[UweSchmidt]

Seems like "Amy" missed out on that unique moment in history. I joined in the early Slashdot days and the occasional mailing list, and was fascinated how sophisticated the discussions were. Knowledgeable people went great lenghts to prove their points and didn't hesitate to tell others they were wrong. Up-and downvoting comments worked. Usernames were pretty much anonymous and and arguments had to stand on their own merit. I felt like finally there was a medium where reason and facts could prevail. Finally!

But Amy's world has won, the social web is a popularity contest, discussions are group-think and emotion-based, "white male nerds" can be ridiculed. Tragic.

[pjc50]

Hmm. When was the golden age of Slashdot? Because I was active in the late 90s up to the early 2000s, and it was already showing the faultlines of the present day. Posting of shock images (goatse was invented there). "GNAA". Trolls got downvoted, but they maintained their own culture down there in the negative comments.

It was always a popularity context. The groupthink was so bad that adequacy.org could very effectively parody the obsession with Linux and AMD, as well as other tropes.

It looked like a golden age because "we" had a community that was "ours", but the only reason it was "ours" was that a lot of people invisibly bounced off it.

If there was a golden age, it ended somewhere between the Columbine shooting (remember /.'s response to that?) and 9/11. The response to that by Adequacy parodies so many comments before and since : http://www.adequacy.org/stories/2001.9.12.102423.271.html

> Of course the World Trade Center bombings are a uniquely tragic event, and it is vital that we never lose sight of the human tragedy involved. However, we must also consider if this is not also a lesson to us all; a lesson that my political views are correct. Although what is done can never be undone, the fact remains that if the world were organised according to my political views, this tragedy would never have happened.

[UweSchmidt]

Now that you mention it, I too remember the problems. To an extent I do consider them growing pains for a new medium, people trying to break the system in a childlike or hacker way. I also enjoyed the raw-ness of the new medium and accepted the "noise" as so many +5 rated comments were infinitely better than what you were able to read in a newspaper or magazine.

Trolling was in it's infancy and at least labeled as such. Today it's organizations successfully influencing elections through social media. And I do think the discussion of events was more nuanced and objective than today, the parody you've linked is actually a pretty good outline for a comment, better than most 140 character tweets.