Kuro5hin
Encyclopedia
Kuro5hin (pronounced
"corrosion
", i.e. kɵˈroʊʒən) is a collaborative discussion website
. Articles are created and submitted by Kuro5hin's users and submitted to queue for evaluation. Site members can vote for or against publishing an article and, once the article has reached a certain number of votes, it is then published to the site or deleted from the queue. The site has been described as "a free-for-all of news and opinion written by readers".
Kuro5hin is powered by the Scoop
collaborative system. Its motto is "Technology and Culture, from the Trenches". It was founded by Rusty Foster
in December 1999. Kuro5hin's membership used to number in the tens of thousands, but its popularity has declined significantly from its peak in the early 2000s, and the present number of active users is much less.
One feature of the story queue is edit mode, in which a story is protected from voting for a period of time and the author can make changes. Comments can still be made on the story to suggest changes before voting begins. They are distinguished as being editorial or topical comments.
A further section is known as the diaries. They have no editing or moderation vetting and are essentially weblogs
. They are the source of most of Kuro5hin's content by volume, though unlike the edited article sections, they are not widely syndicated. Other users may also comment on these diaries, similar to stories, however without the "Editorial" or "Topical" stipulation.
Kuro5hin site administrators have on several occasions revealed the full name of a user, and are known to publish complaints and comments emailed by readers, usually to publicly ridicule and insult them.
named Kuro5hin — which is, as noted, pronounced corrosion
— as a pun
on his first name. The number 5 was inspired by a character called Da5id in Neal Stephenson
's 1992 science fiction novel Snow Crash
. Dylan Griffiths (Inoshiro) was second-in-command as site administrator for a time.
The community also holds a (now dormant) wiki
for Kuro5hin related material called "Ko4ting" . It houses information about the community, including a Greatest Stories Hall of Fame, Welcome/Introduction Guide, History of Kuro5hin, and a story directory.
In January 2002, OSDN
ended the advertising affiliate agreement with Kuro5hin.
In June 2002 Rusty Foster suggested that he might be forced to sell or shut down Kuro5hin due to lack of funds, and he solicited donations to support the site. In response, readers gave more than $37,000 in donations and other support in less than a week.
Shortly thereafter Foster announced plans to create a non-profit organization known as the Collaborative Media Foundation (CMF) to manage K5. Since then, some users have been critical of a perceived lack of active management and functional improvements to the site. As of 2008, the CMF is not legally incorporated, and the site runs on bandwidth provided by sponsor voxel dot net, with ad revenues going directly into Foster's pocket.
The style and content of what is in part a magazine site has ebbed and flowed over time, at first resembling more the typical Slashdot
geek fare. Following the Dot-Com Crash
, the election of George W. Bush
and the Iraq War, the site saw an increase in politics articles. In early 2003 a fiction section was added.
In the second half of 2003 a large portion of the diarists abandoned Kuro5hin. Around the same time complaints about trolls increased.
On March 25, 2004, Rusty Foster closed off new user accounts because of posting of a photoshopped pornographic image of his wife fornicating with a large man of African descent. He later announced he was going to implement new user sponsorship. Many users believed that it would be the beginning of the end of Kuro5hin and some believed the whole scheme wouldn't work at all. On July 13, Rusty Foster reopened new user accounts and informed the community that he was abandoning the idea of user sponsorship.
On July 23, 2004, Rusty Foster announced that he was going to alter the way editors modify peoples' diaries to make it more visible to the K5 community. This was done in response to the way that an unknown editor modified circletimessquare's diary. There was confusion over whether the diary was a troll, and a subsequent diary by curien underscored this further. As of June 22, 2005, almost one year later, these changes to editor powers have still not been implemented.
On July 4, 2005, a minor scandal erupted over the publication of a front page article titled "Fuck Natalee Holloway" that was perceived to be ridiculing alleged rape and murder victim Natalee Holloway
, with new users signing up to denounce the author and Kuro5hin administrators.
On June 14, 2006, a cross-site scripting
vulnerability was used to compromise cookies belonging to administrators. This access was then used to embed an Iframe
redirect to the shock site
"Last Measure" into every page on the site. The site existed in this state for about 15 minutes before being taken down entirely. After approximately 2 hours of downtime, the site was restored to its normal state.
On September 10, 2007, Rusty Foster announced a $5 fee for new members joining the site, with the intent of discouraging trolls
. This came in the wake of several attacks on site at the end of August, when Foster was distracted with the birth of his new child.
Leet
Leet , also known as eleet or leetspeak, is an alternative alphabet for the English language that is used primarily on the Internet. It uses various combinations of ASCII characters to replace Latinate letters...
"corrosion
Corrosion
Corrosion is the disintegration of an engineered material into its constituent atoms due to chemical reactions with its surroundings. In the most common use of the word, this means electrochemical oxidation of metals in reaction with an oxidant such as oxygen...
", i.e. kɵˈroʊʒən) is a collaborative discussion website
Internet forum
An Internet forum, or message board, is an online discussion site where people can hold conversations in the form of posted messages. They differ from chat rooms in that messages are at least temporarily archived...
. Articles are created and submitted by Kuro5hin's users and submitted to queue for evaluation. Site members can vote for or against publishing an article and, once the article has reached a certain number of votes, it is then published to the site or deleted from the queue. The site has been described as "a free-for-all of news and opinion written by readers".
Kuro5hin is powered by the Scoop
Scoop (software)
Scoop is a content management system originally developed by Rusty Foster. Scoop's focus is on collaborative publishing, and its feature set is geared toward encouraging user contributions and participation. Scoop is written in Perl and runs via mod_perl on Apache web servers with a MySQL database...
collaborative system. Its motto is "Technology and Culture, from the Trenches". It was founded by Rusty Foster
Rusty Foster
Lawrence Calvin Foster III, commonly known as Rusty Foster, is the founder of Kuro5hin, and the creator of Scoop, a collaborative media application used by several websites. He is widely known in the weblog community for running a donation drive which netted over US$39,500...
in December 1999. Kuro5hin's membership used to number in the tens of thousands, but its popularity has declined significantly from its peak in the early 2000s, and the present number of active users is much less.
Overview
All content is generated and selected by the users themselves with the exception of site news, that are written by the site administrators. Registered users can submit stories to the submissions queue. In the queue, users vote +1 FP (front page), +1, 0, or -1. If the story reaches a predetermined threshold score (originally at +95 and lowered from +70 to +40 to +30 as of April 25th due to the site's waning popularity), it is posted to the front page or to the relevant section depending on the proportion of FP votes. If it fails to make the threshold, other factors (such as number of comments and their ratings) can still cause the story to be posted to section. Otherwise, it is dropped.One feature of the story queue is edit mode, in which a story is protected from voting for a period of time and the author can make changes. Comments can still be made on the story to suggest changes before voting begins. They are distinguished as being editorial or topical comments.
A further section is known as the diaries. They have no editing or moderation vetting and are essentially weblogs
Blog
A blog is a type of website or part of a website supposed to be updated with new content from time to time. Blogs are usually maintained by an individual with regular entries of commentary, descriptions of events, or other material such as graphics or video. Entries are commonly displayed in...
. They are the source of most of Kuro5hin's content by volume, though unlike the edited article sections, they are not widely syndicated. Other users may also comment on these diaries, similar to stories, however without the "Editorial" or "Topical" stipulation.
Kuro5hin site administrators have on several occasions revealed the full name of a user, and are known to publish complaints and comments emailed by readers, usually to publicly ridicule and insult them.
History
Rusty FosterRusty Foster
Lawrence Calvin Foster III, commonly known as Rusty Foster, is the founder of Kuro5hin, and the creator of Scoop, a collaborative media application used by several websites. He is widely known in the weblog community for running a donation drive which netted over US$39,500...
named Kuro5hin — which is, as noted, pronounced corrosion
Rust
Rust is a general term for a series of iron oxides. In colloquial usage, the term is applied to red oxides, formed by the reaction of iron and oxygen in the presence of water or air moisture...
— as a pun
Pun
The pun, also called paronomasia, is a form of word play which suggests two or more meanings, by exploiting multiple meanings of words, or of similar-sounding words, for an intended humorous or rhetorical effect. These ambiguities can arise from the intentional use and abuse of homophonic,...
on his first name. The number 5 was inspired by a character called Da5id in Neal Stephenson
Neal Stephenson
Neal Town Stephenson is an American writer known for his works of speculative fiction.Difficult to categorize, his novels have been variously referred to as science fiction, historical fiction, cyberpunk, and postcyberpunk...
's 1992 science fiction novel Snow Crash
Snow Crash
Snow Crash is Neal Stephenson's third novel, published in 1992. Like many of Stephenson's other novels it covers history, linguistics, anthropology, archaeology, religion, computer science, politics, cryptography, memetics, and philosophy....
. Dylan Griffiths (Inoshiro) was second-in-command as site administrator for a time.
The community also holds a (now dormant) wiki
Wiki
A wiki is a website that allows the creation and editing of any number of interlinked web pages via a web browser using a simplified markup language or a WYSIWYG text editor. Wikis are typically powered by wiki software and are often used collaboratively by multiple users. Examples include...
for Kuro5hin related material called "Ko4ting" . It houses information about the community, including a Greatest Stories Hall of Fame, Welcome/Introduction Guide, History of Kuro5hin, and a story directory.
In January 2002, OSDN
SourceForge, Inc.
Geeknet, Inc. is a Mountain View, California company that owns several computer tech-related websites and the online retailer ThinkGeek. Formerly known as VA Research, VA Linux Systems, VA Software, and SourceForge, Inc., it was founded in 1993.-VA Research:VA Research was founded in November...
ended the advertising affiliate agreement with Kuro5hin.
In June 2002 Rusty Foster suggested that he might be forced to sell or shut down Kuro5hin due to lack of funds, and he solicited donations to support the site. In response, readers gave more than $37,000 in donations and other support in less than a week.
Shortly thereafter Foster announced plans to create a non-profit organization known as the Collaborative Media Foundation (CMF) to manage K5. Since then, some users have been critical of a perceived lack of active management and functional improvements to the site. As of 2008, the CMF is not legally incorporated, and the site runs on bandwidth provided by sponsor voxel dot net, with ad revenues going directly into Foster's pocket.
The style and content of what is in part a magazine site has ebbed and flowed over time, at first resembling more the typical Slashdot
Slashdot
Slashdot is a technology-related news website owned by Geeknet, Inc. The site, which bills itself as "News for Nerds. Stuff that Matters", features user-submitted and ‑evaluated current affairs news stories about science- and technology-related topics. Each story has a comments section...
geek fare. Following the Dot-Com Crash
Dot-com bubble
The dot-com bubble was a speculative bubble covering roughly 1995–2000 during which stock markets in industrialized nations saw their equity value rise rapidly from growth in the more...
, the election of George W. Bush
George W. Bush
George Walker Bush is an American politician who served as the 43rd President of the United States, from 2001 to 2009. Before that, he was the 46th Governor of Texas, having served from 1995 to 2000....
and the Iraq War, the site saw an increase in politics articles. In early 2003 a fiction section was added.
In the second half of 2003 a large portion of the diarists abandoned Kuro5hin. Around the same time complaints about trolls increased.
On March 25, 2004, Rusty Foster closed off new user accounts because of posting of a photoshopped pornographic image of his wife fornicating with a large man of African descent. He later announced he was going to implement new user sponsorship. Many users believed that it would be the beginning of the end of Kuro5hin and some believed the whole scheme wouldn't work at all. On July 13, Rusty Foster reopened new user accounts and informed the community that he was abandoning the idea of user sponsorship.
On July 23, 2004, Rusty Foster announced that he was going to alter the way editors modify peoples' diaries to make it more visible to the K5 community. This was done in response to the way that an unknown editor modified circletimessquare's diary. There was confusion over whether the diary was a troll, and a subsequent diary by curien underscored this further. As of June 22, 2005, almost one year later, these changes to editor powers have still not been implemented.
On July 4, 2005, a minor scandal erupted over the publication of a front page article titled "Fuck Natalee Holloway" that was perceived to be ridiculing alleged rape and murder victim Natalee Holloway
Natalee Holloway
Natalee Ann Holloway disappeared on May 30, 2005, during a high school graduation trip to Aruba, a Caribbean country within the Kingdom of the Netherlands. An American student from Mountain Brook, Alabama, Holloway graduated from Mountain Brook High School on May 24, 2005, shortly before the trip...
, with new users signing up to denounce the author and Kuro5hin administrators.
On June 14, 2006, a cross-site scripting
Cross-site scripting
Cross-site scripting is a type of computer security vulnerability typically found in Web applications that enables attackers to inject client-side script into Web pages viewed by other users. A cross-site scripting vulnerability may be used by attackers to bypass access controls such as the same...
vulnerability was used to compromise cookies belonging to administrators. This access was then used to embed an Iframe
IFrame
iFrame can be:* I-frames, in video compression; see video compression picture types* iFrame * The HTML iframe element....
redirect to the shock site
Shock site
A shock site is a website that is intended to be offensive, disgusting and/or disturbing to its viewers, containing materials of high shock value which is also considered distasteful and crude, and is generally of a pornographic, scatological, extremely violent, insulting, painful, profane, or...
"Last Measure" into every page on the site. The site existed in this state for about 15 minutes before being taken down entirely. After approximately 2 hours of downtime, the site was restored to its normal state.
On September 10, 2007, Rusty Foster announced a $5 fee for new members joining the site, with the intent of discouraging trolls
Troll (Internet)
In Internet slang, a troll is someone who posts inflammatory, extraneous, or off-topic messages in an online community, such as an online discussion forum, chat room, or blog, with the primary intent of provoking readers into an emotional response...
. This came in the wake of several attacks on site at the end of August, when Foster was distracted with the birth of his new child.
See also
- AdvogatoAdvogatoAdvogato is an online community and social networking site dedicated to free software development, and was created by Raph Levien. It describes itself as "the free software developer's advocate." Advogato was an early pioneer of blogs, formerly known as "online diaries", and one of the earliest...
- SlashdotSlashdotSlashdot is a technology-related news website owned by Geeknet, Inc. The site, which bills itself as "News for Nerds. Stuff that Matters", features user-submitted and ‑evaluated current affairs news stories about science- and technology-related topics. Each story has a comments section...
- MetafilterMetaFilterMetaFilter, known as MeFi to its members, is a community weblog whose purpose is to share links and discuss content that users have discovered on the web.-Community:MetaFilter was founded by Matthew Haughey in 1999...
- DiggDiggDigg is a social news website. Prior to Digg v4, its cornerstone function consisted of letting people vote stories up or down, called digging and burying, respectively. Digg's popularity prompted the creation of copycat social networking sites with story submission and voting systems...
- redditRedditreddit is a social news website where the registered users submit content, in the form of either a link or a text "self" post. Other users then vote the submission "up" or "down," which is used to rank the post and determine its position on the site's pages and front page.Reddit was originally...
- TechdirtTechdirtTechdirt is a weblog that reports on technology trends, and related business and economic policy issues, often focusing on copyright and patent reform. The website was started in 1997 by Mike Masnick and it was originally based on the weblog Slash. Techdirt has been named among the favorite blogs...
- Adequacy.orgAdequacy.orgAdequacy.org was a satirical web site. It featured articles on politics, religion, technology, history, and sociology, as well as the "Linux Zealot" cartoon series. The site shut down on September 11, 2002, but has since made its archives available....
External links
- Kuro5hin.org
- Kuro5hin.org FAQ
- Ko4ting, a K5 Companion Wiki
- Interview with Rusty Foster of Kuro5hin.org, Dotcom Scoop, January 28, 2002
- Troll blocking script writing by users too upset to see the many trolls take over Kuro5hin. This is a twit filter to avoid reading the trolls and only read from those who are not trolls.