Slashdot Turns 5

As much as I avoid discussing Slashdot on Slashdot, I figured I'd just take a moment to say that Slashdot is 5 years old now. I've written a Journal Entry with a few more comments on the subject. And yes we know we jumped the shark about a week after we registered the domain name, but we just don't care! Here's hoping we're here 5 years from now doing exactly the same thing with the same folks. (As a side note, due to a data importing bug, we really don't know exactly when we made our debut, but I spent september 97 putting the site together... and when we went live, we didn't even have comments for the first week or so!)

Where's GIS?

[randomErr]

Geeks In Space is what really brought people here.

How about a birthday special guys?

wow

[tps12]

It's amazing to see how far we've come in such a short time. Five years ago we were all still using Linux 2.0, Microsoft was in court with Apple over the look and feel of Windows for Workgroups (well, some things never change, I guess), and Monica Lewinsky was in the papers every day (hey, not news for nerds, but we all live in real life, too...sometimes!).

Many of us slashdotters have grown as well. From humble beginnings to the dizzying heights of the dot.com boom to the unemployment line (and mom and dad's house again). But it gives us more time to hack on Free Software, so bring it on!

I'd just like to say "thanks" to Rob & the gang who put in long hours on /code and this site--there's nothing like it anywhere else on the web--and to the great community that makes /. so special. You guys are the best friends (and friends of friends!) a lone hacker could ask for, when he isn't debugging perl in vi!

Here's to hoping the next half-decade is as good as the last. Cheers.

Slashdot is all grown up

[PhysicsGenius]

I remember back in the day when Slashdot would post stories about degenerate companies that used proxies and firewalls to block people from certain sites and when evil corporations would censor their bulletin boards to erase any dissension. It was a heady time, full of youth and idealism.

But I'm glad to see Slashdot has matured since then. Now they realize that sometimes banning someone's netblock is just plain necessary when that person is posting non-factual information. If some innocent net neighbors are gagged for a few days, that's simply the price we pay for informational freedom. And deleting posts, while morally abhorrent, is the only way to keep ourselves from accidentally reading a 3 page long "taco snotting" FAQ.

Thank you, Slashdot, for making the trains run on time.

Chips, Dips, Taco and the Dot

[pez]

Who else remembers the days of Chips n Dips? :-)

As one of the first /. readers, I have to say it's been incredible watching this site grow into what it has become. Congratulations Taco and the rest of the crew; you have not only created a wonderful destination for nerds interested in stuff that matters, but you have also at least in some part created an entire genre of sites. For this, we all thank you.

Re:The secret of ./'s success....

[pez]

In all seriousness, I'd like to submit that the secret of /.'s success is this: users first.

Re:5 years?

[Anonymous Coward]

Ok, now what?

Why do no stories display the year?

[wackybrit]

My only main quibble with Slashdot is why aren't YEARS SHOWN ON STORIES!?

It's great seeing 'October 01'.. but what year is that? Why do Slashdot stories not display the year? It's a pain in the ass when you search for an old story, but all you get is the date and not the year.

Am I the only one who noticed this yet?

Re:And Now...

[dattaway]

In the early days of slashdot, you had sometimes a few hours to get a first post. If it was early in the morning, you had to wait a while before everyone would wake up and the party would start. The first post back in those days was actually a funny joke. Nowdays its about as novel as crapflooding.

Silly posts commenting on a funny article was the norm back in those days. Now its brutal competition among the pedantic keepers of wisdom and those who can google out gems of knowledge. Comments back then seem trollish today. But its still fun to see how much information thousands of people can pack into the comments section. Slashdot today is quite an impressive collection of concise facts following each article.

Mispelled words and poor grammar are just tokens of nostolgia.

Another reason to like /.

[ThePeeWeeMan]

The best way to get lots of material for debates is to read /. and the comments at -1. =P

Also, the best way to get lost is to read /. at -1, but that's another thing altogether.

Happy birthday /., and please continue to be provocative!

Re:The secret of ./'s success....

[MSBob]

Good one! That was definitely a contributing factor but as far as I can tell slashdot was one of the first sites on the web to get threaded discussions right. I mean the child-parent relationship between comments. Sounds pretty obvious but there are still a hell of a lot o half arsed discussion sites out there that have a flat layout for comments that makes it hard for the reader to follow the discussion. This and the fact that the crowd that slashdot caters to essentially comprises of avid internet users is definitely a big contributor to the s site's success.

Re:1st posting on the Wayback Machine

[Cy Guy]

Here is a link to the first posting available on the Wayback Machine.

Actually this post: SGI releases V2 VRML browser [archive.org] is actually a day older.

You'll notice from the URL that its article number is 297 and the Netscape/MSIE article is number 304. 297 was the lowest article number to work using that URL format. Also, the oldest previous articles page [archive.org] also lists the SGI article as the oldest listed article.

My guess is 12/21/97 was the first time they archived the site and either /. hadn't kept a copy online, or there was no active link (or chain of links) from the main site to any older articles for the archive spider to find.