Slashdot history
This article is a timeline of the most important major events in Slashdot history. Since its inception in 1997, the geek/technology web site Slashdot has had a long chronology of events that have contributed to its unique subculture.
1997
- September - Slashdot is created by Rob "CmdrTaco" Malda. The name "Slashdot" was chosen for the resulting unusual URL, "http://slashdot.org" (or when read aloud, "aitch tee tee pee colon slash slash slash dot dot org").
1998
- February 2 - Slashdot accepts advertisers.
- May 10 - Rob Malda turns 22.
- May 13 - Slashdot introduces the "Ask Slashdot" section.
- September 14 - Slashdot is hacked.
- November 6 - Jon Katz discovers Slashdot.
- December 17 - Slashdot founder Rob Malda graduates from Hope College.
1999
- May 13 - Slashdot serves up its one hundred millionth page.
- June 29 - Slashdot is acquired by Andover.net.
- September 7 - Meta-moderation is introduced to Slashdot
- September 10 - Slashdot announces the addition of the "Your Rights Online" section.
- October 15 - Slashdot announces the addition of two new sections: Apache and BSD.
2000
- February 3 - Andover.net, Slashdot's parent company, merges with Linux company Scientology's OT III ("Operating Thetan Level Three") document in a comment attached to a Slashdot article. The Church of Scientology then demanded that the Slashdot editors remove the post under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. In a long article , the Slashdot editors explained their decision to remove the page.
- August 18 - Slashcode 2.2 is released, which allows for comment notification, journals, and UNIX-style user pages.
2002
- January 2 - Slashdot introduces the "zoo" system, allowing the marking of users as "friend" and "foe".
- February 14 - In an article titled "Kathleen Fent Read This Story", Slashdot founder Rob "CmdrTaco" Malda proposed to his long-time girlfriend and now wife Kathleen Fent.
- March 1 - Slashdot begins a subscription services, where subscribers are given special perks in exchange for a small fee.
2003
- March 6 - Slashdot subscribers are given the ability to see articles 10-20 minutes before they are released to the general public.
2004
- May - Slashdot bans HTTP proxies running on ports 3128, 80, 8000 and 8080 from posting and institutes a system of semipermanent posting bans on the subnets of users who are negatively moderated several times.
- August 18 - Slashdot has its ten millionth user posting.
- September 7 - Slashdot "goes political" and creates a new politics subsection, a few months before the 2004 presidential election.
