Slashdot's 20th Anniversary: History of Slashdot

Slashdot turned 20 this month, which is ancient in internet years. How far have we come?

Also, we've set up a page to coordinate user meet-ups around the world to celebrate. Read on for the full 20-year history of Slashdot.

Site Development

Slashdot started in 1997 as Chips and Dips by Rob "CmdrTaco" Malda. He posted links to news articles that interested him, mostly on open-source software and tech news. Between working as an ad programmer and going to college, he ran it off of a single server. In October of 1997, he registered it (with financial backing from Jeff "Hemos" Bates) as Slashdot.org.

It exploded in 1998. After adding new servers, Slashdot added Web forms for story submissions, as opposed to sending them directly to Malda's email. In March of that year, Malda rewrote the old website, introducing the "New Slashdot" on the 28th.

Slashdot introduced user accounts in the summer of 1998. "Ask Slashdot" debuted on May 13 of that year, with a question on potential ways to convince hardware manufacturers to be more compatible with Linux.

In 1999, moderation broadened from 25 editors to a rotating pool of more than 400 users. It was followed by metamoderation in September, which let the older user accounts on the site rate moderations as fair or unfair.

Slashdot introduced subscriptions in March of 2002. For every 1,000 pages, $5 bought users a no-ad experience. In 2003, subscribers were allowed to view articles 10-20 minutes before they were published.

For April Fool's Day 2006, Malda announced that Slashdot didn't have enough female readers. Accompanying this announcement was a hot pink layout that replaced the familiar "News for Nerds. Stuff that matters" with "OMG!!! Ponies!!!" It lasted for only a day, but the comments ranged from "This. Is. Sooo awesome! You guys are totally invited to my sleepover" to "April Fools. Haha. Now PUT IT BACK. My eyes are bleeding already." For another April Fool's Day in 2009, Slashdot introduced User Achievements. There were a few joke ones, but the feature does actually exist.

In June of 2006, Alex Bendiken won the Slashdot CSS Redesign Contest, prompting Slashdot's first permanent layout change since 1998. The second site redesign happened in January of 2011.

On August 25, 2011, Malda dropped a bomb on the community by announcing his resignation from Slashdot. He had posted more than 15,000 stories to Slashdot in his 14-year tenure. "For me," he wrote in his final post, "Slashdot of today is fused to the Slashdot of the past. This makes it really hard to objectively consider the future of the site." He did not list any plans for the future, but in March of 2012, he found a new home as Chief Strategist and Editor-at-Large for WaPo Labs at the Washington Post.

Slashdot launched Slashdot TV on March 28, 2012. In 2016, Slashdot TV was shut down by popular demand.

Corporate
To support its growing readership (and time-consuming nature), Slashdot went into business. In 1998, the editors formed Blockstackers to become the "corporate shell" for Slashdot, said Malda. The site began selling advertisements. The first few, with Herman Miller and Penguin Mints, were barter ads that resulted in furniture and caffeinated mints for the, according to Slashdot editor Rob "samzenpus" Rozeboom.

On June 29, 1999, Slashdot was sold to Andover.net, with the stipulation that creative control remained with the Slashdot editors. Malda reported it was the best way they could think of to support operating costs. And Andover.net was happy to let them keep on doing what they were doing.

Andover.net embarked on a path riddled with name changes. In February of 2000, it merged with VA Linux. Slashdot became a part of their subgroup, Open Source Development Network (OSDN), said Timothy "timothy" Lord. VA Linux became VA Software in December 2001. In 2004, OSDN renamed itself the Open Source Technology Group (OSTG), which changed in 2007 to SourceForge, Inc. The organization changed names yet again in 2009 adopting the brand Geeknet Inc.

In January of 2016, Slashdot was acquired by BIZX, and new editors included msmash, BeauHD, and EditorDavid, along with whipslash overseeing operations.

Slashdot and the News

Slashdot is well-known for its users. They might not be the first to break the news, but they are the first to go at it--fact checking, discussing, and debating. Sometimes, though, they make the news.

On October 4, 1999, Johan Ingles, the deputy editor of Jane's Intelligence Review, reached out to Slashdot concerning an article on cyber terrorism he had received. He wanted readers to go over the piece and answer some questions. After compiling the comments, Ingles decided he could not run the original article. Instead, he wrote a new one based on interviews with the Slashdot community.

In early March of 2001, an anonymous user posted a comment that contained the whole text of OT III, which was copyright material of the Church of Scientology. The church contacted the editors, threatening legal action if the content was not removed. Slashdot conceded, at the advice of their lawyers, but posted links to the copyrighted material that was located in other places on the web.

Milestones
The oldest article in Slashdot's archives, "Become 007 on The Internet" from 1997, is not its first one. Rob Rozeboom estimated about 1,000 earlier articles were lost in a database migration.

In April 2001, Slashdot Japan launched, publishing its first article on the 5th of that month.

Slashdot's 10,000th article was published on February 24, 2000 and the 100,000th story was published on December 11, 2009.

On November 3, 2004, Slashdot published the article "Kerry Concedes Election to Bush." The piece generated more than 5,600 comments, making it the most discussed submission in Slashdot history. That August, Slashdot's most visited submission, "ISP Owner Who Fought FBI Spying Freed From Gag Order" was posted, which has generated more than 1.2 million hits.

2008 saw a new president elected in the United States, and "Barack Obama Wins US Presidency" became the third most discussed story in Slashdot history. In the last 12 months, the election of Donald Trump gave rise to the most discussed story of the past year. Google firing James Damore was also one of the most discussed and visited stories of 2017.

Featured Interviews

In July 1999, a flipside of "Ask Slashdot" was introduced where users could pose questions for a guest, and the highest-rated questions were answered. Bruce Perens, a big name in the Linux/Open Source Movement, was their first interview.

Slashdot Interviews are conducted regularly. Some star interviewees include: Bruce Sterling, the sci-fi author who helped shape the cyberpunk genre, William Shatner, Neil Gaiman, Jimmy Wales, the founder of Wikipedia, and author Neal Stephenson.

Onward!
So where does Slashdot go from 20? Well in a world where the internet is always changing, Slashdot stands almost alone in that it boasts a site and community that have remained quite consistent over two decades. Slashdot is News for Nerds, Stuff that Matters because of the people who have contributed their knowledge, humor, opinions, expertise, and experiences day in and day out in discussions spanning so many different topics including science, open source software, hardware, politics, hate of Beta, and so many more over the past two decades. Thank you all.

Comments

And the biggest blunder of a comment award goes to

[DontBeAMoran]

CmdrTaco, for posting No wireless. Less space than a nomad. Lame.

Old.

[ScooterComputer]

Damn I'm old.

Re:Old.

[Lord Kano]

Looks like you beat me to registration by a month or three.

LK

Re:Old.

[Bookwyrm]

Yeah. I think it's not so much just the 20 years, it's just that I remember how *cool* everything felt when slashdot was new, and in comparison everything really feels old now.

Re:Old.

[AmiMoJo]

I was going to check how old my achievements made me look but I noticed that maybe they aren't working properly. "Days Read in a Row" is only showing 2^7, but I'm pretty sure I haven't missed a day for at least a decade. Seriously. Certainly zero last year.

Also, 2^9 score 5 comments. Suck it trolls :-)

Re:Old.

[jlowery]

And I'll be darned if I'm not some spritely young wet-behind-the-ears coder! How the heck did I ever get signed up for this, anyway? I think it began with Netly News... IIRC, Soledad O'Brien had something to do with it.

Re:Old.

[AmiMoJo]

People were complaining about the new layout needing an 800x600 screen in 1998. We /have/ come a long way.

Re:Old.

[tsa]

This. I felt the same back then. I was so excited when I was introduced to Linux back in 1996. Finally a system that did not crash when you looked at it and was capable of showing everything a computer could do, which was far more than Windows could. My housemate was (is still) a Windows fan, and I often looked at him wearily when he was fiddling with boot floppies, crashes and failed burns. I installed Linux from a CD that was in another computer and my burns never failed. And I had months-long uptimes while he had to reboot his PC every time after installing a new program.
I didn't go into ICT (physical chemistry is much more fun) but I used Linux as my main OS for 10 years or so before moving to the Mac because I was sick of still having to edit configuration files to get it do behave like I wanted to. With the Mac I have a Unix system that does most of what I want well and has a good interface, and I can still use the power of Unix if I need to. I do miss X though. It's almost never used anymore on the Mac.

Re:Old.

[philj]

Looks like you beat me to registration by a month or three.

LK

Looks like you beat me by a day :-)

Re:Old.

[UnknownSoldier]

> before moving to the Mac because I was sick of still having to edit configuration files to get it do behave like I wanted to. With the Mac I have a Unix system that does most of what I want well and has a good interface, and I can still use the power of Unix if I need to.

^^ THIS

I imagine quite a few of us "old-timers" fit this pattern:

* In our 20's we used to love to tinker with Linux.
* In our 40's we just want to get shit done -- instead of spending time recompiling our kernels.

With a MBP we have 99% what we want in a *nix box. While pricey it is "good enough."

Re:Old.

[Frederic54]

I remember using /. before we had user accounts, 20 years ago.. yeah I'm old too, but I still browse the site almost daily :)

Re:Old.

[CaseyB]

Get off my lawn.

Re:Old.

[damn_registrars]

* In our 40's we just want to get shit done -- instead of spending time recompiling our kernels.

I used to recompile my kernel all the time - back when I ran BSD for many things. In Linux I can't recall the last time I recompiled a kernel. However from my vantage point this has as much to do with hardware power as anything; I used to recompile my kernel "back in the day" to get just the features I want (and to minimize the overhead of features I did not need) but now it doesn't really matter. I used to build servers with 16MB of RAM, now I have a laptop with 16GB of RAM. Overhead just isn't as critical.

I'm sure other people have other reasons to compile kernels, but I would wager it is less common now than it used to be.

Re:Old.

[dstyle5]

I remember the pre-account days as well, was the wild west here back then. ;) When they implemented accounts I stubbornly held off creating one for quite some time, hence my higher 6 digit UID. Doh!

Re:Old.

[lazarus]

You're all youngsters...

Re:Old.

[Lord Kano]

n00b!

Re:Old.

[Scoth]

I ran (and still run, for now) Gentoo for a long time to squeeze every bit of horsepower out of my stuff and generate the smallest, fastest kernel I could. Nowadays I mostly just run genkernel and let it do it, and barely touch use flags or anything else beyond getting my preferred desktop environment running. I've had the occasional case where tweaking specifics and re-emerging fixed edge cases, but in general hardware has made it all a lot less useful.

Not sure where to go from here distro-wise. I've been out of the loop running Gentoo so long that I'm not even sure what a good distro is for someone hardcore into Linux who doesn't really want to have to deal with it all anymore.

We run a mix of Ubuntu Server and CentOS as work, and I've never had an occasion to compile kernels for either of them.

Re:Old.

[colnago]

Not been around quite as long as you guys, but I do feel that tug of the stories and events I remember - and being a part of them, so to speak - and to feel kinda satisfied for having been there.

Re:Old.

[Bing Tsher E]

People in general have always complained about 'hard' layouts that don't conform well to the topology of the browsers people use on their chosen platform to read from.

Slashdot, as with many other websites, still flows like shit on most browsers. Pretty much the only one good for mobile is Opera, where you can set the browser to force text zooming with reformatting flow and make the text actually readable.

Re:Old.

[Bing Tsher E]

* In our 20's we used to love to tinker with Linux.
* In our 40's we just want to get shit done -- instead of spending time recompiling our kernels.

With a MBP we have 99% what we want in a *nix box. While pricey it is "good enough."

That 99% figure is contrived rhetoric. You should just admit that it is 'good enough' because you stopped caring.

I presently use a Windows box, even bought Windows 10 retail earlier this year so I would have better control (retail means I can yank it off this box and move to another, and reinstall the software that I paid for and own where I wish)

I switched from Slackware to Windows 2000 when W2K came out, and spent year-spanning periods since then on NetBSD desktops for part of the time.

I've never felt like spending the big bucks to buy a fucking Mac. Though I have three SE/30s in my collection and run NetBSD on one of them. I've ended up regretting every purchase of Apple hardware at new prices (two iPod Touches) that I have ever made.

Everybody's experience is different. If you want an appliance, buy Apples stuff. If you want bling, buy one of their gadgets.

If you want to get things done without spending so much, there are alternatives.

Re:Old.

[walterhpdx]

If it helps, the domain that I run is actually 3 years older than slashdot, and I'm hitting 50 this year. I'm going to yell at my younger self to get off my own lawn.

Re:Old.

[Reeses]

Huh? What? Did someone say something over there on Slashdot?

Speak up! I can't hear you.

Re:Old.

[Hognoxious]

Now you need a 1600 x 600 display because of the yuuuuge empty space on the right.

Re:Old.

[olau]

Linux has been losing its reliance on configuration files gradually over the years. These days, most of the popular packages are really install and forget.

Even Debian isn't that hard to install anymore.

Re:Old.

[maestroX]

* In our 20's we used to love to tinker with Linux. * In our 40's we just want to get shit done -- instead of spending time recompiling our kernels. With a MBP we have 99% what we want in a *nix box. While pricey it is "good enough."

That's true years ago (MBP2011). Nowadays apt-get shizzle and stackoverflow beat clicking through iCloud, Facebook, twitter integrations and Apple with its proprietary extensions looking like Microsoft of the past.

No need to tune etc files or recompiling kernels, simply because linux-compatible hardware works out of the box and most packages have sensible defaults out of the box.

And IF you need to edit etc files, it surely is much less of hassle than tackling those ill-documented plist files.

So, I'd like to add;

* In our 40's, when MacOSX turned to shit, we need things we can control to do away with shit.

Just for thought, it's the tinkering that started your professional life, seeking improvement; better get things done and have fun, because in your 40s, with family, kids and all, you don't want to get your job to own you.

Re:Old.

[avgjoe62]

What an appropriate user name, although I'm sure there's a double-digit user named Methuselah around here somewhere.

Re:Old.

[Lord Kano]

Stick with me old fella, I'll get you home.

LK

Re:Old.

[lazarus]

Sadly, he was before my time so I never got to meet him. He wouldn't be on Slashdot though...

Re:Old.

[jwhyche]

I still compile a kernel every now and then to make sure I can still do it. I never actually install it. I remember though back when I used to compile a new kernel it took about 45 minutes on my PPro 200mhz. Now it takes about 45 minutes on my 8350. hummm.

Re:Old.

[jwhyche]

Yup, I remember /. before user accounts. I actually resisted getting one.

Re:Old.

[sconeu]

<AOL> ME TOO! </AOL>

Let me just put some text here to thwart the lameness filter.

Re:Old.

[gmezero]

Thanks but us 4 digits watch out for each other just fine.

Re:Old.

[Pseudonym]

I bet that like me, your uid is 5 digits only because it was considered good etiquette to lurk for a while before commenting.

Re:Old.

[Trogre]

Speak for yourself. Linux distros have come a long way since one had to compile a new kernel to install it.

Now I, like you, just want to get shit done and my family and colleagues all do that with Linux.

Re:Old.

[fisted]

So you build a kernel, and when it compiles without errors, you're like "yay, I can still do it! make clean"?
If you don't even boot your kernel, you can't know whether you can still do it.

Re:Old.

[Lord Kano]

That's pure gold. It's times like this that I wish I could comment and moderate.

LK

Re:Old.

[Wolfrider]

--What ^^ said. ;-)

almost run into the ground

[doctorvo]

Slashdot turned 20 this month, which is ancient in internet years. How far have we come?

Slashdot has been almost run into the ground, with a large number of the stories having little to do with technology, and instead raising divisive political and social issues.

And the user interface is stuck somewhere in the previous decade.

Re:almost run into the ground

[Baron_Yam]

>Slashdot has been almost run into the ground, with a large number of the stories having little to do with technology,

I'm (partially) OK with that. Too much focus and there's less draw to visit frequently or stay as long. Not enough and... well, everything gets watered down, which encourages lower quality posts and drives the cycle further. I would suggest the owners not let things slip any further since the 'generic noise' social media niche is well occupied by Reddit and they're not rolling in the bucks either.

>And the user interface is stuck somewhere in the previous decade.

Again, I'm on the fence. Yes, it's annoying... but it might also be one of the reasons we haven't finished the race to the bottom just yet.

Re:almost run into the ground

[Kierthos]

Well, I'm a bit of a politics nerd, so......

Bang on about the user interface, though.

Re:almost run into the ground

[UnknownSoldier]

> And the user interface is stuck somewhere in the previous decade.

Agreed. For a site that is "news for nerds" it is bullshit that code snippets can't be posted.

* Seriously, what the fuck is the point of an "ecode" tag if you are going to butcher whitespace???
* I get it, you want to stop trolls with the "lameness" filter -- but isn't that 's what moderation is for? The "lameness filter" is LAME.

Another reason /. sucks -- where is the _summary_ of a thread after posting has been closed?
i.e. I would be willing to _summarize_ the various +5 posts and make a final "TL:DR;" post after the comments are closed.

There are ways that /. _could_ stand out from the rest of the crap sites out there, but it seems like the moderation system is the last innovation they hand. Instead we get shitty UI re-designs every few years that no-one wants while still leaving the unsolved problems unsolved. Hello, Umlauts and Unicode, anyone?

/rant off

Re:almost run into the ground

[jwhyche]

I'm kind of glad the user interface has stayed pretty much as it has for the past 20 years. Seems everyone is in a hurry to update their website with the lastest new look or some shit. Good to see that /. still has mostly resisted the change and still looks green.

No i don't' want to talk about /. beta.

Re:almost run into the ground

[Megane]

Only because we fought against Beta so hard. Seriously, it felt like they had hired someone to do the software maintenance, and then he went nuts trying to go web 3.0 with it, like he was doing it to justify keeping his job longer. I guess it could have been worse, he could have tried to go full retard Discourse.

This is the first time in my /. life

[rsilvergun]

that greased up yoda dolls and Natalie Portman's hot grits has been on topic. Thank you, 20th year anniversary!

Also, great googly moogly I'm old.

Re:This is the first time in my /. life

[CODiNE]

PETRIFIED Natalie Portman with hot grits you insensitive clod!

Re:This is the first time in my /. life

[sconeu]

NAKED and PETRIFIED Natalie Portman with hot grits you insensitive clod!

Re:This is the first time in my /. life

[Pseudonym]

The juxtaposition of this top-level comment with this reply sums up the recent history of Slashdot almost perfectly.

The sorry state of Trump-era Internet trolling almost makes me nostalgic for the GNAA.

Re:This is the first time in my /. life

[Megane]

Netcraft says "Beowulf Clusters of Naked And Petrified Natalie Portmans pouring hot grits DOWN MY PANTS" are dying.

Re:And the biggest blunder of a comment award goes

[AmiMoJo]

Not sure he was actually wrong though... In many ways the iPod did suck much worse than the competition, it just had better marketing. And yes, I bought one, complete with Firewire connectivity and really crap LCD.

I think the iPod took everyone by surprise. Apple computers were at least quite functional, but the iPod was a fashion accessory and sold as such, with the iconic white earbuds. Being nerds most of us probably weren't used to that.

Digits!

[Known Nutter]

In before the battle of the ultra-low UIDs.

Re:Digits!

[TuringTest]

In before the battle of the ultra-low UIDs.

Let's start gently...

Re:Digits!

[tsa]

What's wrong with ultra-low UIDs, you whippersnapper? Get off my lawn!

Re:Digits!

[Brigadier]

Get off my lawn !!

Re:Digits!

[Nadir]

Kids these days

Re:Digits!

[Frederic54]

What did you say?

Re:Digits!

[lazarus]

You think you're deaf now? Just wait...

Re:Digits!

[kdekorte]

I think I have been reading Slashdot for pretty much as long as it has been around. I remember when they added logins, and I wasn't sure I wanted one so I waited awhile to get one. But Slashdot has always been one of my daily stops.

Re:Digits!

[angel'o'sphere]

I guess it is the fact that you still have 5 digits instead of 3 or 2?
On the other hand, the programmers could be fair! Just confess that you use an 64bit integer as id, display the leading 0's and we are all equally low idded.

Re:Digits!

[Matheus]

My memory's screwy... I know I got my account sometime between 95-99 given where I was living at the time BUT I thought it was closer to the beginning of that and apparently /. has only been around since '97 SO.. Given my 6-digits must have been closer to '98 I guess... /. post history is only going back to 2008 for me so.. is there anyway to check our "birthday"?

Re:Digits!

[gmezero]

Hats off to you, aged sir.

Re:Digits!

[Megane]

Didn't we already do that last month?

Re:Digits!

[Yeechang Lee]

That's nice, young whippersnapper. Now, get off my lawn!

Re:And the biggest blunder of a comment award goes

[dunkelfalke]

Yet truer words were never spoken.
But Apple was then and still is about fashion, not technical merit.

I don't remember exactly when I signed up but...

[Lord Kano]

I've been here at least 18 years.

I have changed so much over that period of time that I feel nostalgic when I look back at some those old discussions.

I remember non-ironic mentions of Beowulf clusters.

I remember the kinship I felt during the Hellmouth discussions.

I remember being thrilled when I learned that I could filter out Katz's posts.

I've been here for a long time and I plan to be here for a long time to come.

LK

Ahhh...

[Oswald McWeany]

Ahhh... I missed the first 3 years of Slashdot's existence. By the time I first started logging on Slashdot was already a toddler and using a big-boy toilet.

Re:What no Katz/Hassellton memorial?

[AmiMoJo]

Remember when the site went down because the database had an integer overflow on the comment index number?

Or when they first introduced the [domain.tld] after links to protect users for goats.cx bombs?

$DEITY, you make me feel old !

[Nadir]

Happy Birthday Slashdot: I've been following you for most (all?) of those twenty years. Even with your ups and downs you still hold a dear place in my heart...

Re:$DEITY, you make me feel old !

[WinkyN]

I wonder if we can get a lowest user ID to post thread going. I think you're in the lead at the moment.

Re:$DEITY, you make me feel old !

[Hognoxious]

His name's rather appropriate.

Re:And the biggest blunder of a comment award goes

[TuringTest]

Having a reasonable way to navigate the music library didn't hurt, either. *Snark*

Need a new shirt

[AndyKron]

My 15 year anniversary /. t-shirt has a hole growing under the left arm. Will there be a replacement?

Re:Need a new shirt

[Anonymous Cashews]

Slashdot needs to team up with Teespring for shirts and hoodies. New swag will make for a great conversation piece with IT coworkers. "Slashdot? Never heard of it."

Political Stories + Bad Modding + Posting Limits

[Anonymous Coward]

Too much focus and there's less draw to visit frequently or stay as long.

I don't buy this at all. The best thing about Slashdot in its early years was the rather specific focus it had on actual technology, computing, science and math topics.

It was easy to come here and spend hours discussing open source software, Linux, math, compilers, programming, programming languages, and science with others who shared those interests.

These days most of the topics are totally political, but they just happen to involve technology in some way, since pretty much everything these days involves technology.

For example, we've been subjected to a "Russia narrative" story about Kaspersky almost every day this month, and sometimes more than once a day, like on Oct. 16 or Oct. 11. While technology is involved, the real focus of those submissions is political in nature.

It's hard to have relevant discussions when the topics here are limited to politics, politics, and more politics. Politics always results in shitty discussion!

We also should ignore how the restrictive posting limits and the awful moderation also prevent high-quality discussion from happening here.

The posting limits are really bad. It means we can post maybe once or twice before long delays are introduced. That prevents anything resembling a real conversation from happening. It's not possible to have a back-and-forth discussion here lasting more than three or four comments in total. So what do we get? People using their one or two comments per hour to post their opinion and then leave, without any followup.

The awful moderation also makes it harder to see good comments. I have to always browse this site at -1 these days, because so much good content ends up at 0 or -1 for no reason at all. It totally defeats the purpose of the moderation system when we have to browse at -1 constantly!

It also doesn't help that we have to log in now to submit stories. That's idiotic. We should be able to submit stories without logging in.

To save Slashdot, this is what's needed:

1) Get rid of the posting limits. Keep the captchas, but let us post more than a few comments per hour.

2) Get rid of the moderation system. Just show all comments. We have to browse at -1 anyway these days, so it's like we've already disabled the moderation system.

3) Get rid of the political stories or the tech stories from mainstream news outlets. Go back to reporting on the more obscure stories that aren't found elsewhere, like those concerning open source software, programming languages, and so forth.

4) Allow stories to be submitted without having to log in.

Re:And the biggest blunder of a comment award goes

[AmiMoJo]

It was a real chore for me, because everything had to be tagged. I was just organizing by directory structure and file name at that point.

do you have a screenshot

[FudRucker]

of your first webpage that was served on the first day slashdot went online??? i checked archive.org, they have one from 1998 but it was slow and timed out before my browser could load it

Re:do you have a screenshot

[phalse phace]

Here's a screen capture of Chips and Dips

Re:do you have a screenshot

[AmiMoJo]

I had forgotten that C&D had the "from the ... department" tags too. I could swear they went away for a long time, only to come back to general derision and indifference. Turns out the O.G. site had them too.

Re: What no Katz/Hassellton memorial?

[Anonymous Coward]

Dude, Slashdot was severely disrupted just a few weeks ago, for around a couple of days. SourceForge was also affected. The lack of transparency was terrible. All we got were some useless tweets about the disruptions, long after they had started. The editors couldn't even bother to add a submission or even a small notice on the front page mentioning that there were problems going on! All we got was a busted site.

Still keeping an eye on my feed...

[thunderbee]

... but I rarely take the time to log-in.

happy birthday /. !

IRL? Is that a good idea?

[drunken_boxer777]

What if AC shows up? All of them? Good grief, the venues would experience the Slashdot effect in real life.

Moderators, gird your loins for that one!

As an old Fart(in internet time)

[Pablopelos]

I like the way the site was in the old days "News for Nerds", kind of sad to see the site seemingly wither over the last 5 or so years, but maybe everyone has migrated to Reddit, or just found other sources.

Re:As an old Fart(in internet time)

[dysmal]

Or maybe they finally moved out of their parents basements! :)

Okay, not to toot my own horn...

[Trailer Trash]

Slashdot was *way* in the news on 12/25/1999 when we saved Hotmail.

https://slashdot.org/story/99/...

And how about when we spammed millionaire spammer Alan Ralsky in real life?

https://slashdot.org/story/02/...

That was surely one of the most beautiful moments here.

Re:What no Katz/Hassellton memorial?

[tsa]

goatse.cx

Re:I don't remember exactly when I signed up but..

[tsa]

I vividly remember the Columbine shootings and the thread here on /. about it that went on and on. People posted in it how horribly they were treated at school because they were smarter than average and didn't care for fashion and being cool. I was pretty shocked by that. I never had problems like that.

What Slashdot looked like

[phalse phace]

What Slashdot looked like from 1998 to 2014

https://i.imgur.com/efMLCxJ.gif

Re:Political Stories + Bad Modding + Posting Limit

[spaceman375]

I usually ignore AC posts, but here goes.

First off, Coward certainly fits. If you have such a high opinion of your opinions, log in or STFU.

When it comes to your points:
1) Higher limits, sure. No limits, no way in hell. Too much short, fast back-and-forth means no thought goes into the conversation. Wait 10 minutes between posts, max in a thread at 10 or so.

2) I use the mod system all the time. Some topics I skim, some I read deeply. -1 comments are (almost) all worthless. The only down-mods I give when I have points are for lewd insults and the stupid attacks on users like cremier (however it's spelled). Whether or not I like a given user, personal attacks are NOT something I want to see here, and the mod system helps get rid of them

3) Only point I can agree with.

4) Lazy coward. Login required keeps out a lot of bullshit. You want higher quality stories, then take away a major defense against bad submissions. Lazy thinking as well as lazy action. You don't like /. so much, go away.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY!

[tsa]

Happy 10100-th birthday, /.! I'm glad to have been a part of almost all of it. I was here before you could log in. It's been great, and although /. has changed, I don't think it's better or worse than before. I hope to be here frequently for many years to come. Keep up the good work!

Cheers, tsa (I was here before the TSA!)

Re:HAPPY BIRTHDAY!

[hcs_$reboot]

You know, since then people learned how to read decimal.

TWENTY??

[bytethese]

Wow, 20yrs ago I was in college, just switching over to Comp Sci and didn't join Slashdot until years later. It's always informative and hilarious here. Keep it up!

Re:'View All Comments' button!

[UnknownSoldier]

+1 for the "'View All Comments" buttons !

Happy Birthday /.

[hoover]

I've been here since 1998, checking the site more or less regularly and more recently again daily when I'm at work for the last year or so.

While I sort of miss the early FOSS and Linux centered days of just a few thousand users and mostly sane discussion threads, things change and we have to accept that I guess.

Thanks for keeping /. alive, I'm looking forward to what the next 20 years (hopefully early retirement for me ;-) will bring.

How far have you come?

[damn_registrars]

Well, still no proper unicode support. Maybe in another 20 years?

Re:How far have you come?

[ChristophWeber]

Actually, end-to-end UTF8 support in the pipeline. Slashcode's Perl innards and some other technicalities make the transition non--trivial, but we are committed to doing it.

Re:How far have you come?

[damn_registrars]

we are committed to doing it.

With all due respect I think we heard that about meta-moderation as well. I'm inclined to say we heard that on other not-really-functional matters around here too. As the active user base continues to dwindle around here some of us are just coming by to see who gets the honor of turning out the lights...

Re:How far have you come?

[mcswell]

Unicode version 1 preceded the Internet as most of us know it: 1992. 'Nuff said.

Ok, I'll say some more. I'm a computational linguist, and while Perl is far from my favorite language, I have used it with Unicode UTF-8, and it works just fine.

Re:And the biggest blunder of a comment award goes

[damn_registrars]

I haven't confirmed this yet, but I'm pretty sure I'm not the only person on the planet who did not find the original iPod wheel to be intuitive or useful.

Re:Political Stories + Bad Modding + Posting Limit

[cayenne8]

Here's an example [slashdot.org] of an excellent comment I saw today that was at -1 for no good reason.

Being this is slashdot....I'm too lazy to click the link and go read it myself.

You should have quoted it if you wanted to make a point.

;)

Re:I don't remember exactly when I signed up but..

[dunkelfalke]

I did.
My first thought on receiving my Abitur diploma was "thank god I won't ever have to see these arseholes again". Last month was the first time in almost 20 years I wasn't able to evade one of them, the fucker recognized me when I was visiting my parents.

Re: Political Stories + Bad Modding + Posting Limi

[spaceman375]

Geez, I'm bitchier than usual today. I'm gonna pay attention to my own sig and ignore this troll.

Still my favorite news site

[omfglearntoplay]

Without a doubt. Wow, how time has flown. Thank you Slashdot, you have some great stuff most of the time.

Re:I don't remember exactly when I signed up but..

[Lord Kano]

The thing about the Hellmouth discussion that drew me into it was the backlash against non-popular kids.

All of a sudden, if they wore all black or a trench coat, schools were treating them like the next mass shooter. Kids were being forced into counseling because of their fashion sense or choice in music.

School authorities had ignored the problem of bullying for decades and when the dam broke, the scrutiny was primarily on the victims and not the perpetrators.

LK

Re:I don't remember exactly when I signed up but..

[hcs_$reboot]

Ah, at the time iPod owners were respected, they were "Apple Fanatics", now they're just fanbois.

Re:And the biggest blunder of a comment award goes

[TheCastro1689]

https://slashdot.org/~zephc "5 GB still is more than my whole mp3 collection"

Re:And the biggest blunder of a comment award goes

[mobby_6kl]

I used the original Nomad and still have the Zen in working condition. Its way of navigating the music library with the jog dial is perfectly fine.

Re:I don't remember exactly when I signed up but..

[Lord Kano]

Now that you mention it, I was a Mac guy back then. My primary computer was a Performa 6400/200 and my secondary was a Pentium 200/MMX for gaming.

My exodus came shortly thereafter.

Ahh... memories.

LK

Re:And the biggest blunder of a comment award goes

[angel'o'sphere]

because everything had to be tagged
No it had not.
I(t?) was just organizing by directory structure and file name at that point.
Exactly! And how else would you organize albums?

Looking at your previous post: everyone I know who bought an iPod loved it ... fastest most intuitive interface ever.

I don't know anyone wo ever tagged anything in his iTunes library, why would you when everything is already perfectly laouted?

Sure ... Prince is and TAFKAP (or how he actually called himself) are not in the same directory ...

Re: Political Stories + Bad Modding + Posting Limi

[Matheus]

#5 Don't let AC's comment :)

Re:What no Katz/Hassellton memorial?

[mobby_6kl]

I once linked goatse in a context where it should've been clear it's goatse (it was a related discussion about shock sites or something), but without explicitly mentioning it by name. Somebody tracked me down on ICQ and asked me "why would you do that???" Still warms my heart to this day.

Re:Political Stories + Bad Modding + Posting Limit

[angel'o'sphere]

I browse at 2 or 3 ....
I metamod ... I actually can not remember when I saw a -1 post that was worth reading.

And ... your name seems to ring a bell, I guess I have read about 10,000 -1 posts of you.

Yay, party time for the old guys!

[sootman]

My site turned 20 earlier this year, and when I saw the earlier anniversary story it took me a moment to realize hey, my site is older! Slashdot is a little better known than mine, though. :-) (And this is just the domain names -- "chips & dips" was a thing before I had my site, so they win there.)

$ whois pixelcity.com | grep Creation
Creation Date: 1997-07-27T04:00:00Z

So anyway, Slashdot -- rich-text editor coming any time soon? Support for curly quotes in pasted text? No rush, just curious. :-)

Re:And the biggest blunder of a comment award goes

[AmiMoJo]

I had a 3rd gen iPod. The only way iTunes could organize music was by tag, it didn't care at all about directory structure. Same with the iPod itself, all the files were just renamed to numbers and thrown in a random directory structure, with metadata copied to a special file.

At first WinAMP could create that file too, but later Apple encrypted it to lock out everything except iTunes. In the end I installed Rockbox.

Join dates

[max99ted]

So.. is there any way to find out your join date? I've looked into this before and as far as I can tell I joined sometime in 1999... but it would be nice to confirm that somehow.

In true slashdot form

[UnknowingFool]

Slashdot will turn 20 again next month.

Back in my day!

[wjcofkc]

Yeah, I remember Slashdot being announced on Chips n' Dips. I had a sub three digit ID that was lost in a database mishap... or am I getting senile and that was somewhere else? I have been a very regular visitor since the start, but never really started taking part until a few years ago, so I have a few lost accounts with much lower IDs.

Great community - thanks!

[steve90]

I have enjoyed visiting this site which I first found around 2000 I think. I have always found it to be a great community with some people posting really interesting stuff in the comments. I remember one thread had an astronaut posting on it and someone worked out he was and outed him (in a good way) and seemed pretty cool at the time. If anyone can find that thread or remembers this incident that would be awesome would like to read it again. Reading this site inspired me to run Mandrake and then Ubuntu Linux as my main OS for quite a few years although like so many others I eventually caved in and just bought a Mac to run Unix at home. I also think the American can-do spirit of so many posters and tech guys inspired me to start my own company www.myhealthscan.co.uk - 10% discount on whole body MR scanning just for mentioning Slashdot.org!

Meet-ups?

[snookiex]

You mean, like getting out Mom's basement are interacting with real people? Wow, that sounds complicated :)

On a serious note, Happy Birthday Slashdot! I've been around like 13 years now, and all I have to say is thank you, fellow slashdotters. Thank you for all these well-spent hours. I've learned a lot from you, and I've tried to give something in return every time I could.

editor mod points

[eaglesrule]

I'd like to see posts tagged when they've been modded by an editor, since they have unlimited mod points. I'm interested in fair debate among peers where posts are up modded for their own merits, rather than merely conforming to whatever editorial bias there may be. Slashdot as an ideological echo chamber is of no interest to me.

Re:And the biggest blunder of a comment award goes

[jwhyche]

I have one of those things, still works too. I hated the jog dial with a passion though. I love its sound quality. Sounded much better to me than my daughters ipod. I took out the 40GB drive that came with it and put in a 120GB. That was when I bumped into the other limit on the damn thing. It would only see about 35K tracks.

Re:netcraft confirms - /. is dying

[Baron_Yam]

Are you saying webmasters need no longer fear the /. effect?

Beta?

[ilctoh]

One of the more significant events in recent Slashdot history was the bungling (and ultimate dismissal) of the failed Beta redesign project. A topic which, understandably, gets little further mention from the /. staff - but I'd love to see something of a postmortem of that project. Seems like it could be a useful parable for our audience.

Happy birthday! #2225 represent!

[EDA Wizard]

I still remember the Slashdot party at 1998 or 1999 LinuxWorld or something in San Jose right after the Redhat IPO and right around the Andover thing. I still have the blue plastic cups!

Re:Happy birthday! #2225 represent!

[EDA Wizard]

Oh, That means I've been hitting refresh on this site almost daily for 20 years.... oh gosh...

Slashdotted

[maestroX]

Contributors is what really set Slashdot apart in the old days (as any comment site), intelligent and whitty comments (In Soviet Russia, You must be new here) made a culture, and the low barrier to get to talk to Bruce Perens and the likes.
You'd know and learn something when reading comments or at least get a smile.

I guess it was the time when computing wasn't fully commercial combined with lots of adolescents just having fun hobbying and PDP get-off-my-lawn greybeards talking shop in one place.

I really miss those days, despite I know those aren't coming back, but they got me through heavy depression.

Thank you.

Thank you.

[dramason]

Thank you for making the internet an interesting place.

Re:I don't remember exactly when I signed up but..

[DNS-and-BIND]

It's because those non-popular trenchcoat-wearing kids went and shot up a school full of children. It is impossible to overstate the cultural effect of Columbine. It was HUGE. Wierd kids went from being strange to being outright deadly. The whole 'thing' was they wanted revenge and weren't going to flush people's heads down the toilet, they were going to murder.

This article is a dup.

[sconeu]

https://meta.slashdot.org/story/17/10/03/2356229/20-years-of-stuff-that-matters

Re:And the biggest blunder of a comment award goes

[AmiMoJo]

I found it much better with an amp. Until the 5th generation they used a crappy headphone driver that was okay with the little earbuds it came with but no good for anything larger. Then they switched to a direct push/pull transistor output and it finally had the power to drive decent cans.

The Slashdot effect and copycats

[It's the tripnaut!]

Surprised not to see any mention of the term Slashdot effect on the history above.

Also, what about the list of brazen copycats that got *cough* "inspired" by /.?

Re:The Slashdot effect and copycats

[furry_wookie]

In the early days, slashdot was considered the ultimate test of your website. If you could handle the inrush of users from being linked on slashdot, you could handle anything. Entire technologies and designs were created just to handle the slashdot-effect.

Re:Frist post

[Longbow]

Now that is funny. I remember the rage-storm over first-post posts and how much effort was put in by the editors to get rid of them. Thanks for the chuckle. :)

Re:What no Katz/Hassellton memorial?

[gmezero]

Actually I'm surprised to not see this referenced. That one URL and it's historical relevance in how it pushed the evolution of highlighting, link shorteners and the entire arms race around link bating is significant. Slashdot even gets reference in the Wikipedia page on the URL.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goatse.cx

Re:Political Stories + Bad Modding + Posting Limit

[Pseudonym]

It's at +2 now. The system works?

Re:And the biggest blunder of a comment award goes

[Megane]

I'm still using my 1st gen 4GB Nano (white). They were recalled years ago because of battery issues, but I always used mine for in-car audio, so the battery never got much use. I drove the same SUV for over 15 years until recently, using an adapter to make the iPod look like a CD changer, but my newer vehicle has USB iPod integration, so I just had to plug it in to the USB plug in the glove compartment.

The downside is that the head end doesn't support non-roman character sets, and I have a lot of song names in Japanese, so they show up as asterisks. It's not just Slashdot that doesn't support Unicode, it's also four-year-old vehicle entertainment systems!

Re:Political Stories + Bad Modding + Posting Limit

[Megane]

1) LOG IN ALREADY.

2) I still browse at 0/1, even during the past year or so when the ability to save your filter setting was broken, and I had to reset it Every. Fucking. Time.

3) Well, damn, you did have to say something I would agree with, didn't you?

4) They did that? If it was recent, then good for them, if not, then that would explain the enormous number of accounts created around the 39,000,000 range that kept dumping spam into the firehose. Also, LOG IN ALREADY.

Re:And the biggest blunder of a comment award goes

[AmiMoJo]

I have a Nissan, a Japanese car, and the head unit doesn't support Japanese. Half the names in my phone's address book come up as squares.

Re:Political Stories + Bad Modding + Posting Limit

[Megane]

So because one user is such an annoying asshole that his name gets brought up when talking about moderation, that means that logging in at all is useless? Sure, it's good to have the ability to post anonymously, but even in a world with logins, creimer/cdreimer is what 4chan calls a "namefag", because he thinks he's so important that you need to know it's him, and that you need to know what he thinks about everything. (So is Alpha-Papa-Kilo, at least about certain topics, but he actually manages to do it without logging in.)

Until a few months ago I had been clicking the "Post Anonymously" box a lot more, but I like being able to check back every now and then to see what replies I got, and you can't do that with an anonymous post.

Re: Political Stories + Bad Modding + Posting Limi

[Megane]

I think that Pseudonym's point is that metamoderation is there to correct the down-mods that should never have been done? Initial bad mods are the way Slashdot has been forever, but both metamoderation and second-day moderation correct the problem. On "everybody mods everything" sites like Reddit, there is nothing to counteract the initial groupthink down-mods.

Re: What no Katz/Hassellton memorial?

[Megane]

Remember when the suits thought they could leverage Slashdot into a "business intelligence" site, aka SlashBI? Remember how nobody fucking cared, even though they shilled it hard, because it was such a stupid application of the Slashdot brand? Those who read Slashdot didn't care about that shit, and those who would care didn't know what the fuck Slashdot was.

Re:I don't remember exactly when I signed up but..

[Lord Kano]

Two out of millions committed murder. Thousands who had done nothing other than be victims were targeted.

It might have been possible to prevent it if schools had taken bullying as seriously then as they do now.

LK

As one of the first users, congrats!

[furry_wookie]

It aint what it used to be but I still read it.

Re:Happy birthday! #2225 represent!

[furry_wookie]

Hello fellow 4-digit user. I got to me taco and the guys at LinuxWorld / Comdex 1999 I think as well. I remember they would all just hang out sitting in bean bag chairs in the middle of the conference on their fancy new sony laptops that the slashdot staff was so in love with at the time.

2012 to Present

[Prien715]

One of the most enduring features of /. is the lack of QA. Like how all the 20th anniversary parties are taking place in 2012:)

I've spent more than half my life here

[RockWolf]

This story prompted me to stop and realise that I've spent more than half my life reading Slashdot. The tech has changed, from early AMDs and Pentium 4s to 8-core mobile phones with data links I could only dream of as a youngster. I've learned more here than I can say, and it's almost all from the comments. This weird little corner of the internet has been a constant rock in the fast paced change if the internet, a tiny piece of consistency and calming green on white colours. Thanks for everything. I mean that. .rockwolf

Re: What no Katz/Hassellton memorial?

[Megane]

original Sons Of Lucas?

Nope. No way can I handle anywhere near that much smoke escaping. And at 6 feet tall I'm a bit too big for those things anyhow. The closest I ever got to Brit cars was a (5'3" or so) cow-orker who imported a Mini back in '99, with obligatory union jack painted on its roof.

Re:And the biggest blunder of a comment award goes

[Megane]

My excuse is 2013 Chrysler, maybe they'll hear about Unicode one of these days. Your problem is that the Japanese are sufficiently xenophobic that the idea of a gaijin who can read Japanese scares them shitless.

Re:And the biggest blunder of a comment award goes

[AmiMoJo]

Strange, they don't seem scared of me.

Re: What no Katz/Hassellton memorial?

[Megane]

Wait, recent? I haven't posted there in over a decade, so that won't be me. I've barely even kept usenet up for a few binaries groups.