(this page restored from an old copy dated 2002-07-02)
Slash Dot has a fascinating participation and ratings process. Anyone can post. Some people ("moderators") can mark postings as better or worse. Everyone has a chance to become a moderator, depending on how often they read, how often they post, and how their posts are rated, a user may receive moderation points. A moderation point is used when a moderation action is performed. Unused moderation points expire after a few days/hours.
Users can specify what level of quality (based on moderation) comments they want to look at by default. How can you trust the moderators? They've been chosen based in part on their "karma" (see the URLs below), and their moderation decisions themselves are "meta-moderated".
Newsflash: Slash Dot has announced that they will be allowing ad-free subscriptions now. This is done thru Pay Pal. (ugh) They also will be using bigger ads soon, so all you Perl Monks out there, get your Gnu Emacs or Vim Text Editors out!
Details:
Slash Dot Homepage: www.slashdot.org 
General Slashdot FAQ: slashdot.org
Slashdot moderation guidelines: slashdot.org
discussion of moderation ideas: slashdot.org
discussion of metamoderation: slashdot.org
-- Paul Chisholm (a.k.a. "Lumpish Scholar" on Slashdot)
Version 0.9 of "Slash", the code underlying Slashdot, has been released.
Basic information about Slash:
slashdot.org
Article announcing the release, and discussion thereof:
slashdot.org
Download the code via FTP (about 400 KB):
ftp://ftp.slashdot.org/pub/slash
Web interface for CVS server:
server51.freshmeat.net
wiki in slash www.onlamp.com
-- Seth Gordon
I would like to see a provision for anyone to post articles, and for the community to assign karma points to articles. I suspect that "Microsoft releases OfficeXP under GPL", "NASA admits UFO's destroyed orbiter", "Star Wars Episode 2 script online at lucasfilm.com", and "Transmeta merges with Compaq" would be moderated up to +5, while "Evil capitalists put workers in cubicles", "Buffy cleavage pix now online", "Herb gardening causes cancer" and "Europeans sure like cell phones" wouldn't. My biggest complaint with the site is with the exceptionally poor quality of editorial judgement concerning the original posts; by reading at +5 I enjoy lots of excellent discussion.
This kind of thing allready exists, using a nice piece of software called Scoop(scoop.kuro5hin.org ) it allows members to vote on articles to decide whether they're worth the front page, and includes kuro5hin/slashdot style moderation.
see Scoop in action at Write-On www.write-on.org
-- Nick Nolan
The karma idea grows out of their experience with RPGs. Everything Two at Slashdot will take this even further. (cf. Geeks In Space March 29, 2000 http://cotazooma.thesync.com/ramgen/geeksinspace23.rm cotazooma.thesync.com) It's a very excellent idea to put the responsibility back into freedom.
I feel that everyone, not just moderators, should be able to rate comments on /. For example, on kuro5hin.org anyone is able to rate a story. Since everyone has a voice, the ratings are normalized and are "more real" than just having a select group of people rating stories.
Take a look at kuro5hin.org nowadays for an example of breakage of their rating system. About the only place not infested with trolls (yet) is the edit queue (which, by the way, is the really interesting concept there) -- Carlos Scheidegger
"Slashdot effect":
The immense load-increase experienced by a Web site when a URL for said site is posted to Slashdot and hundreds of thousands of Slashdot readers pursue the link. Links are included as part of a story. See Slash Dotted.
Slashdot was down the other day, just about the same time this page was last edited. Slashdot must have been wiki'd!
Keith Dawson wondered the same thing about giving Wiki Wiki Web a TBTF http://tbtf.com tbtf.com effect. He talks about it in a Quick Topic discussion http://www.quicktopic.com/1/H/emxb7z9ubBnT5eAuc8l.html www.quicktopic.com: "I wrote to the creator and asked for his views on getting hit with a bit of the TBTF Effect. His reply was similar to that of the man who was tarred & feathered & rode out of town on a rail: 'If it wasn't for the honor of the thing I'd just as soon've walked.' In short, he asked that I not give Wiki any publicity."
Given the number of times in the last 36 hours that I have experienced problems viewing Wiki Pages and saving edits, I agree that the c2.com isn't ready to be Slash Dotted. -- Tim Chambers, 11 October 1999
A much smaller page; Mac Slash at www.macslash.com focuses on Mac, Hardware and Software, news in a similar, albeit smaller way to Slash Dot. -- Matthew Theobalds
Slash seems a bit stale lately... the news is sort of predictable: amazing thing coming in 5 years, fear for privacy et al.
An interesting reading is "Quit Slash Dot Today!", at www.cs.washington.edu .
On a relatedly disgruntled note, they ran a sidebar poll once on who their users are, and 76% (or some similarly high number (lies, damn lies, etc., etc.)) reported themselves as college students, which I think, explains a lot. -- Mc Clain Looney
My guess would be that many (most?) of those would be highschool students, *pretending* that they are college students.
Slashdot also provides an RSS feed, which can be picked up by any news aggregator. For OSX, try netnewswire ranchero.com There is also a list with entries for a variety of platforms at blogspace.com .
See original on c2.com