The Slashdot effect (slashdot.org)

Member Name: Retron

Product:	slashdot.org
Date:	02/08/01 (44 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Good range of topics covered, Very customisable, Popular - always something new to read

Disadvantages: US-centric, Biased towards Linux

Slashdot is an online news source, aimed at computing and technology in general. A wide spectrum of topics are covered, from industry news to film reviews.

The main source for these articles is people sending in links to sites or news stories elsewhere, together with a write up. Good stories then appear on the main page, and that's where the fun starts. Readers are encouraged to comment on the stories, which can lead to a good range of comments, often drifting on to other topics. These comments are like a microcosm of newsgroups - some sensible, some daft; there are trolls (attempting to get people to reply to obvious posts) and flamers (people just out for an argument) are also present. Annoyingly, there's a culture of people trying to get the 'first post' on any topic, which seems slightly pathetic. Thankfully, posts are 'moderated', that is, given a score according to how good / relevant they are. This means you can (in theory) filter out irrelevant posts.

You can gain moderator status by posting comments and reading other comments - anybody can get a login on Slashdot, and even if you don't become a moderator you can still customise things in a mind boggling amount of ways.

From this, you'd gather Slashdot is a popular and good site - and it is, providing you don't mind things with a large American bias (the UK gets very few mentions). Also, the articles tend to be of quite a techy nature - although Slashdot does advertise itself as being suitable for nerds. There seems to be a distinct pro-Linux, anti-Microsoft feeling throughout the site. This is particularly common in the comments - be prepared for lots of 'M$ is evil' type of comments. As a measure of how popular Slashdot is, any site that gets mentioned in an article tends to get a lot of hits, sometimes leading to it getting overloaded and being taken down - this is known by Slashdotters as the Slashdot effect (hence the title of this
review).

Even with the pro US / pro Linux attitude of the site, it's worth reading if you're really into IT and aren't afraid of lots of technical discussions.

Summary: