Slashdot effect: Difference between revisions

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{{Short description|Increase in traffic caused by a popular website linking to a smaller websitelinks}}

{{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''', 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 &ndash; 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.

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== Terminology ==

The term "Slashdot effect" refers to the phenomenon of a website becoming virtually unreachable because too many people are hitting it after the site was mentioned in an interesting article on the popular Slashdot news service. It was later extended to describe any similar effect from being listed on a popular site, similar to the more generic term, flash crowd, which is a more appropriate term.<ref>{{cite web|title=slashdot effect|url=http://catb.org/jargon/html/S/slashdot-effect.html|work=The Jargon File, version 4.4.8|author=Eric S. Raymond|access-date=21 May 2012}}</ref>

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|access-date=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|access-date=24 October 2012|date=August 31, 2012|url-status=dead|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20141101224936/http://blogs.abc.net.au/newseditors/2012/08/the-reddit-effect.html|archive-date=1 November 2014}}</ref> Another generic term, "flash crowd,"<ref>{{cite web|title=flash crowd|url=http://catb.org/jargon/html/F/flash-crowd.html|publisher=The Jargon File (version 4.4.7)|access-date=25 May 2012|author=Eric S. Raymond}}</ref> originates from [[Larry Niven|Larry Niven's]] [[Flash Crowd|1973 novella by that name]], in which the invention of inexpensive [[teleportation]] allows crowds to materialize almost instantly at the sites of interesting news stories.

The term "flash crowd" was coined in 1973 by [[Larry Niven]] in his science fiction short story, ''[[Flash Crowd]]''. It predicted that a consequence of inexpensive [[teleportation]] would be huge crowds materializing almost instantly at the sites of interesting news stories. Twenty years later, the term became commonly used on the Internet to describe exponential spikes in website or server usage when it passes a certain threshold of popular interest. This effect was anticipated years earlier in 1956 in Alfred Bester's novel ''[[The Stars My Destination]]''.<ref>{{cite web|title=flash crowd|url=http://catb.org/jargon/html/F/flash-crowd.html|publisher=The Jargon File (version 4.4.7)|access-date=25 May 2012|author=Eric S. Raymond}}</ref>

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|access-date=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|access-date=24 October 2012|date=August 31, 2012|url-status=dead|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20141101224936/http://blogs.abc.net.au/newseditors/2012/08/the-reddit-effect.html|archive-date=1 November 2014}}</ref>

== Cause ==