Slashdot- Of the Techies, By the Techies but For the Entire Web

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Strangely, the first thing that seems odd when you come across the website Slashdot is not its name. It is only when you put some thought to it do your realize that we have here a website named “http slash slash slashdot dot com”. This clever use of the most common symbols of the World Wide Web leads to high expectations about the site itself.

Thankfully, the site does not disappoint.

Slashdot is a current affairs oriented website with a tilt towards the nerdy side of life. Surfers and members are encouraged to submit links and the same are put up on the site after being evaluated by the editors. Slashdot is yet another site which feels that open source is the way to go. Current news related to technology and all things nerdy are judged with an obvious pro open source tilt.

This site was created in 1997 when weblogs had not captured the imagination of the masses. However, this site was designed in such a way that many find it difficult to believe that it was setup before the whole concept of blogging caught up.

Once the story is posted, the same is open to the opinion and judgment of the readers. They are free to post comments and you can learn a lot about technology and its various aspects by going through the stories and the various comments related to the story.

Slashdot seeks to separate itself from other social networking websites like Digg, Delicious and Youtube when it comes to rating the stories posted. Rather than judging the story as good or bad and voting it up or down, members simply express their opinion about the story by passing comments like “30% insightful, 70% interesting”. The right descriptors can be used to give one’s opinion about the story without actually getting into mud slinging about the tastes and choices of the submitter.

The site takes its duty of moderating the comments very seriously with even anonymous comments posted on the site being moderated to determine whether it matches the high standards of the site.

Since this site is clear about the fact that it focuses on the various current issues related to technology and its various aspects, its list of members includes the who’s who of the technical world. Co founder of Wikipedia, co founder of Apple, Freenet creator, Samba developer, Linux Kernel developer and even a gentleman who is a Physicist and Author can be found on the list of members of Slashdot.

The site is divided into sections to enable people to focus on their areas of interest. Some popular sections on the site include Games, Hardware, Linux, Mobile etc.

The popularity of the website led to the coining of the phrase called ‘slashdot effect’. This effect described a sudden surge in the traffic to a small website due to a link posted in a popular forum like Slashdot. Those who liked the link proceed to click on the same and small websites simply go under when there is such a huge spike in traffic.

To know more about the Slashdot effect, click here

To check out a 2005 blog post that strangely claimed Slashdot was dying and on its way out, click here

Image Credit: toxickore

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