15 Years after the First Slashdot Post

Normally I might not identify with this level of nostalgia, but in this case I find it hard to restrain myself.

Slashdot was a critical piece of Internet history. In my mind it was last big thing that came out of the Internet from the era when it was exclusively for geeks. It continued in the footsteps of what we had done previously with email, usenet, ftp/archie, and irc, and became one of the biggest websites for us old timers.

After Slashdot the next big thing was probably Napster, and at that point the chasm was crossed to traditional mainstream youth demographics. Never again would the biggest thing on the Internet also be the geekiest.

Godspeed cmdrtaco.

Just want to say thanks for all of the great work over the years. Slashdot was never my home - I never signed up, always contributed as AC - but I've been a loyal reader for almost a dozen years.

It's not what it once was, but it's still the best at what it does.

That was an enjoyable read, and Id like to Point out that it is also a chapter in many of our lives. Maybe not as directly or deeply, but for me my discovery of slashdot coincided with my move back to the valley in 97 specifically to get into silicon valley IT.

I've grown a lot, slashdot was a part of that growth and while I don't visit it that often any longer, it's still a part of my professional and personal DNA.

Nostalgia is a good thing, after all; memories are the only things you have to think back on. ;)

/. user #5825 here. I have great memories of the old days.

Let's start a list of funny and cool things that we learned about for the first time on Slashdot. Here's mine:

1. Google - I still remember the first postings about their search engine and how awesome it was compared to everything else when I first tried it out back in the mid 90's.

2. RootServers, a startup that sold colo'd linux boxes and would give you root--a big deal back in the mid 90's. I saw their ad on /. and was surprised that they were based in my hometown. They later morphed into Rackspace, which has been my employer for the last five years!

3. Mac OS X. I remember the early posts about Rhapsody, which encouraged me to go buy a Mac at the just-opened second-ever Apple Store in DC. Been a Mac user ever since.

I'm sure there's more...

Slashdot user #527 here. I feel as similarly as an outsider can to Taco's feelings. Slashdot did a lot to shape what I think of as a real community, both on and offline. It was based around news but there were also fun things like all the Natalie Portman's grits stuff that not only didn't detract, it added to the feeling. HN is a great discussion place but there's very little "frivolous" stuff that really makes a friendly community. It'll never really be replaced.

I first got good at network programming by writing /. crapflooders in the late 90's and early 00's, and my profanity skills honed in the trolltalk salt mines still take my mother's breath away to this day.

Thanks for everything Rob!

Slightly OT, but I'm very glad that working at WaPo Labs feels like those early days of Slashdot. I very much believe in news organisations and I want them to have a future- hearing about this kind of innovation is fantastic. Someday I hope to able to get into a similar news labs environment myself.

Before HN, before Digg, before any kind of social networking or all encompassing tech news sites, there was Slashdot. I still remember when one of the first questions to ask a fellow programmer was, "You on Slashdot? What's your number?"

In 1998 I moved to VA for a job as an Account Manager with a web consulting firm. Their business model changed almost immediately and I had to learn how to sell Sun hardware if I wanted to stay employed. Reading Slashdot was an important part of my education into Unix, system administration, and system administrators. That lead to an interest in open source and ultimately to me installing Red Hat at home. Today I am much more comfortable in the FOSS world than I am in the Windows world, and it all started with me reading Slashdot. I finally removed Slashdot from my feed reader last year, when I realized I couldn't remember the last time I clicked through to read a story.

However, I am still waiting for the box of swag I was supposed to get to pass out at the 10th anniversary party that I organized.

Semi-long time /. reader here -- six digit UID but just barely. If I had known it would have conferred bragging rights I would have signed up a week or two earlier.

Slashdot was absolutely the best community from the late 90s up through maybe 2005 or '06. I learned so much from both the news articles and the subsequent discussion. Still have never found a better comments section than what Slashdot had then, though I keep searching.

I think it would be fair to say that /. pioneered the 'the comments are often better than the articles' social news site.

I remember coming into the Uni IT labs and seeing everyone usually had /. up on the monitors of their Solaris Workstations.

Hat tip to you.

Loved Slashdot from the very beginning (read Chips n' Dips on occasion before Slashdot). My second ID was 100612, and my first was four digits. I'd been posting anonymously before that.

When reddit came along, I was splitting my time about equally for six months or so. And then, I realized a few months after that that I hadn't logged into Slashdot in months, and hadn't really noticed. I came back to Slashdot a couple of times to answer questions about something I was involved in (like Y Combinator), and found that it still led to a huge spike to my company/Open Source project website...slashdot is, or was, a firehose of very focused traffic that may never be replicated (at least, not for really nerdy folks). reddit never sent that kind of traffic our way, and neither has HN, or any other single source.

Anyway, it must be hard to let go of something awesome. But, it's also hard to watch something awesome die while you try to save it. Slashdot may not be "dying" per se (any more than any of us are dying, at a slow but steady clip), but I'm pretty sure it's in a steady decline that will never be turned around, and that's tough to watch.

Slashdot has been the only site where I've been able to spend two hours learning about hard drive technology just by reading comments. Good times...

I was slashdot user # 404. Thanks, Rob.

This is a great example of solid writing that transcends the specific knowledge of any community. The nouns are all familiar, but the story would resonate even if they weren't. It's just about being human, and doing human stuff.

Also, thanks for building something awesome.

Slashdot had an incredible influence on my perception of computers, the internet, privacy, and participation. Though I don't remember the subject, I remember printing out my first successful submission and posting it on the wall.

Slashdot introduced me to ArsDigita, which introduced me to web programming and linux, leading me out of the depths of a corporate visual basic dead-end job. I'm very grateful for the impact this had on my life. Thanks, Rob.

I'm splitting my time between here and Slashdot nowadays. Karma is certainly a lot more difficult to get here but I think that's a function of the quite different communities.

I'm curious though, do you know if Dice has any plans for reviving Slashcode or creating a new version of it? It looks like it hasn't been touched in about two years.

In any case, thanks for everything, and I'm sorry that the site seemed to grow away from you. I think most people here agree that it was better when you were part of it.

Ah, the fond memories of hitting Slashdot at least 5x per day back when I worked for early Amazon (1998?). I remember all the memes from back then. Like many people attest, it was hugely useful to make connections to other FOSS and Linux users.

But the biggest thing I remember was 9/11 and the updates from /. users who lived in NYC, Brooklyn, and Queens right after the disaster happened...at the point when the only other coverage was CNN.

You know what? I think over the years cmdrtaco has become quite a writer as well.

I started reading Slashdot when the first days of the "slashdot effect" for flattening websites was being mentioned. Late 90's?

It was always a go-to site for me, and for events like 9/11 it was a better news source, simply because the team was agile enough to swap to static pages to handle the load, unlike CNN etc.

This was a great read, user #11637 here. I had a project many years ago called half-empty that made it onto the /. front page, which slashdotted my college apartment and got my cable Internet service cancelled within a few hours. This was my first taste of the crack-cocaine called "tail -f access.log". It was awesome. Thanks again Rob.

I still have Slashdot in every browser as a bookmark, even though I rarely visit the site. I can't bring myself to remove it.

Slashdot will always be near and dear to my heart. Slashdot was a big catalyst in my early tech education, even if I had to wait for long threads to load over my Courier Robotics modem. I can't remember if my user number was 8811 or 8872 but I do remember how cool it was to meet cmdrtaco at an early Linuxworld in nyc.

Thanks for everything /.

Long-time top submitter here (still top 4, although I think I stopped in 2005 http://slashdot.org/hof.shtml), many good memories, the sense of community helped shape my interests in many ways, influencing my career, so just want to thank for your great work.

Still remember the moment six months into it's history when I found out that Slashdot was a Michigan company. You never heard about any cool Internet companies originating from Michigan in those days. I remember being dumbstruck and then proud, damned proud.

good memories.

myself, i had a modest user number, a few mentions for my work, posted some book reviews, hosted timothy at my condo a couple of times, even got slashdotted a couple of times (including once to distribute star wars prequel trailers via a grad school server i ran, which should give you an idea of how old i am now). "focused traffic" is hardly an apt description, and we still call it "the slashdot effect."

good times.

thank you. what was always clear is that it was first and foremost a labor of love and interest, and that's a rare thing among the net's high profile sites. that has had a profound impact on the site's long term quality.

I still find Slashdot one of the most valuable discussion sites on the Internet.

Thanks man!

The slashcode site hasn't been updated in years. Did it fall to the wayside throughout the buyouts?

http://www.slashcode.com/www.slashcode.com/

#1221 here... I remember when Slashdot ware THE place to get the tech news and discuss them. I do not think it is anymore, but still have some fond memories from these times. Thanks for that.

longtime /.r 2774,

thx @cmdrtaco for starting slashdot.

It really filled the gap on the web in Perl, Linux & FOSS, information and was the go-to place in startups I've worked in. Now for a few questions,

Q. /. for me was the start of 'social software' through commenting & friends (fondly remembering 'friends of foes' & freaks) - what lessons learned in moderating & story post moderation do you think HN could improve with?

Q. Is there any way to get a dump of old posts. I've got 'em back to '96 & wouldn't mind getting a copy.

Happy 15th birthday! I posted as AC for the first year or two and sadly missed out on the "low UID" boat. I was 15 at the time of its launch.

Are you a hacker? Do you like news? If you answered "yes" to both of these questions, then HNAA might be exactly what you're looking for!

I've never used Slashdot for even a moment, but I really enjoyed that article and I could really feel OPs pain as he let his baby go.

Slashdot was the original (and nerdier) reddit.

I just wish there was a way to find out when my slashdot account was created!

Cmdrtaco, whatever happened to Bruce Twickler?

#977520. Thanks for all the fish.

Next Up: Crackmonkey Nostalgia.

I've always wanted to have story accepted on /.

But I've yet to submit one. :)