20 Years of Stuff That Matters

Today we're marking Slashdot's 20th birthday. 20 years is a long time on the internet. Many websites have come and gone over that time, and many that stuck around haven't had any interest in preserving their older content. Fortunately, as Slashdot approaches its 163,000th story, we've managed to keep track of almost all our old postings - all but the first 2^10, or so. In addition to that, we've held onto user comments, the lifeblood of the site, from 1999 onward. As we celebrate Slashdot's 20th anniversary this month, we thought we'd take a moment to highlight a few of the notable or interesting stories and discussions that have happened here in the past decade and a half. This is part of our 20-year anniversary celebration, and we've set up a page to coordinate user meet-ups. We'll be continuing to run some special pieces throughout the month, so keep an eye out for those.

Read on for a trip down memory lane.

Update: Slashdot founder CmdrTaco has taken to Medium with some of his own Slashdot nostalgia.

The most obvious place to start would be some of the stories listed in the Hall of Fame. While Slashdot isn't a political site, we do post particularly relevant political news, and two of the three most commented-on posts were about the winning of a U.S. presidential election. John Kerry's concession to George W. Bush in 2004 drew 5687 comments, more than half again as much as Barack Obama's victory in 2008. Interestingly, Obama's name was thrown around in the 2004 thread as possible future candidate, but many thought he'd be running for vice president alongside Hillary Clinton or another, more established Democrat name. A few other tidbits: health care was mentioned much more often in the 2008 discussion, while comments on the military were four times as common in 2004. The economy was discussed slightly more in 2004, while mentions of the banking system in 2008 far surpassed the 2004 count.

While a few other political discussions rank in the top 10 for total comments, total views is another story. A quick and simple post about source code leaks for Windows 2000 and NT has garnered over 700,000 views. It generated a great deal of insightful commentary on the security implications of the leak and how the code should be approached by developers curious to get a look. Many users warned others off of glancing at Microsoft code, fearing that copyrighted samples would find their way into open source projects, thus giving Microsoft a tool with which to disrupt the projects. This leak followed one a few months earlier of the Half-Life 2 source code, which garnered a strong but much different reaction. Many called for Valve to go ahead and open source the game, since the cat was out of the bag. Others were worried about the influx of bots and cheats for the game, since the people writing those tools had much clearer access to the game's internals.

Two of our other most popular posts, and two of the most significant to us internally, are posts about somebody trying to get us to delete comments. We've always taken a strong stance both for preserving freedom of speech, and for simply providing a reliable wall upon which readers can scribble their words and know the words won't disappear. The Digital Millennium Copyright Act made that difficult in a few situations, and we made sure to be open and transparent about what happened. In early 2000, Microsoft asked us to kill off a few comments. We asked you folks how we should proceed, and you had no shortage of suggestions. Then, almost a year later, the Church of Scientology happened to notice a Slashdot comment which contained copyrighted text: part of the Fishman Affidavit, court documents that contained church course materials as well as criticism of the organization and its leadership. This was part of a war Scientology had been waging for several years to keep the documents secret. We were forced to remove the comment, but CmdrTaco's notification post thoroughly demonstrated how useless such an action was in the digital age, and encouraged people to reach out to their representatives to speak against the DMCA. He wrote, "This is the first time since we instituted our moderation system that a comment has had to be removed because of its content, and believe me nobody is more broken-hearted about it than me." He also went out of his way to point out the bad press surrounding the church for various other incidents. Fortunately, those types of requests seem to be largely behind us, now.

As the site evolved in those early days, the staff began to realize that the Slashdot community wasn't just absorbing the news and moving on; it was digesting the news and coming back with knowledgeable additions in the discussion. As interesting as an article may be, the community's response to it could generate informed discussion that surpassed the article tenfold. The staff considered how to harness this attribute to help the community, and shortly thereafter Ask Slashdot was born. In the time since then, almost 10,000 reader questions have been answered by other readers, and they frequently form the basis for the site's most informative discussions. The most popular was certainly "What's keeping you on Windows?" from 2002, a question that was revisited almost a decade later. Many of the specific reasons changed in that time, but the ability to easily play games was a sticking point for users in both discussions. There have been many common refrains over the years: how to get into IT or programming, how to get kids into it, what kind of phone/GPU/HDD/monitor to buy, or how best to put together some arcane but useful device or program. They occasionally get rather esoteric: questions about finding beautiful code, depressing sci-fi, or trying to pin down the biggest lies told by hardware and software vendors. Ask Slashdot is also sometimes used as a method of defense. Early this year, when the Stop Online Piracy Act and its sibling PIPA threatened freedom of speech on the web, we used it as a vehicle to show precisely why the legislation was bad, and figure out what more could be done to prevent them from being signed into law.

Slashdot's audience has always been very much about science, as well. This manifests itself in several different ways. For one, since readers' level of scientific education is higher, on average, than the general population's, any attack on science meets with strong opposition. For example, debates about creationism in the classroom spark a great deal of interesting discourse. While there's often a fair amount of vitriol, there are also well-reasoned and politely stated arguments. Other science-related topics sidestep the arguing in favor of excitement and wonder; when SpaceShipOne achieved the X-prize in 2004, the comment section was ripe with hopes for the commercial space sector (which is continuing to blossom today) and the possibility of ubiquitous spaceflight in our lifetimes. More recently, the discussion of CERN's supposed faster-than-light neutrinos, which took place over many months, brought into sharp relief the difficulties bleeding-edge science faces, and the resilience of the scientific method itself, which compelled researchers to come forward with results they suspected were wrong and then engage the scientific community in the task of confirming or repudiating them.

One of the greatest things about the Slashdot community is its above average level of understanding for all things technical. Commenters, submitters, and interviewees alike understand they don't have to use layman's terms to describe complex concepts. One of the best examples happened earlier this year when a group of fusion researchers from MIT got together to answer questions from readers on the state of fusion power. They didn't hold back, and were happy to provide a ton of very interesting information on how fusion reactors work, what it will take to make it a viable technology, what the safety issues are, and more. Similarly, there have been some fantastic, techinical answers from people like John Carmack, Vint Cerf, and Bjarne Stroustrup. But even when the interviews aren't highly technical, the community's strong opinions can lend themselves to contentious but productive discussions, as happened with Metallica drummer Lars Ulrich over the band's fight against file sharing, a Marketing exec for Microsoft Windows over some of the company's competitive practices, and Richard Stallman about the ethics of free software and open source.

It's also interesting to go back and look at stories that flew under the radar at the time, but later developed into huge, ongoing news items. For example, the launch of WikiLeaks in 2007 met mainly indifference and doubts that such a repository could do anything useful. Similarly, Google's unveiling of Android in 2007 brought a lot of speculation as to how open it would be and whether another phone OS could succeed. Facebook didn't get a mention on the site until late 2005, and its opening to the public the next year brought skepticism that it could trump MySpace or operate without compromising user privacy. The announcement of SpaceX by Elon Musk was blandly titled "Another Private Space Startup." Wikipedia got a couple of mentions in early 2001, even from Jimmy Wales himself. And, not exactly under the radar, but who can forget the early critique of Apple's original iPod?

On a more somber note, this collection of old stories wouldn't be complete without mentioning the day of September 11th, 2001. Here is how the page looked that day. News organizations around the world got a lesson in how people flock to the internet in times of emergency, and Slashdot was no exception. Readers congregated to share news as it was happening, and the staff frantically shut off portions of the site to keep it from buckling under the strain. It's a set of problems that have largely been solved in 2017, but they were new back then.

The last couple years have seen our world become more polarized than ever before, or at least it seems that way, likely because of the internet. Some of the most discussed and visited stories of the past year include the election of Donald Trump, Google firing engineer James Damore for writing a memo, to Silicon Valley investors calling for California to secede from the United States. One non-political, less polarizing story that made the Slashdot 2017 Hall of Fame was "Slashdot Asks: What's Your Favorite Sci-Fi Movie?", which is about as Slashdot as Slashdot gets, and the comments are well worth the read.

We hope this walk back through Slashdot's history provided a nostalgic diversion for you. With over 162,000 to pick from, it's inevitable that we'll leave some good ones out, so feel free to share in the comments any particular stories that have stuck in your memory. A lot of you have been around and contributing to the site for years, and we hope you'll stick around for years more. This is part of our 20-year anniversary celebration, and we've set up a page to coordinate user meet-ups. We'll be continuing to run some special pieces throughout the month, so keep an eye out for those.

Comments

One notable story I heard about first on /.

[ebrandsberg]

9/11. At the time, my habit was to login and go to sites like cnn.com for the morning's news. None of the normal news sites would come up. That is odd I thought. Continued onto /., where I first saw the post about it. I immediately went and turned on the TV. Crazy stuff.

Still one of my favorite posts ever

[DaedylusSL]

February 14, 2002 - The day that CmdrTaco's life changed forever: https://slashdot.org/story/02/...

Re:Slashdot Died when CmdrTaco Left

[Applehu Akbar]

Go to the linked 9/11 page, and the top story on 9/11 itself. What jumped out at me right away was the quality of the comments that got modded Troll that day. They were for the most part anti-Islam screeds and gummint-did-it conspiracy theorists, but all of them composed by someone who actually expected their commentary to be read by others. Not a single instance of app apping cow nonsense, references to gay ethnics, or multipage cut-and-paste fetish descriptions.

If this site is not going to be News For Nerds anymore, let's at least bring back our literate trolls.

Thank you, John C. Randolph (~jcr)

[Anonymous Coward]

Your comment reminded me of heroes. And there's one Slashdot Hero that I'd like to thank for his fantastic contributions over the years: John C. Randolph, also known as "jcr".

There are few users here whose comments I look forward to reading. John is among those commenters. When I'm scrolling through the comments rapidly and "~jcr" catches my eye, I stop and read the comment every time.

John embodies the original spirit of Slashdot. Unlike so many here, he has a huge amount of hands-on industry experience working on important computing systems. Yet at the same time he has such a strong understanding of politics, economics, and so many other fields.

He brings important insight and wisdom to the discussion here, and he has helped expand my understanding of the world far beyond what it otherwise would have been. In many ways he has become an indirect mentor to me. As I've read his comments over the years I have grown intellectually.

And before anyone wrongly claims that I'm John posting this, let me assure you that I'm not. I could never achieve even a fraction of what John has achieved.

Thank you, John, for all of your comments. They truly are the hidden gems of this website.

Re: Slashdot Died when CmdrTaco Left

[jandrese]

I remember having a randomly generated password that you couldn't change when they first introduced usernames.

I also remember when a story was on fire when it had more than a hundred comments. At that point the site would start to slow down from the traffic.

There was also Jon Katz and his idiotic editorial pieces.

It's changed, not for the better

[p51d007]

Use to be news for nerds, stuff that matters Now, it's more like POLITICAL news that doesn't matter. Get enough of that garbage on 99.9% of the other sites.

Re:It's changed, not for the better

[zilym]

Back in the beginning days of Slashdot, the changing state of the art in TECHNOLOGY was the driving force in our lives, and it was EXCITING to us nerds because we were the ones building our future. But nowadays, the masses have technology out the ass and much of what we were building has already come into fruition.

Since the 9/11 terrorist attacks and the 2008 financial crash, technology has slowly been declining as the preeminent force in peoples' lives. Instead, overbearing government policies have been usurping that position, using technology today to spy on us, id/track us, and coordinate control over all under the guise of thwarting the next mass shooting, terrorist attack, or just maintaining status quo. Their programs have created a huge "brain drain" that has left technology mostly stagnating today. This is why "News for nerds" is taking a backseat, because there is too much "Stuff that [supposedly] matters" in the political realm.

I predict there will be a re-awakening eventually. It won't happen on a public site like Slashdot. There are too many lawyers, too much politics for anything meaningful to be born out in the public today. Only the huge technology companies like Google can make any meaningful progress forward under today's hostile environment, and they are struggling to do so, in my opinion.

I have some hope for the darknet, although so far nothing particularly wonderful and game changing has come out of there that I know of. And maybe nothing ever will. If the NSA can infiltrate everything, civilization may well be stuck working on political progress before technological progress can come back in vogue.

Re:Slashdot has changed over the 20 years

[jandrese]

I was working at the time and had a morning meeting, so I missed out on the lowest UIDs. Funnily enough I remember hesitating a bit before signing up because it seemed like that comfortable anonymity of the web was being chipped away little by little.

Re:Slashdot Died when CmdrTaco Left

[Opportunist]

That's true. We did have a more sophisticated kind of trolls back in the days.

But in the early days, there were true masters of the dark art, they could make comments so carefully crafted to goad you into actually replying in an attempt to actually engage in a meaningful discussion, and they even replied. Not even with canned statements but with witty, if trolling, remarks. Back then it was actually a challenge to know whether someone's just trying to fool you.

Voices from the Hellmouth

[HockeyPuck]

The Voices from the Hellmouth series seemed like one of the most important stories on /. as enabled the masses of readers to express their own experiences of being bullied or treated by others within school. It seemed to be one of the first articles about us rather than about some technology or company.

Recall that this story was from back in '99, way before being in IT/computers was cool or mainstream.

Re:Slashdot Died when CmdrTaco Left

[Tom]

He was very noticeable earlier than that. When I joined /. (sorry, don't remember when it was, but definitely before 99) it still had that feeling of a personal blog that was unusually successful. We didn't even call them "blogs" back then. :-)

The main differences in /. between then and now are:
* it now feels more "under editorial control" and less personal
* the meta-moderation system didn't exist
* the old comment system was better. :-)

... and at least 6 years of right-wing politics

[damn_registrars]

In the not-too-distant past the dominant voice on this site took a hard right turn. During the administration of Obama we saw a constant barrage of anti-Obama and anti-Clinton news bits on the front page, while simultaneously seeing articles that championed various right wing causes.

Sure, we see some front page articles now that point out a subset of the failings of the current POTUS, but regardless of how much someone loves him it would be nearly impossible to not have to come to face with his failings on at least a daily basis.

Re:Seniority matters.

[scottm]

So, is there a separate thread for old timers?

Obviously a ton has changed, but I have fond memories of slashdot and credit it's consistent quality for a lot of my career progress!

Happy birthday slashdot!

Re:Slashdot has changed over the 20 years

[IAN]

I must have caught the very start of account registration purely by luck; I saw that I could open an account, said "why not", and got myself an initial-band-of-conspirators sort of UID. Once, my day would start with a visit to /., with frequent refreshes. I still lurk regularly, but the stories and comments are kind of... predictable. There's almost a retirement home kind of atmosphere around the place -- but maybe that's my twenty years older self projecting ;)

Re: Slashdot Died when CmdrTaco Left

[reg]

I think this was the story that really started it all:
https://slashdot.org/story/99/...

Notice it was still called the "slashdot effect" back then. Look at the comments from the poor site owner! Although I still want to read the end of "She Hates My Futon"...

    -Jeremy

Not better, not worse, just different

[xanthos]

Many of the comments I have read are lamenting that /. just ain't what it used to be. Kind of true, kind of not.

What keeps me coming back are the pure simplicity of the site and the opportunity to learn by having the more esoteric stories explained by truly knowledgeable people.

Happy bday Slashdot. May Cowboy Neal never die!

Re: Slashdot Died when CmdrTaco Left

[sconeu]

Anyone remember the guy who had a sig: "Karma: Chameleon (Mostly due to the fact that you come and go)"?

Re:Not a first post

[sconeu]

Don't forget CleverNickName aka Wil Wheaton.

Re:Slashdot has changed over the 20 years

[Doctor Memory]

Yeah, it's funny, I had called my ISP because I had just installed RH 4.7 (I think) and was having trouble getting stuff configured to connect to the internet. Fortunately the tech support guy was a fellow geek, because he walked me right through setting up the configuration and after I was connected he said "There are two sites you have to check out Right Away". They were /. and Freshmeat. I signed up on both immediately, I guess it must have been the first day for /. accounts. I had no idea people signed up so fast.

Re: Slashdot Died when CmdrTaco Left

[cyber-vandal]

Russia managed to destabilise the UK? When did that happen?

Re:Slashdot has changed over the 20 years

[C R Johnson]

Dang Grandpa, I thought I was the old guy around here.

I'm shocked - no Columbine?

[RobinH]

Sure, 9/11 was big. But JonKatz's Voices from the Hellmouth about Columbine was a big deal. Yes, we all grew tired of JonKatz eventually, but a lot of people opened up about their horrible experiences being bullied in high school. There's been a lot of improvements in schools recognizing bullying, though a lot of that has just moved online and gotten worse there. Still, for those of us who were here, that was a really memorable time. I'm surprised there was no mention.

one tomographic megaphone, hold the wool

[epine]

Nostalgia? Pass the Gravol.

The only large parameter I've ever cared about here is whether sharp story submissions encourage sharp dialogue.

Why so often—during various epochs—story submissions tapering off into a woolly final sentence? Is it an actually goal here (by some) to unleash an obligatory pocket-protector Olympics of beat-the-buzzer geek stereotypy?

Trolls, consider yourself trolled—for the extremely predictable lolz.

No, true nerd-hood is about going through life in the spirit that no consequential detail is ever too small to hold up to the tomographic megaphone—for as long as it takes. Wool is what other people like to pull over the fine technical fine print. I continue to celebrate every wool-free story submission that /. has ever run.

Blessed be the pinprick lightsaber that shears sheep.

Wow, 0x14 years already

[tamyrlin]

I don't think there are many websites that have made such a big impact as this site has made. Even though I don't really have time to partake in the discussions here (or at other websites for that matter due to real life) I still visit slashdot more or less daily and I often find interesting news here. Lets hope the site continues to run for 20 more years (by that time we will all be highly paid consultants working to fix the imminent 2038 year bug :) )

Re: Slashdot Died when CmdrTaco Left

[tamyrlin]

Since I had already perfected my FVWM config I was able to register my account early on instead of tinkering with my window manager :) (Speaking of longevity, I'm still using more or less the same FVWM config...)