Back in the day (what some here have referred to as Slashdot's "peak"), Slashdot commentary and trolling could be side-achingly hilarious, irreverent, profane, thought-provoking, insightful, silly, and humbling.
Slashdot's editorially permissive policy coupled with algorithmically assigned moderator points allowed "representative" Slashdot users to choose which trolls and provocateurs would be buried and which boosted.
As a result, Slashdot was renowned and reviled for its sometimes predictable and frequently appropriate inside jokes (e.g. "Had Netcraft confirmed it?", "Only old people ______", "IN SOVIET RUSSIA $NOUN $VERBs YOU", etc.) as well as for its sometimes intractable and iconoclastic user base.
The user base was in fact so intractable that a site-wide redesign was deployed and then retracted due to extraordinary complaints from the user base. Dice ended up throwing a lot of invested time and resources away to appease a user base determined to voice its displeasure with a Web 2.0 redesign.
Roblimo, CmdrTaco, and CowboyNeal were the ones who forged Slashdot's editorial policy and, by so doing, indelibly shaped the character of Slashdot at its peak.
Today, thoughtless shitposting and unoriginal trolling of anonymous (and some pseudonymous) Slashdot users has driven away all but the most hardy (or desperate) of Slashdot readers. Slashdot today seems to be an endlessly burning tire fire. I'm grateful the current /. thread for Roblimo is so far civil. [0]
But there was a time when its moderation policies and commitment to anonymity generated insight and humor. Even now, Slashdot has a hackerish mean streak that can yield endlessly entertaining threads full of puns, jokes, and in-jokes and if there is anything I wish HN had more of it is an understanding that iconoclastic juvenile humor can play an important discursive role in conversations of technology, society, and culture.
I only rarely visit Slashdot these days due to the toxicity of its users' comments (I can't bring myself to hide comments moderated to -1 for the same reasons that I "showdead" here on HN).
I am forever indebted to the original Slashdot team, the Slashdot community and, on this occasion, especially Robin Miller for providing a platform where I could learn from others, express my opinions, and keep abreast of geek culture.
Roblimo, you will be missed.
[0] https://linux.slashdot.org/story/18/05/24/1750210/robin-robl...
EDIT: typos and small changes here and there