Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with slashdot

Quantifying the Slashdot Effect

evariste — Fri, 24 Oct 2008 16:54:19 -0800

I'm trying to figure out if a server I'm working on can withstand being linked to by very high traffic websites. Can anyone tell me the basic traffic characteristics of, say, a front page link from: Drudge Report, Yahoo! Buzz, Huffington Post, Slashdot, Reddit, or Digg? I'm using ab (ApacheBench) and I'd like to have some idea of how many requests, and at what level of concurrency, I should be trying to make this server capable of pushing out. Thanks! I already know what to do (log and observe, cache cache cache, tune and tweak db and web server configuration, etc) and am experienced in that process. I just need some typical numbers to help me figure out when I'm done!

Oops I slashdotted again

Leon-arto — Thu, 24 Apr 2008 16:40:17 -0800

Can I make an RSS feed of one person's Slashdot comments? It's possible to make an RSS feed out of a Slashdot journal. Is it possible to do the same for that user's slashdot comment stream?

best CMS for discussion/collaboration site?

philosophistry — Sun, 10 Feb 2008 19:50:03 -0800

What's a good CMS to make a slashdot/kuro5hin/plastic.com/digg clone? The features I want the site to ultimately have are:
- users
- moderation/karma system
- queue for articles
- ajax/digg-style voting goodness
- fast

Scoop seems good, but is there something else I should be looking into?

HTML to RSS without your own server?

krisjohn — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 16:06:22 -0800

Can anyone help me create an RSS feed, using Yahoo Pipes, from a list on an HTML page? I want an RSS feed of my Slashdot comments. I used Fetch Page with the following parameters:

URL: http://slashdot.org/~Kris_J/comments
Cut Content From: 1
to <div id="footer">
Split Using Delimiter: 

And it does create a list of just my comments as fragments of HTML. How do I turn that list into an RSS feed?

(I don't have to use Pipes. If there's a better solution, I'm all ears.)

Slashdo's and Slashdon'ts.

EnormousTalkingOnion — Wed, 23 Aug 2006 14:14:48 -0800

How is selection/positioning on the front page determined for Slashdot? Is there any Digg-like element where mod points or popularity influence story placement on the front page (both it showing up in the first place and how long it stays there)? Or do the editors just choose the stories and then they stay until a certain number of more recent stories bumps them off? I've read the FAQ and as far as I understand, users can only use mod points to "mod" comments up or down, not the stories themselves. But I've heard some conflicting reports. Anyone know how it works?

Surviving the Slashdot effect

blag — Wed, 21 Sep 2005 18:02:28 -0800

Help us survive a major-but-short-term traffic spike. We're conducting a joint promotion with a MajorOnlineAuctionHouse. They have kindly offered to include our link in the newsletter which is sent to their entire (subscribed) user base. If even 10% click on the link, we could be looking at hundreds of thousands of visitors in a very short space of time. We were planning on hosting the site on a Verio VPS (!) but now I'm beginning to wonder if it can take the strain...

Last year we were simultaneously Slashdotted and Register-ed. The server just gave up - it was exactly as if they'd launched a DDoS attack on us. I don't want this to happen again.

What precautions can we put in place? I know about Coral Cache but I'm not sure it's appropriate for a commercial site. Are there any other load-balancing techniques we could use? Or is there a way to buy short-term bandwidth from a provider? We'd only need it for a month or two. The site/server is LAMP: I realise that Apache isn't ideal for this sort of thing, would something like Zeus be a better solution? Would this require significant code changes/setup?

All advice would be appreciated. Thanks.

I've lost my AvantSlash code, have I tried everything?

ralawrence — Wed, 03 Aug 2005 05:12:13 -0800

My (old) sysadmin in what could only be described as a hissy fit deleted my entire account one friday night. Along with all my emails and other stuff went the only copy I had of AvantSlash. This is rather unfortunate, since I maintain it! Can you help me find a copy of v3.0 or 3.1? Ignoring the obvious (should backup more often, don't go with a sysadmin who suffers from this kind of thing) I'm having terrible problems actually finding the code. I've searched Google, searched p2p (v2.28 only), posted requests on Slashdot, posted requests on forums where they've asked about it and even tried to contact the owner of the glowing comment on the freshmeat page but nothing.

Is all hope lost? Can you help or can you advise on where I should be looking?

Natalie Portman meme?

furtive — Sun, 16 Jan 2005 19:01:17 -0800

[SlashdotMemeFilter] What is the link between Natalie Portman and hot grits? I know it started on Slashdot, and I realize the obsession with Natalie Portman is a result of the more recent Star Wars films, but I have never been able to find what she has to do with hot grits. How did this meme get started? P.S. Google's got nothing and my questions to Ask Slashdot got bounced.

Do "cool" careers suck as much as working at EA?

Stan Chin — Thu, 11 Nov 2004 07:46:31 -0800

This entry from an EA Programmer's wife (via /.) details working for EA to complete exhaustion. I'm a young guy, maybe I don't know, but it seems to me that most of your 'dream jobs' like working on a video game, a magazine, advertising, etc. are completely exploited by management because it's seen as a cool job. Also, hundreds of people are waiting to take your 80-hour work week 'dream job.' Is this pretty much the sharp edge to doing what you love to do? Most jobs are pretty shitty, but it looks like anything remotely creative/cool sucks beyond measure as far as hours and stress goes. Do all of these 'cool' careers suck this bad? Is it just something that comes along with the industry, and you should just shut up about it?

Slashdot alternatives?

angry modem — Tue, 08 Jun 2004 09:25:03 -0800

Slashdot is a hellhole. Can anyone recommend any decent and at least semipopular tech news sites with insightful comments, and ones that won't ban my ip after two unjust downmods?