Talk:Slashdot/Archive 1

POV
"Because of its technically savvy and innovation oriented audience"

A large portion of the slashdot population is often just as scientifically illiterate as the public they hold themselves above. The only difference is the snobbery and a larger amount of time sitting at a computer. Jarwulf 07:29, 13 March 2006 (UTC)
 * As of my experience, I have generaly found Slashdot comments very interesting and have learned a lot of from this site I am reading since the begining 1995 or 1996 I think--Khalid hassani 13:31, 17 March 2006 (UTC)

Michael Sims and other Ostrich behavior
Slashdot seems to be perpetually unable to face its own demons. First there was the distance beetween their theory, 'we want to make everyone able to comment', and reality, when they made a 'bitchslap' script to specifically delete/punish certain users who posted comments.

second is the way they never talk about whats going on, like when Michael Sims got fired/left/whatever/who knows. no stories no discussion.

the self censorship of slashdot is as bad as the efforts of anyone else.

Slashdot problems
There oughta be more detailed discussion of the various problems that have arisen with slashdot. It is nearly universally agreed...except for the editors, that these extend far beyond the rampant biased moderation of comments. For example, Dupes seem to have become very problematic since I joined. Very interesting submissions will regularly be rejected and shunted aside so the same irrelevent article can appear yet a third time on the front page in the same day. The editors don't bother to check the submissions for proper spelling, grammar, readability, or even broken links. The myspace takeover submission is a good example of this laziness. Then of course there's the fact that they let Jon Katz post...but thats a different story. Jarwulf 21:02, 20 July 2005 (UTC)
 * Agreed. And I'd like to see a section or at least mention of the recent rampant growth of slashvertisements and other 'ego' posts. For example the noble piece prize was supposed to be a link to a nobel peace prize parody (listed under 'funny, laugh), but turned out to be a shameless plug for the submitter's software. The editor (asleep?) didnt pick it up, and the article wasn't even deleted or modified (even though many had noticed it was yet another slashvertisment) Adidas 14:44, 29 July 2005 (UTC)
 * A good example of slashvertisment is the great number of Google related posts as of lately (at least once a day), while this could be explained but the audience of the site, I can't help but think there is some slashvertisment going under the radar.--Khalid hassani 13:28, 17 March 2006 (UTC)

Liberal Bias
Slashdot is also a good example of liberal bias--I'm liberal myself, but some of the editorials make me wince: they seem occasionally to ignore evidence contrary to accepted dogma (as opposed to, say, not understanding it or not knowing about it--or, better, yet, methodically discrediting it). They're also a good source of invective against Microsoft, should you ever need one. :-) I do like the site, though, don't get me wrong.

One could say the same (or the exact opposite) about many news sources. In any case, the great thing about Slashdot isn't the article or the editorial, it's the comments. And those are a free for all-- in any anti-MS article, over half of the highly-moderated comments will be a defense of MS (even if, in that particular case, MS's behavior might be difficult to defend.)


 * Achieving the front page on Slashdot.org is to technology what the front page of the Wall Street Journal is to business and finance. Except that the Wall Street Journal usually does some sort of fact checking and retracts egregious errors it makes.

While this is quite funny and not all that inaccurate, it could use a rewrite to be in a neutral point of view. --BlckKnght This article is cool, id never heard of geekizoid or the 'anti slashdot' movement. Thanks for adding 'naked and petrified' back in.

As for the bias, its not so much 'liberal' as 'geek', which is some kind of two headed bastard baby monster when a libertarian had sex with phyllis schlafly and was raised in the suburbs.
 * I would say that the editors (at least some of them) are definitely pro-environment, pro- civil liberties, and anti- corporate bad behavior; and rabidly anti-Bush (which may merely arise from the other values). If that makes them 'liberal', I'm curious what the contrast is with.  (Are we to suppose that moderates can't hold those views?)  At any rate, 'liberal' has become something of a knee-jerk criticism of such a large range of values that it has almost become meaningless.
 * The posters, OTOH, cover a very broad political spectrum. There is prominent advocacy of Libertarianism (of the current variety), though seemingly not as much lately.  There were huge arguments over the 2000 election, with both opinions well represented, along with a lot of other people claiming that the result didn't actually matter due to party convergence.  I think the Bush supporters became rather hushed for a long time after the war started, but they seem to be becoming more vocal again now.  It's hard to say which political leanings are best represented, since you tend to notice the most vocal.  There are also very vocal advocates of Windows, Mac, and BSD, along with the Linuxers.  And there are incessant posts getting modded up for claiming that anyone who disagrees with the "groupthink" gets modded down.  The site would certainly make good fodder for a student of political rhetoric. &mdash; B.Bryant 12:27, 11 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Most if not, all people are pro-environment (they just don't want burdensome regulations from the federal government that do more harm than good in the long run.) What do you define as "Civil liberties," most, if not, all people usually uphold civil liberties, and no one (unless they are apart of the bad corporation) supports corporate bad behavior. Rabidly anti-Bush: there is the key phrase, *rabidly* anti-Bush, such as the people from DemocraticUnderground.com or Blamebush.typepad.com, both of which have virulent (and often egregarious) hatred for Bush. How could moderates be "rabidly anti-Bush?" Usually moderates don't hate everything that a President comes up with/stands for/implements.

And BlckKnght, maybe you should write the thing about fact checking and other differences between slashdot and 'real' news organizations. Now that the article has been revised by a non-slashdroid to be more balanced it just doesnt need me to give it an iconoclast kick in the face.

Poor Editors
Slashdot at this point really is a joke.

The editors don't bother to review article submissions properly (for spelling and grammar), they don't adequately check for duplicates, the posters whore for Karma (a meaningless number they don't even get to see anymore), the army of trolls disrupt every single thread, and the posters often don't even bother to read the articles they comment on since you have to get your comment in before 70+ other people do, otherwise no one will likely ever see it.

Kuro5hin is better. The only thing that keeps /. as popular as it is, is inertia.
 * 1. sign your wiki discussion entries. 2. Browse at 0 to filter out the trolls. 3. better yet, browse at 5, set insightful, informative, and interesting to +6, enjoy all the insight. 4. I see. Digg is Incredibly insightful 5. it's gotten much better now. --Rdoger6424 03:02, 1 February 2006 (UTC)

Miscellaneous
Perversely, it's made me want to put up Halichoeres bivittatus as an encyclopedic article just to see how long it would take someone to pull it just for the common name of said fish... (Note: This isn't a complaint, I was the one who deleted the initial penis bird article). :) There's an even worse one (due to current events) which I wouldn't even feel comfortable putting up even though it's a perfectly valid common name.. I'll leave it as an exercise to the reader to find the worse one... --Rgamble

The primary issue _i_ have with this article is it describes "entire threads have been marked down to -1" as moderator abuse, where it is quite clearly (if acknowledged to occur at all... even those who claim this does not occur cannot possibly say that normal moderators are capable of such) _editor_ abuse. Random832


 * While I agree there are probably cases of the editors doing such, I don't believe for a moment that normal moderators are incapable of it. The atmosphere of Slashdot is such that a thread about a sensitive topic need only contain only moderate, thought-out conversation to meet the wrath of a handful of extremist moderators and find itself modded down. I'm not saying this happens often (I don't really know for sure how often it DOES happen), but it is possible.


 * That said, perhaps something like this could be tacked on:


 * It should be noted that the Slashdot editors have the ability to moderate any comments to whatever level they wish. This has lead to accusations of abuse on the part of the editors. Determining whether the accusations are true or not is difficult, however, because users cannot see who it was that moderated a comment.


 * Thoughts, anyone? -- nknight 19:40 21 Jun 2003 (UTC)


 * I have heard the accusation many times, but have never seen the accusers point to an example. I've also seen occasional oddnesses with the mods on my own posts, but I tentatively attribute them to the maintainers' apparent lack of restraint toward tweaking the behavior of the running system. (Mods aren't the only oddities that come and go.) I sometimes wonder whether the people making these accusations are just seeing mod behavior that they don't understand, and constructing a conspiracy theory to explain it. There are certainly lots of posters who seem to have an axe to grind with the editors. (I'm not saying the accusations aren't true, but rather that I haven't seen any evidence of it.) &mdash; B.Bryant 12:27, 11 Feb 2005 (UTC)

The bit about Exodus.net is obsolete, isn't i? -- Error 00:00 14 Jul 2003 (UTC)


 * Yep, Exodus doesn't even officially exist anymore. I'm entirely uncertain what the significance of Exodus providing the bandwidth was that got it mentioned in the first place. -- nknight 02:06 14 Jul 2003 (UTC)

I found the article on slashdot.

I always thought the name slashdot was a reference to the crypticness of the UNIX command line. I wonder if that was at least part of it? Spalding 02:15, Sep 9, 2004 (UTC)


 * The story goes they where hoping for a ".dot" TLD. That way the address would be h-t-t-p-colon-slash-slash-slash-dot-dot-dot. Jachim 23:14, 17 February 2006 (UTC)

Please add an interwiki to nl:Slashdot. nl:Gebruiker:Danielm

Cowboyneal?
Article Cowboyneal is a redirect to this article, but "Cowboyneal" is not mentioned anywhere in it; this seems inconsistent with wikipedia conventions on redirects. Since I have only a trivial understanding of Cowboyneal (as a presumably fictional character mentioned in /. polls) the only way I'd have of fixing this would be deletion of the cowboyneal page; it would surely be preferable to have the term mentioned in this article ... Sharkford 21:24, 2004 Sep 14 (UTC)

Yes, I just discovered the same thing. Someone should make a page about Cowboyneal, at least telling if he is real, or just the poll joke answer. --PlantPerson 19:36, 28 Sep 2004 (UTC)

CowboyNeal is one of the Slashdot editors, I should dig up some biographical information on him and see if there is an appropriate place to work it in, if not I'll throw up a seperate page for him. --G Worroll


 * In fact, I created a stub at CowboyNeal a while ago, to replace the unhelpful link. I did cursory research (found his home page!&mdash;and he is mentioned more in Slashdot subculture than Slashdot) but I'd be the first to admit that my article is uncluttered by meaningful content. Sharkford 13:58, 2004 Oct 18 (UTC)
 * I moved the parts concerning CowboyNeal from Slashdot subculture to the CowboyNeal page and added him to the SlashDot topic box as well; now the page at least has some content. Marcika 00:06, 12 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Sadly, this leaves out an old UNIX/usenet running joke: %finger cowboyneal cowboyneal is not available %mount cowboyneal failed

...etc. I've forgotten most of this, obviously. Anyone?


 * I just read the CowboyNeal page, and I'm afraid I have walked away still not clear on his significance in the /. culture. Most of the article describes the "CowboyNeal option" for polls, but very little of it appears to describe him, he as a user, and why his name has grown to be a humorous reference. Any chance of getting the article expanded a bit? Dxco 19:59, 21 October 2005 (UTC)

Unpopular opinions marked as -1: Troll
Even well-written and effectively-argued posts that lean on the pro-Microsoft side of an OS debate on Slashdot are not uncommon to be marked down as -1: Troll by the overzealous Linux-activist moderators there. I don't care for Microsoft, either, but Slashdot is to computer politics as Indymedia.org is to real-world politics -- just a mouthpiece for one side, any dissent is allowed through if the powers-that-be aren't having a bad day. by AnonymousCoward (Score:-1 Troll) October 2004
 * Bullshit! You have specific examples?--Will2k 03:38, Oct 4, 2004 (UTC)
 * The above example is one --SYSS Mouse 01:54, 2 Dec 2004 (UTC)
 * I find that every viewpoint suffers the risk of downmods for no apparent good reason. You find every viewpoint on every topic there, and you'll find excesses in every group. &mdash; B.Bryant 12:02, 11 Feb 2005 (UTC)


 * Metamoderation, I believe, has changed that policy.--Rdoger6424 02:36, 1 February 2006 (UTC)

I'd like to know why slashdot is called slashdot, any ideas ?
 * Because http://slashdot.org/faq/slashmeta.shtml#sm150.
 * Poster of question above: Please delete this when read. -- Eric, Nov 4, 2004

Delete the Subarticles
All the Slashdot subarticles like the subculture and trolling need to folded into the main article and the sub articles need to be deleted. It's just a web site, there is no reason for it to have so many subarticles.


 * I happen to think the "history" article is unneeded -- it has too little detail and what detail it has belongs in the main slashdot article. However, the subculture and trolling articles should remain as they've grown quite large and detailed. I don't see any problem with having them as separate articles... your comment about it being "just a website" is bogus. It exists, lots of people know about it and use it, and someone wants to write about it. Motor 14:27, 13 Dec 2004 (UTC)


 * Your justification is confusing. Why would being "just a web site" preclude it from having sub-articles? --Dante Alighieri | Talk 01:03, Dec 15, 2004 (UTC)


 * Two things: You'll start approaching the magic 32KB limit if we merge ALL subarticles in, and you risk diluting the substance of the article by including large subsections which are better addressed in separate articles. --ABQCat 01:21, 15 Dec 2004 (UTC)


 * Many more people know about and use the United States social security system, but there is much less Wikepedia content for it than there is for Slashdot. The "just a web site" comment is suggesting that there are more important things to write about in the Wikipedia.  If Wikipedia is to be successful, people who volunteer their time need to focus on contributing to a wide variety of topics instead of focusing on their own pet topics.


 * Many more people know about and use the United States social security system, but there is much less Wikepedia content for it than there is for Slashdot Your point being? You want to improve the social security article... go do it. I'm having trouble seeing how deleting slashdot articles just because less people use that website than use the U.S. social security system is relevant, since everyone here is a volunteer. Motor 13:09, 19 Dec 2004 (UTC)


 * To the contrary, if each person contributes to a pet project and maintains it and guards it, meticulously reviewing changes to it using their watchlist, Wikipedia is well-served. Surely, there are people who are passionate about social security and will maintain it in a similar manner.  To have contributors maintain and add to the articles which they are most passionate about creates the largest amount of quality content for the site.  This is similar in manner to having science journalists report on science, and political journalists report on politics.  If a person has an area in which they are well-educated or passionate, they are more likely to contribute quality work to that subject area.  --ABQCat 05:25, 19 Dec 2004 (UTC)


 * People work on what they're interested in and/or happen to know about and/or think needs to be included -- or whatever their motives are. You can't order around a volunteer.  The anon contributor is correct that Wikipedia's level of coverage doesn't correspond all that well with the importance of different subjects.  To counter that problem, we rely on making it as easy as possible for people to get involved and contribute whatever they will, rather than hectoring them about what some potentates have decided is next on the agenda.  Getting down to specifics, deleting Slashdot articles won't get one sentence written about Social Security.  An attempt to delete them, however, will consume person-hours that could be used to improve Wikipedia.  Note that at least one of these articles was proposed for deletion just a few months ago (Votes for deletion/Slashdot trolling phenomena).  More than two-thirds of those voting favored a Keep.  Furthermore, if such an attempt to delete succeeded, there would then be yet more time lost as newbies came along and, ignorant of the previous vote, re-created some of the specific articles. JamesMLane 06:16, 19 Dec 2004 (UTC)


 * You folks are correct; deleting Slashdot articles certainly does not add anything to the Social Security article. The comment was just defending the "just a web site" statement.  While deleting articles doesn't help, neither does a volunteer contributing content to an over-represented topic.  Unfortunately the pool of people who are both passionate about Social Security and contirbute to Wikipedia is much smaller than than pool of people who are passionate about Slashdot and contribute to Wikipedia.  That is why the philosophy of that was stated in the comment about "each person contributing to a pet project" is not really the best for Wikipedia, at least not at this point.  Rather than spending time writing yet another article about Slashdot, it would be better for volunteers to spend their time writing about something else.  Even if Slashdot is his "pet project", Wikipedia would be served better by that volunteer writing something about his "9th favorite topic" if that topic is lacking content.  Another useful use of the volunteers time could also be taking the time to introduce a friend who is an expert on a under-represented subject to Wikipedia.  Please do not interpret this as ordering around volunteers.  I understand that the nature of Wikipedia and all volunteers to the effort are appreciated.  I am just trying to give the good people who choose to volunteer their time to Wikipedia something to think about; something that I believe to be in the best interests of Wikipedia.


 * Nope. It IS a problem that the Slashdot information here at Wikipedia is far more voluminous and comprehensive than the information on, say, Social Security. That's because it creates a distorted perspective. An encyclopedia doesn't just offer factual information; it also provides readers a sense of context. Flip through Britannica, and you'll see that there's a lot more coverage of "Chicago" than of "Chippendale's." That immediately signals to the reader that America's third-largest city is of greater consequence, in a universal sense, than a string of nightclubs.
 * The glut of Slashdot information here -- much of it minutiae -- serves as evidence that Wikipedia is not an authoritative reference source. Worse, it risks misleading unknowing readers, by indicating to them that Slashdot is something extraordinarily substantial and important.
 * Prioritizing is a crucial aspect of information delivery. Social Security is more important than Slashdot, and thus Wikipedia is delivering poor information when it gives more precedence to the latter over the former. Sure, as some have noted, one answer is to beef up the Social Security entry. As it stands right now, though, the best thing to do, for the sake of truth and accuracy, is to scale back the Slashdot entry so that it takes on the proper context.
 * Well, it is obviously a silly idea to judge importance by how much information there is on it. Should the internet be censored because of the abundance of information on sex? In fact, the question of importance is itself silly. Who gets to be the judge of that? Is not the fact that more wikipedia editors freely choose to dedicate more of their own time to articles on Slashdot than social security itself proof that to these people, Slashdot is actually more important, more interesting, and more deserving of more content than social security? What right do you have to overrule this democratic decision? For example, me, being an unemployed student living outside the US, doesn't give a damn about social security. But I spend a few minutes checking up slashdot every day.
 * And there is a vast difference between wikipedia and Brittanica. Brittanica pays it's contributers, and it pays in terms of space on bits of physical paper on which entries are written. Brittanica has to transfer its resources, and it can do that by an editorial policy as to which topics are or are not important.
 * Wikipedia entries cost almost nothing for wikipedia itself. And it is absurd to suggest that having less content on slashdot can be transferred into more content on more 'important' articles. In fact, the reverse is true. Discriminating against the existing audience will lead to a loss of readers and editors, which will lead to a direct loss of attention on social security articles. The editors interested and capable of writing stuff on both social security and slashdot won't just write about something else. They will simply leave.--Fangz 17:19, 13 August 2005 (UTC)

Penguinheads
User:Fredrik: for some examples of the term 'penguinheads' in use with relation to Slashdot, see http://www.google.com/search?q=slashdot+penguinheads. There's a fairly diverse range of citations there. Acb 15:36, 15 Dec 2004 (UTC)


 * I count 58 search results. Of those, many do not even refer to Slashdotters as penguinheads, but use the word "penguinheads" for Linux fans in general and also have a mention of Slashdot somewhere on the page. So sure, the term exists, but it is by no means sufficiently widely used to warrant inclusion. Contrast with "Slashdotters" which gets 30,000 hits. Fredrik | talk 15:48, 15 Dec 2004 (UTC)


 * I noted the same thing when I looked up "penguinheads" the other day upon noticing that penguinheads as a synonym for slashdotters had been deleted. Since I had never heard the term and it didn't seem to be referring to slashdotters themselves but rather linux fans, I was fine with the deletion.  I think, at best, someone failed to understand the distinction between linux fans and slashdotters - an understandable confusion considering typical comments on slashdot - and thank the editor for noticing the inaccuracy and correcting it.  --ABQCat 06:58, 20 Dec 2004 (UTC)

what is "slashdotted" ?
what is "slashdotted" ?


 * To be slashdotted is to suffer from the Slashdot effect. DJ Clayworth 05:18, 3 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Vandalism
This article has some naughty words in it that I can't be bothered to remove. Someone clean it up.

I actually came here to learn about Slashdot, an endeavour immediately inhibited by some anonymous heretic's decision to express his antipathy towards the article's subject by peppering it with sweary vocab. Needless to say, I still don't know what Slashdot is, but I certainly wanna find out why this crook's so angry about it.

My reversion
I reverted this edit made on Slashdot because it looks very POV to me. /. reports on microsoft vulnerabilities as well as vulnerabilities in linux, bsd and other open-source alternatives. If you think they have a bias against Microsoft, then please cite some. -Frazzydee|&#9997; 12:43, 18 Jan 2005 (UTC)
 * oops, forgot to login before my slashdot edit before. Anyways, fair reversion. I think it's difficult to cite specific bias on slashdot, because there are always noticable articles bashing both MS and Linux (and almost anything if you wait long enough). Rather, the bias is obvious via cumulative effect. The second part of my edit was removing reference to "their infamous gates borg icon". This implies that slashdot created said icon and reference. They didn't. Gates as borg predates slashdot by several years and comes from a magazine cover.. -Nemo

Poll: News site, or blog?
There has been some recent controversy in the Weblog article about whether Slashdot should be categorized as a news site or a blog. Therefore, I thought it might be interesting if a poll was conducted. Also note that this article is currently categorized as a weblog (possibly errantly?). Please place your vote under the headings below. Thank you! &mdash; Stevie is the man!  Talk 05:00, 10 Feb 2005 (UTC)


 * Acknowledging ABQCat's concern, please choose the option that you believe best reflects what Slashdot is. Certainly, there are shades of grey, but it's important with regards to the weblog article to get some additional input so some article text can be resolved. &mdash;  Stevie is the man!  Talk 11:37, 11 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Slashdot is a news site

 * Concur. Nothing on the Slashdot site that indicates it's a blog, and the consensus here indicates that Slashdot users generally agree that it's not a blog.  "News" is in the site byline "News for nerds...".  It's widely regarded as a news site or news portal that happens to provide for comments on news items.  While it has things in common with blogs, it's not a blog. &mdash;  Stevie is the man!  Talk 05:00, 10 Feb 2005 (UTC)
 * Agree. I'll participate in your silly little poll.  Should I mention there's a missing option?  Seriously now, however, I don't see the problem with multiple categories, but if we're strictly limiting ourselves, Slashdot falls a LOT closer to a news site than a weblog.  Perhaps it's worth noting that the similarity to weblogs (commenting, etc) could be confusing to a non-tech-savvy person.  Additionally, I know more than a few people who use the Slashdot "Journal" feature to host their weblog without the need for setting up something more elaborate on their own.  In that vein, Slashdot may be USED as a weblog, but is not (inherently or by design) a weblog.  --ABQCat 17:38, 10 Feb 2005 (UTC)
 * Agree. Actually it's a "news discussion site", but it certainly isn't a blog. &mdash; B.Bryant 11:53, 11 Feb 2005 (UTC)
 * FWIW, my university's library's Web site has included Slashdot in its list of news sites for years, since long before anyone heard of blogs. &mdash; B.Bryant 11:56, 11 Feb 2005 (UTC)
 * Yes. silsor 22:52, Feb 11, 2005 (UTC)
 * News site, for reasons outlined above. --Mister Tattle 05:58, 11 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Link Problems
"karma whore" links to the Slashdot page (essentially you go nowhere). Please change this by either deleting link or liking it to a page defining the term. (This is also the problem with the following "karma system" link)

Slashdot is neither

 * Agree Slashdot is technology news discussion forum. --Kryptknight 03:52, Jun 10, 2005 (UTC)
 * Agree Kryptknight, you could not have put it better. Except maybe by putting in some jabs at the lazy editors. Donutz 22:37, 15 July 2005 (UTC)
 * Agree agreeing with kryptknight here, /. is very much a discussion forum. The 'news' aspect might have been there a few years back, but it has since then been obscured by the massive impact of the forums on the actual content of the (not so) 'news page'. Adidas 14:40, 29 July 2005 (UTC)
 * Agree Slashdot is ... Slashdot Hashar 13:50, 12 August 2005 (UTC)
 * Agree Yes indeed. News aggregation and discussion site would be the best term I could come up with.  Ehurtley 07:18, 1 November 2005 (UTC)
 * Agree Slashdot is as much a newssite as the National Enquirer is a newspaper. Yeah they do post up interesting stuff from time to time but many articles are either outdated, editorials masquerading as news, or embarassingly inaccurate. Most people come to ridicule the stupidity of the submissions. Jarwulf 00:25, 7 November 2005 (UTC)

Obligatory
IN UNITED STATES, SLASHDOT POLLS YOU! oh, wait... Project2501a 1 July 2005 11:34 (UTC)
 * I, for one, welcome our Slashdot Overlords. Adidas 14:41, 29 July 2005 (UTC)
 * Make a poll on wikipedia
 * Profit! --Fangz 17:07, 13 August 2005 (UTC)
 * Imagine a beowulf cluster of wikipedias --Rdoger6424 20:10, 21 December 2005 (UTC)
 * Fire the two-ton torpedoes Cmdr.Taco!!
 * Fire the two-ton torpedoes Cmdr.Taco!!

RE: "Criticism" subsection and POV
It seems that the section of the article headlined "Criticism" maintains a biased POV throughout. Instead of stating specific criticisms that some people hold as opinions, it states them as fact and/or as held by the entire population of Slashdot readers. And the bit at the end about drug use seems to be entirely out of left field. Does that even belong in this article? --Reverend Loki 23:34, 30 November 2005 (UTC)


 * The Trolling subsection looks to me to actually cover most of the same stuff the Criticism subsection does, but in a better fashion - with more citations, etc. Maybe the criticism section ought to just be removed? TerraFrost 19:03, 10 January 2006 (UTC)


 * I more or less rewrote the section. I think it is better with short statements. A few points are repeated from the "Trolling" section.  However, I would keep the criticism section because it handles valid criticisms apart from the work of trolls.  In other words, there is a difference between someone trolling a criticism and someone just making a point. --Vector4F 05:00, 9 March 2006 (UTC)