Slashdot Mirror
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.
CmdrTaco, for posting No wireless. Less space than a nomad. Lame.
#DeleteFacebook
Damn I'm old.
Scott
"Hokey religions and ancient weapons are no match for a good blaster at your side, kid."
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.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
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.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
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?
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Having a reasonable way to navigate the music library didn't hurt, either. *Snark*
Singularity: a belief in the "God" idea with the "demiurge" relation inverted.
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!)
-- Cheers!
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!
Here's a screen capture of Chips and Dips
Well, still no proper unicode support. Maybe in another 20 years?
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
Geez, I'm bitchier than usual today. I'm gonna pay attention to my own sig and ignore this troll.
On the one hand you take life too seriously, and on the other, you do not take playful existence seriously enough. Seth
Without a doubt. Wow, how time has flown. Thank you Slashdot, you have some great stuff most of the time.
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
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
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.
I read at +2. If your post doesn't reach that level I will not see or respond to it.
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.
How many slashes would a slashdot dot, if a slashdot could dot slashes?
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.
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.
I read at +2. If your post doesn't reach that level I will not see or respond to it.
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