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{{Redirect|Flash crowd|the short story by Larry Niven|Flash Crowd|the social gathering in the real world|flash mob}}
The '''Slashdot effect''', also known as '''slashdotting''', occurs when a popular [[website]] links to a smaller website, causing a massive increase in traffic. This [[Web traffic#Traffic overload|overloads]] the smaller site, causing it to slow down or even temporarily become unavailable. The name stems from the huge influx of [[web traffic]] which would result from the technology news site ''[[Slashdot]]'' linking to websites. The original circumstances have changed, as flash crowds from ''Slashdot'' were reported in 2005 to be diminishing due to competition from [[News aggregator|similar sites]],<ref name="BW Less impact"/> and the general adoption of elastically scalable cloud hosting platforms. The effect has been associated with other websites or metablogs such as [[Fark]], [[Digg]], ''[[Drudge Report]]'', [[Imgur]], [[Reddit]], and [[Twitter]], leading to terms such as being "farked" or "drudged", being under the "Reddit effect"—or receiving a "hug of death" from the site in question.<ref name="TNW Reddit effect">{{cite web|last=Wilhelm|first=Alex|title=How Reddit turned one congressional candidate's campaign upside down|url=https://thenextweb.com/socialmedia/2012/01/17/how-reddit-turned-one-congressional-candidates-campaign-upside-down/|publisher=The Next Web|accessdate=24 October 2012|date=17 January 2012}}</ref><ref>{{cite web|title=The Reddit effect|url=http://blogs.abc.net.au/newseditors/2012/08/the-reddit-effect.html|publisher=ABC News|accessdate=24 October 2012|date=August 31, 2012|url-status=dead|archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20141101224936/http://blogs.abc.net.au/newseditors/2012/08/the-reddit-effect.html|archivedate=1 November 2014}}</ref> [[Google Doodle]]s, which link to search results on the doodle topic, also result in high increases of traffic from the search results page.<ref name="hwangcnn">Williams, David E. "[http://www.cnn.com/2006/TECH/internet/07/19/google.logo/index.html Google's unknown artist has huge following]." ''[[CNN]].'' July 19, 2006. Retrieved on July 19, 2006.</ref> Typically, less robust sites are unable to cope with the huge increase in traffic and become unavailable – common causes are lack of sufficient [[data bandwidth]], [[Server (computing)|servers]] that fail to cope with the high number of requests, and traffic [[Disk quota|quota]]s. Sites that are maintained on [[shared hosting]] services often fail when confronted with the Slashdot effect.▼
The '''Slashdot effect''', also known as '''slashdotting''' or the '''hug of death''' occurs when a popular [[website]] links to a smaller website, causing a massive increase in traffic. This [[Web traffic#Traffic overload|overloads]] the smaller site, causing it to slow down or even temporarily become unavailable. Typically, less robust sites are unable to cope with the huge increase in traffic and become unavailable – common causes are lack of sufficient [[data bandwidth]], [[Server (computing)|servers]] that fail to cope with the high number of requests, and traffic [[Disk quota|quota]]s. Sites that are maintained on [[shared hosting]] services often fail when confronted with the Slashdot effect. This has the same effect as a [[denial-of-service attack]], albeit accidentally. The name stems from the huge influx of [[web traffic]] which would result from the technology news site ''[[Slashdot]]'' linking to websites. The term '''flash crowd''' is a more generic term.<ref>{{cite web |first1= Ismail |last1=Ari |first2=Bo |last2=Hong |first3=Ethan L. |last3=Miller |first4=Scott A. |last4=Brandt |first5=Darrell D. E. |last5=Long | url = http://www.ssrc.ucsc.edu/Papers/ari-mascots03.pdf | title = Managing Flash Crowds on the Internet | publisher = University of California Santa Cruz Storage Systems Research Center | date = October 2003 | access-date = 15 March 2010 | archive-date = 9 May 2013 | archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20130509180859/http://www.ssrc.ucsc.edu/Papers/ari-mascots03.pdf | url-status = dead }}</ref>
The original circumstances have changed, as flash crowds from ''Slashdot'' were reported in 2005 to be diminishing due to competition from [[News aggregator|similar sites]],<ref name="BW Less impact"/> and the general adoption of elastically scalable cloud hosting platforms.
==Terminology==▼
▲== Terminology ==
The term "
▲
== Cause ==
Sites such as ''Slashdot'', Digg, Reddit, StumbleUpon and Fark consist of brief submitted stories and a self-moderated discussion on each story. The typical submission introduces a news item or website of interest by [[hyperlink|linking]] to it. In response, large masses of readers tend to simultaneously rush to view the referenced sites. The ensuing flood of page requests from readers can exceed the site's available bandwidth or the ability of its servers to respond, and render the site temporarily unreachable.
[[Google Doodle]]s, which link to search results on the doodle topic, also result in high increases of traffic from the search results page.<ref name="hwangcnn">Williams, David E. "[http://www.cnn.com/2006/TECH/internet/07/19/google.logo/index.html Google's unknown artist has huge following]." ''[[CNN]].'' July 19, 2006. Retrieved on July 19, 2006.</ref>
==Extent==▼
[[File:SlashdotEffectGraph.svg|thumb|right|[[MRTG]] graph from a web server statistics generator showing a moderate ''Slashdot'' effect in action in 2005]]▼
▲== Extent ==
▲[[File:SlashdotEffectGraph.svg|thumb
Major news sites or corporate websites are typically engineered to serve large numbers of requests and therefore do not normally exhibit this effect. Websites that fall victim may be hosted on home servers, offer large images or movie files or have inefficiently generated dynamic content (e.g. many database hits for every web hit even if all web hits are requesting the same page). These websites often became unavailable within a few minutes of a story's appearance, even before any comments had been posted. Occasionally, paying ''Slashdot'' subscribers (who have access to stories before non-paying users) rendered a site unavailable even before the story was posted for the general readership.
Few definitive numbers exist regarding the precise magnitude of the ''Slashdot'' effect, but estimates put the peak of the mass influx of page requests at anywhere from several hundred to several thousand hits per minute.<ref>{{cite web|title=The Slashdot Effect: An Analysis of Three Internet Publications|url=http://ssadler.phy.bnl.gov/adler/SDE/SlashDotEffect.html|
By 2005, reporters were commenting that the ''Slashdot'' effect had been diminishing.<ref name="BW Less impact">{{cite news |first=Olga |last=Kharif |url=http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/mar2005/tc2005032_0932_tc119.htm |title=Less Impact from the "Slashdot Effect |work=Bloomberg Business Week |date=March 2, 2005 |
When the targeted website has a [[internet community|community]]-based structure, the term can also refer to the secondary effect of having a large group of new users suddenly set up accounts and start to participate in the community. While in some cases this has been considered a good thing, in others it is viewed with disdain by the prior members, as quite often the sheer number of new people brings many of the unwanted aspects of ''Slashdot'' along with it, such as [[Internet troll|trolling]], [[vandalism]], and [[newbie]]-like behavior. This bears some similarity to the 1990s Usenet concept of [[Eternal September]].
== Assistance and prevention ==
Many solutions have been proposed for sites to deal with the Slashdot effect.<ref>{{ citation | url = http://research.microsoft.com/pubs/75287/flashcrowds-camera-ready.pdf | title = Handling Flash Crowds from your Garage | author1 = Jeremy Elson | author2 = Jon Howell | publisher = [[Microsoft Research]] | year = 2008 }}</ref>
There are several systems that automatically mirror any Slashdot-linked pages to ensure that the content remains available even if the original site becomes unresponsive.<ref>{{ cite web | url = http://archive.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2004/10/65165 | title = Solution for Slashdot Effect? | author = Daniel Terdiman | date = 1 October 2004 | publisher = WIRED | access-date = 2016-04-18 }}</ref> Sites in the process of being Slashdotted may be able to mitigate the effect by temporarily redirecting requests for the targeted pages to one of these mirrors. Slashdot does not [[mirror website|mirror]] the sites it links to on its own servers, nor does it endorse a third party solution. Mirroring of content may constitute a breach of [[copyright]] and, in many cases, cause ad revenue to be lost for the targeted site.
== See also ==▼
▲==See also==
* [[Denial-of-service attack]]
* [[Streisand effect]]
* [[
== References ==
{{refs}}
[[Category:Internet terminology]]
[[Category:Slashdot]]
[[Category:Denial-of-service attacks]]
[[Category:Computer networking]]
[[Category:1970s neologisms]] <!-- for "flash crowd", which is also defined here -->
[[Category:Web 2.0 neologisms]]
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