Slashdot
Slashdot is a technology oriented weblog. Created in September 1997 by Rob "Cmdr Taco" Malda, today it is owned by the Open Source Development Network. Most of Slashdot's content consists of short summaries of stories on other sites, with links to them, and provisions for readers to comment on the story. These summaries are generally provided by the Slashdot readers, with the editors accepting or rejecting these contributions. Also mixed in are movie and book reviews, as well as "Ask Slashdot" queries from users requesting information from the readership.
Slashdot is run primarily by Rob "CmdrTaco" Malda, Jeff "Hemos" Bates (who posts stories, sells advertising, and handles the book reviews) and Robin "Roblimo" Miller (who came on board to help handle some of the more managerial sides of the site, as well as posting stories). The bandwidth is provided by Exodus.Net.
Slashdot's core audience consists of Linux users and various other people within the Open Source software movement.
As anonymous posting is allowed on Slashdot, trolling and spamming on Slashdot is a highly evolved phenomenon. It is a bizarre and complex subculture involving attempts at the "first post", Naked and Petrified Natalie Portman, hot grits, the trolltalk forum and other user-created discussions, goatse.cx, penis birds, Beowulf clusters, mock-homosexual erotica featuring an admixture of Slashdot celebrities and topics (e.g. Star Trek, Linux, BSD), and other unusual juvenalia. There is a weblog devoted to examining the Slashdot subculture called Geekizoid.
Nupedia and Wikipedia were Slashdotted (see Slashdot effect) on Thursday July 26 2001, @03:10AM.
Additional Resources:
- http://slashdot.org -- Slashdot
- http://www.cs.washington.edu/homes/klee/misc/slashdot.html -- A campaign to boycott Slashdot
- http://slashdot.org/articles/01/07/26/0312258.shtml -- The third (July 26, 2001) Slashdot article to mention Wikipedia, and the first to focus in on it
- http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?op=user_created_index -- List of Slashdot's user-created discussions