Talk:Slashdot

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Contents

[edit] Name

No explanation of why it is called /.? That's what I came to this page for! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.128.152.101 (talk) 00:00, 2 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Moderation

I edited the max total number of mod points under the moderation section, I have had six and can prove it if need be.

TheShadowZero 22:58, 29 November 2006 (UTC)

I see what you are saying - you can go down to -1 and then accumulate points to +5 - and thereby get six positive moderation points. But that's only because you aren't counting the initial -1 moderation point you automatically got for whatever reason. If you are going to count positives but not negatives, your score and go up and down all day long - so you can accumulate hundreds of positive points - providing you get enough negatives. Rather than be difficult and controversial - I've change the sentence to say that the maximum total score you can get is +5. SteveBaker 05:50, 30 November 2006 (UTC)
I think what TheShadowZero (and the article) is saying is that you are given 6 points with which to moderate other posts. It is not stating the maximum score for a given post (that is in the next para). —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Testla (talk • contribs).
How can you get negative mod points? Your points can be used to neg a post or to make it positive. TheShadowZero 21:01, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Slashdot is down?!

Today, Sept. 13 2006, http://slashdot.org returns "503 Service Unavailable". Was this a planned shutdown, or has Slashdot been Slashdotted? Sure seems wierd.--Sboots 15:39, 13 September 2006 (UTC)

129.81.108.179 here, confirming Slashdot is indeed down with a "503 Service Unavailable" error. AFAIK it was up before 9AM CST this morning. UPDATE: Seems to be back up now. (15:50 UTC)--129.81.108.179 15:48, 13 September 2006 (UTC) 01:33, 16 September 2006 (UTC)01:33, 16 September 2006 (UTC)~~

Slashdot is often down for short periods, usually returning a 503 error. It is sometimes the butt of a few jokes. I would assume this is when they change the code. It doesn't happen often, but it happened semi-regularly for years. It used to be a joke that Slashdot must have " linked to itself", which is, of course an absurd reference to being /.ed . Pharmboy 00:30, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Criticism

The criticism section is much too short so I lengthened. I'll put some more down as I find them. --Rotten 05:20, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Subculture and other deletions

Why was the Slashdot Subculture page removed and redirecting to the main Slashdot page? There was a lot of good information on that page, nearly all of which is now gone. Perhaps Slashdot has a lot of content on Wikipedia, but that doesn't inherently mean that the entire subject needs to be watered down to the mediocre content on this page. What's the problem with having more "specialized" topics? Slashdot is a significant player on the web, so it makes sense there is a lot of information about it. The comparison between the Slashdot and Social Security articles (from Archive1) is asinine.

Along with the Subculture page, many other pages were removed. When considering the amount of time and effort that went into those pages, and the fact they were removed on a whim of a few users, it's not surprising that people are becoming disenchanted with Wikipedia. I'm no wiki-expert, but from what I can tell there was no real discussion about deleting the articles, it was just done because somebody wanted to do it. --Nick, 71.195.213.70 06:54, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

I generally agree with this. I think the pruning was rather OTT. Feel free to dig bits out of the page history and discuss them here. Chris Cunningham 08:24, 26 October 2006 (UTC)
I added back some of the subculture areas that I had previously written Pharmboy 23:36, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

It's interesting that even though they deleted those pages, they didn't remove any of the links to those pages. 24.89.87.41 02:48, 14 November 2006 (UTC)

It is further interesting that the discussion of the subculture deletion was so obviously controlled to the point where it is worth talking about the possibility (likelihood?) that the discussion and deletion was rigged. Every Wikipedia user who dared challenge the (pre-ordained?) decision to delete the article with a Keep vote was called out and challenged; it is pretty clear from reading the discussion page that every keep vote was going to be challenged, adding bias to the discussion and vote. The bias would have been on two fronts; users who viewed the vote in progress were going to see the challenges of the keep votes and been more inclined to vote against or would have avoided voting altogether to avoid being challenged by experienced editors (thus undercounting the tree keep votes). I am greatly disappointed in this capricious, arbitrary, tyranny of the vocal minority that took place in this vote. Everyone involved in the creation and promotion of this bias should be ashamed of themselves. SkydiveMike 00:22, 4 December 2006 (UTC)

I agree that the removal of those pages, and the information they contained, is reprehensible. There was no reason they needed to be removed. Sometimes I think some folks here on Wikipedia are of the impression that Wikipedia has to be constantly edited down to a particular number of pages, like a paper encyclopedia. This is just not true; one of the strengths of Wikipedia is that it can have pages on lots of topics, even somewhat esoteric ones. It's the breadth, as well as the depth, of WP's articles that makes it useful. The deletion seems to be mostly the continuation of an ongoing Wikipedia/Slashdot pissing contest, where members of each try to denigrate the other, rather than any realistic attempt at self-improvement. --Kadin2048 05:04, 30 December 2006 (UTC)

I referenced the Slashdot Subculture article in particular on a regular basis. I was quite surprised to find it had suddenly been deleted. Is there any chance of getting it to come back from the dead? Who would I need to contact to at least try? I haven't given up on Wikipedia yet. :) --Dlugar 22:44, 2 March 2007 (UTC)

I remember an article called 'Slashdot trolling phenomena'. It was an interesting article. I came this way hoping to find an update. Now it has been replaced by a brief list towards the bottom of the main article. *sigh* Axl 15:42, 31 March 2007 (UTC)
If I recall correctly, this page looks like a mirror of the old 'Slashdot trolling phenomena' article. Axl 15:49, 31 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Japanese Slashdot

Should a link to the slashdot website in japan be inserted? From what I read at the us slashdot page the japanese slashdot is run by it's own people.

Slashdot says as much here: http://slashdot.org/faq/editorial.shtml#ed860 If you were to make a section of slashdot versions in the different languages, I think you would have to make it VERY clear that they were not owned or managed by the same company that owns the US /. Pharmboy 21:59, 1 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Subculture deletion?

Can anyone point to any AFD discussion for the Slashdot subculture page? All I can find is Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Slashdot subculture, but it survived that nomination. --Saforrest 16:30, 3 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] References

These are links that I posted to the AFD discussion:

These should be integrated as needed for specific claims and as general references. Night Gyr (talk/Oy) 21:28, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Hans Reiser

Should Hans Reiser still be mentioned in the "celebrity" slashdot users? I have a feeling he won't be posting his view for a while... ;) (check Hans Reiser) —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Knutsi (talk • contribs) 20:44, 8 January 2007 (UTC).

[edit] Slashdot vs. Slashdot.org

Why is the article not at Slashdot.org, like Fark.com? If no one has any particular reason, I'll be requesting a move. - JNighthawk 02:41, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

This article is called Slashdot because the website is called Slashdot. I don't know why the other article is called Fark.com - maybe people usually call the site by that name, you'd have to ask on Talk:Fark.com. But Slashdot is Slashdot. Gronky 09:26, 12 January 2007 (UTC)
This is why we have redirects. You can enter either 'slashdot' or 'slashdot.org' and end up here - and you can enter either 'fark' or 'fark.com' and get there - so all that's really at stake is the title that's displayed once you get here. It's not really a huge deal. SteveBaker 14:57, 12 January 2007 (UTC)
The other article is called Fark.com because the website it discusses is called Fark.com. You can tell by looking at the logo and title. The Fark.com logo says "Fark.com", and the page title at www.fark.com is "Drew Curtis' FARK.com". The Slashdot logo says just "Slashdot", and the page title at slashdot.org is "Slashdot: ...". Therefore, the Wikipedia page for Fark.com has a ".com" in it, just as it should; and the Wikipedia page for Slashdot does not have a .org in it, which is also correct. 81.86.133.45 23:49, 25 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] How can it be misuse if everyone agrees?

This paragraph, dealing with "misuse" of the moderation and meta-moderation system is absolutely nonsensical:

The meta-moderation process is designed to counter this problem, but in practice fails to do so, probably because this form of misuse is so widespread that the meta-moderators themselves agree with the mis-used "troll" and "flamebait" categorizations and so the original moderator does not have his moderation points award frequency reduced.

The paragraph admits that the way things are moderated is generally agreed upon by both the moderators and their watchdogs. How then can this be labelled "misuse"? This is a case where the writer of this article doesn't agree with something, and is applying his or her own opinions to the article. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 68.149.196.244 (talk) 18:10, 28 January 2007 (UTC).

It is a subjective topic whether moderation system works or not. I think it does, section author thinks it doesn't. Ideally it should be out of the article altogether. I tagged it "Speculation for now".

[edit] Come on people

I removed these two "facts" from the page:

  • It appears to be impossible to delete a Slashdot account, or indeed, to actually contact anyone involved with Slashdot to ask any questions, administrative or otherwise.
  • With a mostly male readership, Slashdot and its users has been accused of being sexist or hostile towards women. [1]

The first part of the first note is addressed in the FAQ. THe rest of this appears to be added by someone pissed off that Slashdot wont answer their email. This is an encyclopedia to provide information. Not a place to bitch at some admins from a site. meshach 20:55, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Groupthink at Slashdot.

Slashdot has the worst mindless groupthink culture I've ever seen on the internet and I absolutely think that this should be mentioned.--Rotten 20:30, 2 March 2007 (UTC)

I removed the citation, as it is a user homepage, and not a reliable source. I'm sure there must be one, am looking through google to spot any. --h2g2bob 20:56, 2 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Article shortcomings

The article is IMHO currently particularly deficient in establishing the noteability of slashdot and putting it in a wider context. I made a comment in another talkpage, as an editor was considering using this article as a model but I felt that was a bad idea after reading this article.

I've taken a look at slashdot and it appears to me to be a good example of what NOT to follow. While there are some good things and it's probably in a better state then this article, it seems to be especially bad at establishing it's noteability. For example, there are very few inline citations or citations of any sort to sources outside of slashdot. The 'slashdot effect' does establish it's noteability, as does the notable contributors and the number of comments etc. A fair amount of stuff which helps estabish it's noteability is not in the article. For example it's wom multiple? webby awards but the only way you will know is from the external links. Similarly slashdot has obviously been referred to a lot by external reliable sources. There doesn't appear to be any real mention of this, apart from a link to a paper which mentions slashdot in the citations (but there is no use or mention of this reference in the article from what I can tell) and several external links with external sources which mention slashdot, like CNN.

Hopefully it'll be useful in improving this article as well. Nil Einne 14:54, 18 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] What the hell happened to this page?

Used to be great at one point, or was that the slashdot culture page? What happened to all the descriptions of the trolls and things? ThreeVryl 17:54, 6 April 2007 (UTC)

I think that was Slashdot trolling phenomena. The page seems to have been deleted. :-( Axl 20:18, 6 April 2007 (UTC)
This page looks like a mirror of the old 'Slashdot trolling phenomena' Wikipedia article. Axl 20:20, 6 April 2007 (UTC)
Which was deleted because of Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Slashdot trolling phenomena. -- ReyBrujo 20:44, 6 April 2007 (UTC)
ARRRGGHHH!!!! So typical of the utter stupidity that goes on around here at times. Why have the debate at all, if Yomangani can just make his own mind up about it? Sure would save a lot of time. Just when you think it is safe to get back in the water, this sort of crap just blows your mind away. ThreeVryl 12:33, 7 April 2007 (UTC)
If you don't know how consensus work in Wikipedia, please stay away from giving opinions until you have read Wikipedia:No original research, Wikipedia:Verifiability, Wikipedia:Reliable sources and Wikipedia:Consensus. Thanks. -- ReyBrujo 15:10, 7 April 2007 (UTC)
Better if you went and did some original research, wikifascist... you might not look like such a retard. Sorry! ThreeVryl 16:33, 7 April 2007 (UTC)
So if there is no "Science" or "Nature" article about something, we should not talk about it at all? No, there has been no academic research on Slashdot culture, it doesn't mean that people who spend many hours a week there don't know a thing about the place. It's like telling me that I am not allowed to say which train I take to town every day, just because it's "original research". Wouldn't it be wiser to concentrate on cleaning the articles that really _require_ cleaning as opposed to just exercising authority for no apparent reason? Rules are meant to evolve and accommodate human needs, not vice-versa. Think about it.--Artpol 11:03, 29 April 2007 (UTC)
I remember the page about trolling phenomena. It was very well written. Tragic idiocy on the part of whoever deleted it. --kjkrum —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.27.232.87 (talk) 07:43, 27 November 2007 (UTC)
I have to agree. It was well written and the nature of the comments are one of the key aspects of Slashdot. The original research argument is bogus - there is plenty of research on the net (though it did need to be better cited) and more to the point lots of actual examples of the trolling mentioned. The article was not making any conclusions (i.e. research), it was just documenting events and phenomena that have happened. A good example would be describing a commons faults on a particular model of car - there might not be any research but many people have anecdotally experienced the problem and reported it, thus making it worthy of mention as long as conclusions are not drawn (e.g. that said car was unreliable). I may recreate the article so we can have a proper debate. Mojo-chan (talk) 16:19, 18 December 2007 (UTC)
Please see discussion at Wikipedia:Deletion_review/Log/2008_January_1#Slashdot_trolling_phenomenaMojo-chan (talk) 15:32, 2 January 2008 (UTC)
Well, the idiots have ruined it. God I love Wikipedia. I am going to archive the article on my blog. Is there any way to get the last version before it was removed? It does not appear on the history page. Mojo-chan (talk) 15:20, 6 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Re: Culture and AYB

Shouldn't the Culture section contain a mention of "All Your Base Are Belong To Us" as one of the running jokes, even though it's down to an occasional cameo now?

unitron

216.10.186.22 05:01, 7 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Firefox flagged as spyware hoax

I took out this section from the criticism section as the assertions made in it were not backed up by the sole reference within it, which merely showed that Slashdot believed the article to be a hoax. Critics may indeed believe Slashdot to be biased against Microsoft and for Google and Apple, but if so, it should be cited properly. Otherwise, it fails Wikipedia's standards for reliable sources. --69.12.229.84 20:09, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

This got put back in, so I took it out again. The problem that I see is that it has nothing to do with critics calling Slashdot biased. Apple and Google are not mentioned at all. It's one instance of hoax being perpetrated, but in order to justify the more sweeping generalizations of that paragraph, a better source is needed. --GentlemanGhost 07:26, 1 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Did the Bill Gates "Borg" really begin its life on Slashdot?

In Culture: "he ongoing assumption that Slashdot is Linux-oriented comes both from historical reasons and from its famous Bill Gates 'Borg' icon." This implies Slashdot had a hand in the icon's creation or at least can claim some ownership of it. Is anyone certain of the fact that the Bill Gates "Borg" icon originated from Slashdot? I seem to remember going to the Software Engineering Conference in April of 1997 and seeing the image being sold as a t-shirt (before Slashdot existed).

[edit] Weird headlines

We mention that Slashdot had a headline which goes: "Spain outlaws P2P file sharing". Now, I found this article on Slashdot: Texting Teens Generating OMG Phone Bills. Should we mention that the headlines is very often not very formal (like you would expect from other news sources), and that it often makes fun of something (in this case the teenagers)? --Ysangkok 20:20, 20 May 2007 (UTC)

I'm not sure if it's worth mentioning; sometimes, even in "formal" news sources, one can find wryly (sp?) worded headlines or headlines utilizing puns. I wouldn't be surprised to see the Slashdot headline regarding text messages in a newspaper; even newspaper editors have senses of humor (sometimes). Vbdrummer0 21:38, 20 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Culture

Missing "first post" and "BSD is dying". No distinction between the nerdisms and the juvenilia (Portman, hot grits). I don't recall "Netcraft confirms it: some OS is dying" as the original or dominant form. I always regard the "Beowulf cluster" and "In Soviet Russia" and three steps to profit memes as juvenilia, but maybe that's just my own twirpology. In my view, it's not a bad reference for someone new to the monkey house the most contagious forms of mental fungus and jock itch, but it has zilch chance of becoming encyclopedic by the current WP standards, even if it takes the reader zilch time to verify these claims directly. If everything on slashdot is a matter of the public record, maybe it ought to viewed as standing in reference to itself, but I'm not presently willing to hoe against the grain. MaxEnt 00:43, 3 June 2007 (UTC)

Can someone put an explanation of the "ohnoitsroland" tags? I realize it's when the user "Roland Piquepaille" authors a story. But why that tag? Any story behind it? Anything worth mentioning in the article? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 72.200.196.49 (talk) 09:31, 3 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] slashdot traffic

I used to be a much more regular reader on slashdot, and when I came back after a few years absence noticed that there seemed to be less activity that I remembered. A boring book review I once posted gained like 250 comments; but now even inflammatory things seemed not to break 1000. I went on alexa to check, and it seemed to confirm that slashdot has been experiencing a significant decline in traffic and rank [1]. Has this been discussed anywhere? I'm not an uberdork, but perhaps "everyone knows"? Sdedeo (tips) 19:33, 1 September 2007 (UTC)

I did some googling. Here's someone claiming this began in 2005 [2] (the opposite of what Alexa's traffic show, but OTOH they are measuring different things.) Here's someone making the claim in 2006 [3]. Another person talks about the Alexa traffic linked above [4], claiming that digg and reddit (I have never heard of these things!) are the "new" slashdot. Anyway, all blog posts for now so not really RS. Sdedeo (tips) 19:51, 1 September 2007 (UTC)

Ah, and here's a post from slashdot itself disputing the accuracy of Alexa. [5] I think there are some good points to be made against alexa, but I can't shake the feeling that things are much slower on /. these days? Sdedeo (tips) 19:53, 1 September 2007 (UTC)

Hm. Must have been a weekend thing. It's lively as ever now. Sdedeo (tips) 19:00, 3 September 2007 (UTC)

When Digg launched with similar stories, many people moved there for their technology news. Part of Digg's traffic relates to their partnership with Google. Here's the link to the Alexa data, which compares Digg, Slashdot, and Reddit.[6]
YoungWebProgrammerMsg me 12:29, 3 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] slashdot turns 10!

Added that. Expound if you wish. 203.112.84.139 09:44, 2 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Broken wiki-link

The wiki-link titled "I, for one, welcome our new <some animal/object> overlords" is broken, but I don't know enough about wiki-syntax to fix it. Mdmkolbe 23:25, 3 October 2007 (UTC)

It seems to now be fixed Mdmkolbe 21:54, 25 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Linux focus

"The ongoing assumption that Slashdot is Linux-oriented comes both from historical reasons and from its famous Bill Gates "Borg" icon."

What about the website description: "Source for technology related news with a heavy slant towards Linux and Open Source issues"? BuilderQ 21:43, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Not the Slashdot complaint department

I have removed parts of the criticism section. For your information Wikipedia is not the place to complain about a typo you found on Slashdot or any other personal reasons why you don't like the site. Please read WP:V, WP:RS and WP:OR before posting your personal complaints on Wikipedia, thank you. I'll be keeping an eye on this from now on. EconomicsGuy 05:46, 22 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Mod War

The mod war part needs an explanation of what the hell a mod war is.Drhamad (talk) 19:11, 19 December 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Discussion of restoration of Trolling Phenomena article

Please see discussion at Wikipedia:Deletion_review/Log/2008_January_1#Slashdot_trolling_phenomena and comment.Mojo-chan (talk) 15:32, 2 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Tagging system

The tagging system on Slashdot is great, but I'd really like someone to explain to me how it works. I'm talking in particular how certain, highly specific tags get seem to get applied. For instance, a story today on how MIcrosoft will open the spec to its binary document format the got tagged with "catsanddogslivingtogether". Now, I find it hard to believe that enough users independently suggested this tag to allow it to be displayed. So is there some manual "fiddle factor" going on behind the scenes?

http://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/01/17/1553206

Straussian (talk) 21:28, 17 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Cowboy Neal.

There really should be something written here about the 'Cowboy Neal' phenomenon. There used to be an article with the title "CowboyNeal" (all one word) - which passed an AfD - then was renamed to Jonathan Pater - whereupon it failed an AfD (Wikipedia politics...we love you!). Now, all we have is "Cowboy Neal" - which redirects to Neal Cassady - with no mention of Slashdot anywhere in sight. I've since added a note at the top of that article telling people to come here for an explanation...but all we have here is a redlink to the old CowboyNeal article.

If the Wiki politicians don't want a separate article about CowboyNeal-the-slashdot-meme - we should at least write something about it here. If indeed Jonathan Pater is/was CowboyNeal - then it needs to be said here - because it's a notable fact and it has nowhere else to live.

SteveBaker (talk) 02:03, 17 April 2008 (UTC)