Slashdot effect

The name stems from the huge influx of web traffic which would result from the technology news site Slashdot linking to websites.

[1] The original circumstances have changed, as flash crowds from Slashdot were reported in 2005 to be diminishing due to competition from similar sites,[2] and the general adoption of elastically scalable cloud hosting platforms.

[7] Major news sites or corporate websites are typically engineered to serve large numbers of requests and therefore do not normally exhibit this effect.

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.

[8][9][10] The flood usually peaked when the article was at the top of the site's front page and gradually subsided as the story was superseded by newer items.

[11] When the targeted website has a 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 trolling, vandalism, and newbie-like behavior.