Thinking through the significance that Slashdot is not a particularly significant site now and has not been for some time

In the mid-to-late 90s, the fact that it was possibly the only significant website that offered any new content in the 15 minutes since you last checked, its alignment with IT-nerd culture (who then represented a significant share of people on the web during work hours), and the comment (and user moderation and metamoderation as a sort of jury duty) system that offered discussion under each individual news item made it possibly the most significant site on the web, the medium in which user culture (suddenly learning about this new novelty site, hoping it had solid enough hosting that the sudden attention didn’t see it “Slashdotted” and overtaxed to the point of falling offline) lived

I still use it to test my internet connection because from this era they made a point of keeping it on a reliable connection and very light and quick to load