Tuesday, February 22, 2005
Slashdot Article For Class
Slashdot.org: Land of the Geek, Home of the Nerd
Among forms of human communication, arguing via the internet currently ranks somewhere below smoke signals on a foggy day.
At Slashdot.org, Rob "CmdrTaco" Malda and his fellow administrators are making a valiant attempt to raise the level of online discourse.
Slashdot provides a wide-ranging forum for conversation on everything from national politics to “What’s New With Data Structures In C#.”
Users submit stories to Slashdot by the hundreds every day. The administrators sift through the submissions, choosing about twelve a day to post on the front page.
Nearly all of the articles posted on Slashdot are open to public feedback and discussion. Any reader may post a comment, but that does not mean that anyone wants to read what they have to say.
To deal with this common problem in online forums, the administrators of Slashdot allow certain moderators to assign a numerical rating to each comment. A particular comment might be rated as high as “5: Insightful” or as low as “-1: Off Topic.” The points add up. Users hoard their “karma” points as a badge of honor.
Slashdot commands so large a following that when a story links to a smaller web site, the huge number of hits can crash an unprepared server. This has become known as the “Slashdot Effect.” The victims are said to have been “Slashdotted.”
Slashdot was created by geeks, for geeks. Along with Jeff “Hemos” Bates, Malda founded Slashdot in September 1997. According to Malda, the site was named Slashdot because he “wanted to make the URL silly and unpronounceable.” Malda encourages doubters to “[t]ry reading out the full URL to http://slashdot.org and you'll see what I mean.”
The white and green Slashdot home page looks like a throwback to the early 1990s, reminiscent of early local online bulletin board systems.
Icons at the top of the page indicate the categories of the most recent stories. At the moment, an illustration of Justice leads the pack, blindfold and all, pointing to a story in the “Your Rights Online” section.
A powerful tool for Slashdot users hides beneath the link to “Ask
Slashdot.” “Ask Slashdot” masquerades as an advice column, but it reads more like the “Playboy Advisor” for geeks than “Dear Abby.”
The questions themselves range from the inane “Pimpin’ Out Your Corporate Office” to the altruistic “Technology
To Help With Learning Disabilities.”
Many of the replies will fall short of the questioner’s expectations, but somewhere buried under the mountain of inside jokes and historical computer references, the answer will appear.
Open Source Technology Group (OSTG) has owned Slashdot since October 2000, taking over the management of the servers and advertising. In addition to Slashdot, OSTG owns sites such as Linux.com and SourceForge.net, gathering points for developers of open-source software.
Malda, Bates, and their team are now free to spend their time editing content for Slashdot and developing software of their own.
According to web traffic monitor Alexa.com, Slashdot has averaged a ranking of 1244 over the last three months, increasing by 259 places over the same time period. In that span of time, Slashdot has also increased its page views and reach.
Because Alexa depends on “traffic data from millions of Alexa Toolbar users,” their calculations may be underestimating the usage of Slashdot. The Alexa Toolbar is available only to users of Internet Explorer on a Microsoft Windows operating system. No scientific poll exists, but the anti-Microsoft mood that prevails at Slashdot might indicate that the Alexa Toolbar goes ignored by Slashdot users.
According to Alexa, CNET.com tops Slashdot on all fronts. CNET ranks 210, with larger percentage increases in all categories over a three month period. CNET is a commercial site, offering price
comparison of products, splashy color advertising, and high quality visual design. CNET has articles, reviews, and columns such as “Most Popular Buzz” and “Ask the Cell Phone Diva.”
In contrast, Slashdot is the low-tech leader with a writing style that resembles the signature pages in a high school yearbook. CNET exudes slick gadgetry, trumpeting the release of the newest digital cameras. Slashdotters argue over the faults of the latest Linux kernel.
Slashdot’s low-tech exterior, greatly unchanged since 1997, represents its traditional nerd aesthetic. It might be a little hard on the eyes and annoying to listen to for long periods of time, but Slashdot excels as the primary source for “[N]ews for nerds, stuff that matters.”
Among forms of human communication, arguing via the internet currently ranks somewhere below smoke signals on a foggy day.
At Slashdot.org, Rob "CmdrTaco" Malda and his fellow administrators are making a valiant attempt to raise the level of online discourse.
Slashdot provides a wide-ranging forum for conversation on everything from national politics to “What’s New With Data Structures In C#.”
Users submit stories to Slashdot by the hundreds every day. The administrators sift through the submissions, choosing about twelve a day to post on the front page.
Nearly all of the articles posted on Slashdot are open to public feedback and discussion. Any reader may post a comment, but that does not mean that anyone wants to read what they have to say.
To deal with this common problem in online forums, the administrators of Slashdot allow certain moderators to assign a numerical rating to each comment. A particular comment might be rated as high as “5: Insightful” or as low as “-1: Off Topic.” The points add up. Users hoard their “karma” points as a badge of honor.
Slashdot commands so large a following that when a story links to a smaller web site, the huge number of hits can crash an unprepared server. This has become known as the “Slashdot Effect.” The victims are said to have been “Slashdotted.”
Slashdot was created by geeks, for geeks. Along with Jeff “Hemos” Bates, Malda founded Slashdot in September 1997. According to Malda, the site was named Slashdot because he “wanted to make the URL silly and unpronounceable.” Malda encourages doubters to “[t]ry reading out the full URL to http://slashdot.org and you'll see what I mean.”
The white and green Slashdot home page looks like a throwback to the early 1990s, reminiscent of early local online bulletin board systems.
Icons at the top of the page indicate the categories of the most recent stories. At the moment, an illustration of Justice leads the pack, blindfold and all, pointing to a story in the “Your Rights Online” section.
A powerful tool for Slashdot users hides beneath the link to “Ask
Slashdot.” “Ask Slashdot” masquerades as an advice column, but it reads more like the “Playboy Advisor” for geeks than “Dear Abby.”
The questions themselves range from the inane “Pimpin’ Out Your Corporate Office” to the altruistic “Technology
To Help With Learning Disabilities.”
Many of the replies will fall short of the questioner’s expectations, but somewhere buried under the mountain of inside jokes and historical computer references, the answer will appear.
Open Source Technology Group (OSTG) has owned Slashdot since October 2000, taking over the management of the servers and advertising. In addition to Slashdot, OSTG owns sites such as Linux.com and SourceForge.net, gathering points for developers of open-source software.
Malda, Bates, and their team are now free to spend their time editing content for Slashdot and developing software of their own.
According to web traffic monitor Alexa.com, Slashdot has averaged a ranking of 1244 over the last three months, increasing by 259 places over the same time period. In that span of time, Slashdot has also increased its page views and reach.
Because Alexa depends on “traffic data from millions of Alexa Toolbar users,” their calculations may be underestimating the usage of Slashdot. The Alexa Toolbar is available only to users of Internet Explorer on a Microsoft Windows operating system. No scientific poll exists, but the anti-Microsoft mood that prevails at Slashdot might indicate that the Alexa Toolbar goes ignored by Slashdot users.
According to Alexa, CNET.com tops Slashdot on all fronts. CNET ranks 210, with larger percentage increases in all categories over a three month period. CNET is a commercial site, offering price
comparison of products, splashy color advertising, and high quality visual design. CNET has articles, reviews, and columns such as “Most Popular Buzz” and “Ask the Cell Phone Diva.”
In contrast, Slashdot is the low-tech leader with a writing style that resembles the signature pages in a high school yearbook. CNET exudes slick gadgetry, trumpeting the release of the newest digital cameras. Slashdotters argue over the faults of the latest Linux kernel.
Slashdot’s low-tech exterior, greatly unchanged since 1997, represents its traditional nerd aesthetic. It might be a little hard on the eyes and annoying to listen to for long periods of time, but Slashdot excels as the primary source for “[N]ews for nerds, stuff that matters.”
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