Slashdot Turns 100,000
This entry represents the 100,000th story posted on Slashdot. Technically this is a bit late since we're missing the first few months of stories from the DB, but there are now 100k items in the story database and I thought that milestone was worthy of sharing with the universe.
We've come a long way in the last 12 years, and while the site isn't always exactly what I want it to be, I'm very proud of the work done by our thousands of submitters and by the editors our readers have "affectionately" referred to as "The Slashdot Janitors" for so many years.
Special grats to timothy who is just short of his 17,000th story and is far and away the most prolific person here. The hall of fame has a few other bits of trivia.
What's amazing to me isn't that /. has carried on this long, but rather that the comment quality on here hasn't gone the way of most social new sites. It seems that in general as a social news site ages, matures, and grows, the comment quality follows an inverse pattern. Or more simply, as the number of users approaches infinity, the comment quality approaches 4chan. Digg used to be a decent site for discussion; now you'd be laughed at for even suggesting that the comments might be notable. Reddit is quickly getting there. Slashdot though seems to best this pattern. While I'm well aware that someone will reply to this with "In soviet russia 4chan approaches you!" or something similar in a successful attempt to disprove my point, but I think it still holds true in some respect. Kudos slashdot, keep it up. You keep trying to make UI (un)improvements and we'll still be here to comment without RTFA - and we'll both be thankful for it.
Congrats /. and "Thanks!"
You've been a regular haunt of mine longer than any other tech site and I'm glad you're still around. :)
There may be 100,000 stories, but what's that without dupes though? 1000, 2000 tops? ;)
ASCII stupid question, get a stupid ANSI
You have to hold a four or five digit UID to wake them from the darkness, otherwise they won't listen and will continue to hide.
Sig: I stole this sig.
At least we know they used the right data type for the stories ;)
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
I'm curious about CmdrTaco saying the site isn't always what he wants it to be; care to elaborate?
I'm seriously not trying to start a flame war or anything like that; just curious as to how the site has differed from your vision for it.
"There is no time, sir, at which ties do not matter," Jeeves, (Jeeves and the Impending Doom)
Only one way to find out:
``Pl'ngooi hglw'grtz Natalie Portman /. wgah'nagl b00bies petran''
(In a pool of hot grits at Slashdot, Natalie Portman lies naked and petrified.)
Thanks for 100,000, Taco and Company.
...to a geek. We should hold off celebrating until the next power of two. Looking forward to the 131,072nd story!
-Stephen
How's this? I know a few ppl with even lower though... and obviously the staff!
You have to hold a four or five digit UID to wake them from the darkness, otherwise they won't listen and will continue to hide.
I have a five digit UID and am nihilistic enough to awaken eldritch horrors purely out of curiosity to see what would happen.
Is there a man page for it?
Darth --
Nil Mortifi, Sine Lucre
I remember reading posts like yours in the days of old, decrying the decline of /.
Me too.
My really low account number was one lower than your really low account number, but I lost it. I think it's somewhere in a dresser drawer, next to the keys to my other car, which is a Porsche 911 GT3 RS and has a kicking sound system.
You are welcome on my lawn.
that woke me up, but I think I saw someone in double digits somewhere around here.
The UI would be fine if a) it worked correctly cross-browser, or at least among standards-compliant browsers and b) the javascript that powers most of it wasn't some of the slowest ever written.
I liked the site better when it didn't rely on Javascript at all: back when all the comment boxes worked without a hitch, and there weren't so many clever little popups that don't work half the time. Plus, I used to be able to see icons for friend/foe markers. Even with everything turned on in NoScript (save DoubleClick), the site doesn't completely work, and it's maddening.
I haven't seen ANY value added by ANY of the UI changes to Slashdot in the past couple of years. All they've done is make the site harder to use and less attractive. I always get the feeling no matter what browser I use that the site was coded for some other browser. And that's just terrible.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
When did you find the time to log on? Aren't there kids in your lawn that need to be told get off?
Anything can be found funny, from a certain point of view.
I remember a few times the "low UID" issue came up (for no other reason than asking who's got a low uid??)
Somebody was bragging about their low UID (2 digits) and Taco responded "pwned". ;)
Another time the discussion was about if people with low UID's posted useful info, and user #11 (I think) said "nope just pointless comments really".
I see Palpatine posted below, #94 that's pretty low!
What CmdrTaco failed to mention is that when you remove all the duplicate articles they're only at 75,654.
but really, were would any of us be without Slashdot?
Working?
Now that I think about it, I'm pretty sure everything I just said is completely wrong.
# cowboyneal
there, fixed it for ya.
signed,
grammar nazi