July 27, 2003

Poor CheeseBikini

Poor CheeseBikini got knocked offline when he was quoted in a slash dot article. Although its not suprising that his server couldn't cope with the load, what is suprising is that it took this long before flash mobs gained the attention of slashdot. I've picked it up and even the BBC Website has run articles on it in the past!
The other suprising thing is why people still continue to read slashdot. With the amount of servers that get /.'ed its amazing that readers don't get frustrated with all the sites which get pulled offline. I know I'd stop reading a newsletter where every post came back with a 404 error.

Posted by Andy at July 27, 2003 8:57 PM
Comments

Yes but Slashdot still rules because of (1) the reputation system that makes the most insightful and amusing posts and comments rise to your attention, and (2) the large number of very intelligent and funny and insightful people who (probably because of #1) still read it and actively comment and maintain Slashdot by ranking things.

I've read a ton of discussion about flash mobs over the past month and just in five minutes of scanning through the highest-rated Slashdot comments it was clear that this was a cut above the standard flash mob chatter. A couple of gems that come to mind: someone called this "human spam." Another person said, we should organize a human flash mob to engulf the Slashdot offices (or house, or wherever it's headquartered) to make up for all the virtual flash mobs that Slashdot has sent to people's servers over the years!

So I still love Slashdot. I can't wait til this sort of reputation system is available as a component of moveabletype, so I can quickly and easily plug in a similar reputation system at cheesebikini, and make the best comments under each entry rise to the top.

-Sean

Posted by: sean at July 28, 2003 2:11 AM