We hope 2012 has been good to you (or was good to you, depending on your time zone) and that 2013 is even better. The world did not boil off into space in earlier, which is at least a good start on both counts.

It's been an eventful year in the world of Slashdot, and we're glad you're reading. We started shooting videos (the cycle will be a bit more complete when we get some videos from CES, which starts in the second week of January), interviewed people like Richards Dawkins and Stallman (answers pending), celebrated 15 years of News for Nerds (if you've been along for the ride and scanned them all, know you've had something like 125,000 stories flashed into your head), and changed corporate affiliation.

On this last day of the year from our vantage point in the central U.S., here's a reminder that Slashdot has communication channels besides what you see by hitting the front page. We try not to clutter the page too often with meta-information in the flow of stories, but you can tap into slightly more if you'd like:

Our Twitter feed: This is a good way to keep up on headlines as they appear on Slashdot while you enjoy your active, outdoor lifestyle, and every so often the twitter feed features a note or three that appears only on Twitter.

The Slashdot page on Facebook. Here, too, you can see the stories that appear on Slashdot, as well as a few extras or notes about the site itself. For instance, you can see a a bit of of reader artwork, and photos from our anniversary gatherings. If you have a Slashdot-related image, send it along -- we'd like to add more.

If you've got a smartphone or a tablet, try a different approach to Slashdot with the mobile version. The same stories you'll find on the main site, but presented in a way we hope takes better advantage of (read "suffers less from") the smaller screen, touch interface, etc, of mobile devices. It works, but it's also a work in progress; tell us what you like about it or hate about it, so we can iterate in your favor.

For MBA-caliber scanning of headlines (and firewall sneaking, too, if you would like to read somewhere that Slashdot is blocked by censorware), you can also read Slashdot's stories in the form of a newsletter; it's easy to sign up (you'll need an account and an email address, because that's how it arrives) by clicking "Newsletter" in the menu at the upper right of the page.

Also remember that there are, besides Slashdot (at last count, but stay tuned) three sister sites that focus more narrowly and feature boatloads of original stories on the domains of data centers, the cloud, and business intelligence, as well as tv.slashdot.org, which collects all of the videos that we've shown on Slashdot along with some others.

Finally, our all-purpose (all singing, all dancing) email address is feedback@slashdot.org. If you've got an interface idea, a problem, a query, or the number to a Swiss bank account you'd like to share, sending to feedback@slashdot.org means the editors will see it. (We regret that we can't respond to every email, but if you report a bug or make a cool suggestion, it will get passed on to the right people!)

Have a happy and safe holiday — and enjoy the next orbit of the only Earth-like planet of which we are thus far aware.

Reader contributions are what make Slashdot Slashdot. We've posted more than 125,000 news items over the years, and the vast majority of them started out as reader suggestions. Someone read (or wrote!) a cool story, or witnessed an interesting event, or was stumped by a technical or ethical question, and thought it was worth sharing with the rest of the world.

(Submitting a story to Slashdot should be fairly painless. Hit the submission guidelines, and then the submission form to stack an item on the pile for consideration.)

But sometimes we (the editors) goof by either overlooking or introducing errors, and sometimes we (the all-inclusive "we" of humanity) goof. If you find that you've submitted a story but left out a vital link, or got hijacked by a cut-and-paste demon, or hit "Save" when you meant to his "Keep Editing," here's the best way to fix it:

• Resubmit, using the same submissions form :) Except in unusual circumstances, that's far easier for us to deal with that attempting to fix things by email, over the phone, or in the smoke signals. Versioning is the work of the devil, especially when it means mixing streams of communication.
• Point out that it's a resubmission, and briefly explain why. ("I'm resubmitting to fix some bitrot; site changed its addressing scheme right after I read this article," say, or "I didn't realize that Finnish keyboards put the 'Enter' button inside the space bar," etc.)
• If you've still got a link to the previous submission (the one you're updating), we'd appreciate it if you could include it (it's something like "https://slashdot.org/submission/$number-here/your-previous-articles-title"). That makes it easy to compare the new one to the old and understand why you've resubmitted. Any given editor might have not realize that you'd submitted a different version previously, especially if you submitted it anonymously.

That's it!

Note: We must decline far more of the submissions that come in to Slashdot than we run; that's the nature of the beast. So we can't guarantee in advance that any particular submission will run on the page, but we definitely give re-submits a close eye.

For a bigger-picture view of the submissions process, see our previous blog entry, too.

As always, we try to answer reader questions (whether personally, or by incorporating design changes, or by explaining in ways like this blog) that are sent to feedback at Slashdot dot org; pop us a note if you've got a question, suggestion, or complaint.

One of the purposes of this blog is to provide a more detailed explanations of various aspects of Slashdot -- things that don't fit in the FAQ. Today we'll address a common point of confusion among users trying to share news with the world: What happens to my submission once I've submitted it?

Once you finish typing up your summary and hit submit, two things happen immediately: you're shown a permanent link at which your words will reside for as long as our database does, and your submission is entered into the top of the firehose. If you'd like to keep an eye on your submission, I'd suggest either bookmarking its permanent link, or watching it from the submissions tab of your user page. It'll always be in those two places regardless of what happens to it. More on that later.

When your submission has successfully entered the firehose, a few more things. Other readers will be able to read, vote on, and comment on your submission. You can comment on it too, so if you stumble upon a correction that needs to be made, or more information you want to add, feel free to drop it there. You're also quite welcome to send us an email for that sort of thing — feedback@slashdot.org will hit all of us, or you can contact individual editors using their username @slashdot.org.

Speaking of the editors: at the same time, the editors will be looking over your submission for possible acceptance. Unless you're submitting in the wee hours of the night, it's likely they’ll see your submission the moment it comes in. Don't fear that it will get missed — the editors' workspace is basically an expanded view of what users see in the firehose, with a bunch of tools for working on submissions, whacking spam, and so forth. We get a much broader view of the incoming stream of information, and user submissions stand out.

Now, that doesn't necessarily mean that your submission is going up on the page immediately. There's often a delay, and since users only see one end of the process, it can sometimes feel like nobody's paying attention. But don't worry, that's definitely not the case. The reality is simply that Slashdot's front page runs on a schedule. We try to have a new piece of news at the top of the page at regular intervals so that you get something new every time you visit. One of the side-effects of this schedule is that if five interesting things happen at 8:00 AM, they get spread out over the next couple hours instead of all going on the page at once.

So when will my submission be approved?
Approved submissions generally go up on the page within several hours of being submitted, but not always. If the article you submitted isn't of immediate importance, it will probably wait until the time-sensitive news has been posted. For example, say two submissions come in at exactly the same time. One is about some big company buying another company, and the other is an opinion piece about sci-fi movies. We’ll post the one about the two companies first since it's "hard" news, and something people want to know about immediately. That's not to say the opinion piece is less interesting or less deserving of being posted — it's simply a matter of prioritizing.

One of the big parts of the editors' jobs is prioritizing stories. Sometimes we'll have more interesting stories than we can reasonably post in a day, and the surplus (interesting but time-insensitive articles) spill over into the next day, assuming there's not another flood of good stories. Other times, there will be a few slow news days in a row, so we'll hunt around for any interesting submissions we can find. Also, if there are stories of particular interest to people in particular countries, we’ll try to run those stories when it's daytime in that part of the world.

My submission disappeared from the firehose!
Unfortunately, we can’t run everything we receive. If your submission is gone from the firehose view, it's unlikely to be posted. There are many reasons for this -- it may be that we already ran something about the news you linked, or that it was just too far off-topic for our readership. It's also possible that somebody else submitted the same news and we chose their submission instead. We love getting submissions on the same story from 10 different users, but the down side is that we have to decline 9 of them. Declining doesn't mean we don't appreciate your submission, or that it isn't useful -- often times if we get a few different good submissions, we’ll blend them together.

But my submission was red!
Our scoring system works mostly like you'd expect, but we put in a few tweaks to highlight good submitters. If you've had several submissions accepted, your new ones will enter the firehose at a higher color level than the average submission. This is to make them stand out for readers browsing the firehose. Give it some time -- if people continue to like it, it will stay high. However, as above, if it's a dupe or if it's offtopic, it may disappear despite the high rating.

What can I do to maximize my chances of having a submission accepted?
We have a handy list of submission guidelines that will help immensely. A quick look through the stories on the front page will help, too, to give you an idea for how long and how many links to use. If formatting and hyperlinking is turning you off, don't worry too much about that — as long as the editors get your words and links, we can make it look right. One big suggestion would simply be to write what you know. Whoever you are, you're pretty smart, and you probably know more than the average reader about something. Focus on that. If you know a bunch about Linux desktop environments, write about those! If you're a huge sci-fi fan, send us some sci-fi news and reviews! If you’re an expert on cosmology, keep us apprised of all of latest discoveries!

Again, as always, if you have questions about any part of the process, don't hesitate to contact us.

(A message from Gaurav Kuchhal (Head of Product, Slashdot)

Getting beta all the time ...
We're proud to announce the final beta version of our mobile site. Now, from both your smartphone and your tablet, you can read Slashdot and interact with the community.

Over the past several weeks, we've been hard at work building this mobile site and releasing it to you in stages. Your comments (hundreds!) and feedback on the alpha version have driven its design.

What's new in this beta?

• Notifications: Did someone reply to your comment? Was your story submittal approved? Now you can see all these updates in one place.
• Firehose: Quickly skim through the latest story submissions and vote on your favorites. Also, submit new stories directly from your phone or tablet.
• Richer Profile: Want to learn more about another user? Now you can tap on any username and quickly see past story submissions and comments. Tap 'Friend' or 'Foe' to follow their updates.
• Friend's Activities: Keep up with the latest activities from your friends and foes, from their story submissions to comments.

Anything big I should know?
Since we're geeks, we purposely built a mobile site using the latest open web technologies, but compatibility with hundreds of mobile devices is still challenging with HTML5. Since carriers don't always update their devices with the latest browser software, if you are using an Android device, we recommend using the Chrome browser directly from Google, not the version packaged with your handset. If you are using an iOS device, we recommend using iOS version 6.

What's next?
We're always polishing and refining the functionality of the site, so before we move to v1.0 we want to make sure we've addressed any pressing issues that you find. It's easy to join in the beta from any supported mobile device: just load up mbeta.slashdot.org and start reading. If you find any problems or have ideas for improvement, please use this survey form to give feedback.

(And as always, you can fire complaints and suggestions about all aspects of the site to feedback@slashdot.org.)

We've had over the years a mix of entrepreneurs, activists, archivists, makers, artists, engineers hackers, musicians, gamers, sysadmins, writers, actors, and even the occasional gadfly ... who else would you like to see in that mix?

Some people are harder to reach than others, and some people we'd like to interview either don't want to or aren't able to. But the more ideas we have on this front, the more interesting a mix we can bring to the table. (And, if you have a line on anyone in particular, we'd love an introduction or a personal plug.)

So: if you have someone in mind, or even just a class of someone's generically defined, please pass it along, so we can try to get in contact. Send email to us at with "interview" somewhere in the subject line. Taxonomy, phylogeny, etc. Since perception of worthiness is unevenly distributed, please give as much information as you can:

• WHO - (By name, or at least narrowed down to an identifiable class)
• WHY - Why do you want this person on Slashdot? (Use small words; reputation is a sometimes thing.)
• WHERE - We hope to be able to get more of our interview guests on video; if they're in the U.S. or Canada, that's much easier to arrange.
• HOW - Do you know the best way to reach your intended interview target? Let us know!

(And Yes, this is an attempt to get a jump on a New Year's resolution.)

Besides appearing on the site proper, Slashdot stories are mirrored with various degrees of human involvement in several different ways — they go out in curated newsletters (especially good for people who can't view the site at work -- available in daily headline and best-of-the-week flavors), via RSS, on Twitter, and on Slashdot's page at Facebook. This week, we (overdue!) finally swapped out the low-res Slashdot logo that had been on the Facebook page with a slightly better one -- but the replacement had some flaws, too. "What's with the weird artifacting around the characters?" asked reader ModernGeek, and promptly supplied a better version. With his permission, we're now using that one instead — Thanks!

Related, eldavojohn's tessellation (one of the logos that appeared last month, long may they wave) has been reworked as the cover image for that page. Do you have any appropriate art you'd like to see there? If so, we'd like the chance to consider it, so email us at feedback@slashdot.org.

(And reader Wilhelm Rahn had his own idea, too, about improving &mdash YMMV — the 15th anniversary logo that ThinkGeek came up with.)

YOU SPOKE. At least, some combination of bots and human users spoke! ;)

Of many logo entries we recieved for last month, we could only run 31 of them on the front page (one for each day of October). We listed several of our favorites in a poll, and asked you to weigh in. Several thousand clicks later, voting has slowed, and it looks like Ignacio Marquez's Memory Test of October 29 is the winner, with 22 percent of the vote, so Ignacio takes the Nexus 7 tablet. (Actually, he'll have to wait while it ships to Argentina.)

Many thanks to all of the artists who submitted ideas -- we hope you had as much fun in making them as we did in seeing them.

Many thanks to all the readers who've sent in logo designs (NOTE: the last few days are all filled out now; further submissions will be enjoyed, but only as art ;)), asked questions of Linus, Richard Dawkins and our other interview guests this month, or gotten to meetups to hang out with fellow readers. Some of them are happening this weekend, too -- check out the Anniversary Parties page: (If one's in striking distance, feel free to show up -- T-shirts are limited, but at the larger parties especially there will likely be a few extras. I know I'm bringing a small handful to Houston's gathering this evening, 8 PM at Agora -- 1712 Westheimer Rd, Houston, TX 77098.)

On that last front: If you made it to a meetup and took any pictures, we'd like to hear about where they're posted (send email to feedback@slashdot.org with "photos" somewhere in the subject line), so we can attach them at least to the photo gallery on our linked Facebook page.

Tease of the week: You can look forward soon to an announcement about Slashdot Mobile for tablets.

And a request for feedback, too: Who should we interview? A future blog post may explore this is greater depth, but if you know of someone you'd like to see interviewed in Slashdot style, or via video, use that feedback@slashdot.org address again, but but "interview suggestion" in the subject, and let us know not just a name, but your reasoning. Appropriate contact information is always useful, too.

Just a few quick notes today:

- The 15th Anniversary Slashdot meetups are in progress! Some have already taken part (like Seattle's and Pasadena's), and many are taking place this weekend and next (In Toronto, Mexico City, Raleigh, Ann Arbor, NYC, Dallas, Houston, Austin, San Francisco, and many others). Continuing thanks go out to the organizers and attendees for bearing with the glitches in our process in putting these together. Many lessons learned for the next go-'round.

We'd appreciate it, if you're attending or organizing one of these gatherings, if you tag any photos / tweets / etc. with "slashdot15" (As here, on twitter, and/or "slashdot," and/or slashdot15-$TLA, where &TLA is replaced with the three-letter airport code of the nearest major airport.

- We've been happily overwhelmed by the clever submissions which have rolled in to replace for each day of this month the normal Slashdot logo. Take a look at the ones we've selected so far. You're welcome to submit one, too -- selected artists will get one of the limited edition Slashdot anniversary T-shirts, and the artist judged best of the month will land a Nexus 7 tablet.

- Next month, you'll hear more about the Slashdot Mobile alpha for tablets; one step at a time.

- A video experiment in the works: Hallowe'en. This is tentative, but we think it would be fun to showcase readers' cool and clever Hallowe'en projects. So: Are you animating your house demons? Scaring children any technically interesting way, with candy-serving robots, automated strobes, or talking gravestones? Using Arduinos to control LEDs on your costume, or serving blue drinks with rising mist? If so, we'd like to see some video about it, and show it off to the rest of the world, too. If you've got a geeky approach to October 31st, send email to feedback@slashdot.org with "halloween video" in the subject and tell us some details. If you've already put video on a site like YouTube, mention the link, too!

The 15h anniversary extravaganza month of October continues, and with it two reminders:

First, you're invited to meet up with other readers in real life at crowd-sourced Slashdot gatherings. New party registrations have closed, but you can still sign up to attend one of the anniversary gatherings, and we hope you do. While we can't send T-shirts to every party organized (though ThinkGeek would love you to consider the conventional T-shirt-acquisition method), several hundred of them in total are on the way to the larger reader-organized parties in the U.S. and Mexico.

Second, we hope you're enjoying the reader-submitted logos that have been appearing in place of the regular Slashdot logo each day this month; it's been a blast to see the creative designs that come in. Engineer Tim Vroom today set up a page showing all the logo designs that have run so far, if you want to check them out in one spot. We'll be asking for reader reaction soon (when the month is through) on which one is "best of show" (worthy of a Nexus 7 tablet). If you think "Ha! I can do better!", well, then — submit a design. Nothing says you can't submit (or be selected) for multiple days. We've got some great options for the days to come already, but we hope you'll try to top them with clever ideas, even if in the end the near-sighted and ignorant judges don't appreciate your efforts.

One more note: if you're using a recent smart phone, we hope you'll point your phone's browser to the revamped Mobile version of the site, currently in beta. There are some features that are still to come, but the Mobile site works on a wide range of devices, and is a lot easier on the eyes than reading the full-sized site on a tiny screen. Your participation will help make it better, too.

Slashdot is turning 15, which is ancient in Internet years. How far has it come?

Site Development

Slashdot started in 1997 as Chips and Dips by Rob "CmdrTaco" Malda. He posted links to news articles that interested him, mostly on open-source software and tech news. Between working as an ad programmer and going to college, he ran it off of a single server. In October of 1997, he registered it (with financial backing from Jeff "Hemos" Bates) as Slashdot.org.

It exploded in 1998. After adding new servers, Slashdot added Web forms for story submissions, as opposed to sending them directly to Malda's email. In March of that year, Malda rewrote the old website, introducing the "New Slashdot" on the 28th.

Slashdot introduced user accounts in the summer of 1998. "Ask Slashdot" debuted on May 13 of that year, with a question on potential ways to convince hardware manufacturers to be more compatible with Linux.

In 1999, moderation broadened from 25 editors to a rotating pool of more than 400 users. It was followed by metamoderation in September, which let the older user accounts on the site rate moderations as fair or unfair.

Slashdot introduced subscriptions in March of 2002. For every 1,000 pages, $5 bought users a no-ad experience. In 2003, subscribers were allowed to view articles 10-20 minutes before they were published.

For April Fool's Day 2006, Malda announced that Slashdot didn't have enough female readers. Accompanying this announcement was a hot pink layout that replaced the familiar "News for Nerds. Stuff that matters" with "OMG!!! Ponies!!!" It lasted for only a day, but the comments ranged from "This. Is. Sooo awesome! You guys are totally invited to my sleepover" to "April Fools. Haha. Now PUT IT BACK. My eyes are bleeding already." For another April Fool's Day in 2009, Slashdot introduced User Achievements. There were a few joke ones, but the feature does actually exist.

In June of 2006, Alex Bendiken won the Slashdot CSS Redesign Contest, prompting Slashdot's first permanent layout change since 1998. The second site redesign happened in January of 2011.

On August 25, 2011, Malda dropped a bomb on the community by announcing his resignation from Slashdot. He had posted more than 15,000 stories to Slashdot in his 14-year tenure. "For me," he wrote in his final post, "Slashdot of today is fused to the Slashdot of the past. This makes it really hard to objectively consider the future of the site." He did not list any plans for the future, but in March of 2012, he found a new home as Chief Strategist and Editor-at-Large for WaPo Labs at the Washington Post.

Slashdot launched Slashdot TV on March 28, 2012. The videos are filmed by the Slashdot crew and posted exclusively to the site.

Corporate
To support its growing readership (and time-consuming nature), Slashdot went into business. In 1998, the editors formed Blockstackers to become the "corporate shell" for Slashdot, said Malda. The site began selling advertisements. The first few, with Herman Miller and Penguin Mints, were barter ads that resulted in furniture and caffeinated mints for the, according to Slashdot editor Rob "samzenpus" Rozeboom.

On June 29, 1999, Slashdot was sold to Andover.net, with the stipulation that creative control remained with the Slashdot editors. Malda reported it was the best way they could think of to support operating costs. And Andover.net was happy to let them keep on doing what they were doing.

Andover.net embarked on a path riddled with name changes. In February of 2000, it merged with VA Linux. Slashdot became a part of their subgroup, Open Source Development Network (OSDN), said Timothy "timothy" Lord. VA Linux became VA Software in December 2001. In 2004, OSDN renamed itself the Open Source Technology Group (OSTG), which changed in 2007 to SourceForge, Inc. The organization changed names yet again in 2009 adopting the brand Geeknet Inc.

Slashdot and the News

Slashdot is well-known for its users. They might not be the first to break the news, but they are the first to go at it--fact checking, discussing, and debating. Sometimes, though, they make the news.

On October 4, 1999, Johan Ingles, the deputy editor of Jane's Intelligence Review, reached out to Slashdot concerning an article on cyber terrorism he had received. He wanted readers to go over the piece and answer some questions. After compiling the comments, Ingles decided he could not run the original article. Instead, he wrote a new one based on interviews with the Slashdot community.

In early March of 2001, an anonymous user posted a comment that contained the whole text of OT III, which was copyright material of the Church of Scientology. The church contacted the editors, threatening legal action if the content was not removed. Slashdot conceded, at the advice of their lawyers, but posted links to the copyrighted material that was located in other places on the web.

Milestones
The oldest article in Slashdot's archives, "Become 007 on The Internet" from 1997, is not its first one. Rob Rozeboom estimated about 1,000 earlier articles were lost in a database migration.

In April 2001, Slashdot Japan launched, publishing its first article on the 5th of that month.

Slashdot's 10,000th article was published on February 24, 2000 and the 100,000th story was published on December 11, 2009.

On November 3, 2004, Slashdot published the article "Kerry Concedes Election to Bush." The piece generated more than 5,600 comments, making it the most discussed submission in Slashdot history. That August, Slashdot's most visited submission, "ISP Owner Who Fought FBI Spying Freed From Gag Order" was posted, which has generated more than 1.2 million hits.

Featured Interviews

In July 1999, a flipside of "Ask Slashdot" was introduced where users could pose questions for a guest, and the highest-rated questions were answered. Bruce Perens, a big name in the Linux/Open Source Movement, was their first interview.

Slashdot Interviews are conducted regularly. Some star interviewees include: Bruce Sterling, the sci-fi author who helped shape the cyberpunk genre, William Shatner, Neil Gaiman, Jimmy Wales, the founder of Wikipedia, and author Neal Stephenson.

Onward!
So where does Slashdot go from 15? "This year we've branched out more with some video coverage of the same kinds of topics we've been into for a long time... and a bit of live blogging, which I suspect we'll see more of," said Lord. "But a lot of Slashdot is about the user experience, and I think that the future holds a lot of improvement in that aspect of the site."

A message from Gaurav Kuchhal (Head of Product, Slashdot)

Today, on the 15th Anniversary of Slashdot, we are thrilled to announce a brand new mobile experience. The new mobile interface is an indication of what to expect from Slashdot as it embraces the personal and mobile Web.

Without further ado, we present the new Slashdot Mobile Web App (Beta) for iPhones and Android phones. Just direct your mobile browser to mbeta.slashdot.org.

As we built this new mobile experience, we followed three guiding principles:

1. Let the community shape it.
2. Embrace open HTML5 web architecture.
3. Provide a clean, modern, fast experience.

This Slashdot mobile experience has been shaped by the feedback received from hundreds of alpha users over past few weeks. We want to thank all the alpha users for your enthusiasm and critical input, as we couldn't have done it without you!

What can you do with new Slashdot Mobile?

• Read comments and stories in a mobile-friendly view
• Find "Most Discussed" stories at the top
• Share stories and comments
• See rich user profiles of your friends and foes
• See beautiful achievement badges
• Quickly participate in polls
• Show off your latest Gravatar
• Access previous and next stories with a swipe

From Alpha to Beta

Because we've adopted a rapid and iterative method to develop this new mobile experience, we've been able to quickly make changes based on your feedback.

Here are a few features that testers asked for during Alpha, delivered today in Beta:

• Show preview of story on the home page
• Ability to expand -1 comments
• Load more comments initially
• Remember which stories or comments you were reading
• First select and then vote on a poll, eliminating unintentional voting
• Improved comment filtering interface

What's Next?

We're not done yet. This mobile web app is optimized for iPhones and popular Android smartphones (version 2.2 and up). We will continue to support more devices.

We're also adding many of your most-requested features, including the ability to view notifications, as well as submit stories, moderate others' submissions and comments, and set your own mobile preferences — just to name a few.

A tablet app is also in the works. If you own an iPad or Android tablet and can't wait to get your hands on a Slashdot app for it, you can participate in the Tablet Alpha.

We hope that you continue to shape this mobile experience by providing us feedback.