A fork of Rural Dictionary
1. An immediate surge in hit rate on a webserver caused by an announcement on a high-traffic website; a Nivenesque "flash crowd". 2. An unintentional denial of service to a website as a result of a surge in hit rate following an announcement on a high-traffic website. See also: slashdotted
Bill Joy's _Dangers of Lego Blocks_ site succumbed to the slashdot effect scant hours after going live.
A.K.A. Slashdotting, Slashdotted, etc. Refers to the effect a Slashdot post has on a website. Because of slashdot's gigantic audience, any link placed there quickly goes down; very few sites can handle such huge traffic coming to their site.
Though the slashdot effect is similar to a denial of service, most webmasters don't mind the huge publicity and traffic to their site.