Owner Rusty Foster Alexa rank 99,182 Current status Offline | Website kuro5hin.org Launched December 1999 IP address 69.9.170.99 | |
Kuro5hin (K5) (/kəˈroʊʒən/ corrosion) was a collaborative discussion website founded by Rusty Foster in 1999. Articles were created and submitted by users and submitted to a queue for evaluation. Site members could vote for or against publishing an article and once the article had reached a certain number of votes, it was 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".
Contents
The site was founded by Rusty Foster in December 1999, having been inspired by Slashdot. Kuro5hin's membership once numbered in the tens of thousands, but its popularity declined significantly from its peak in the early 2000s.
On May 1, 2016, the site was closed down permanently with all content taken offline. However, according to Foster, it may return in the form of an archive of static content at a later date.
On May 3rd, 2016, "The Wreck of Edmund Kuro5hin" was published on advogato by badvogato.
Overview
All content was generated and selected by the users themselves, with the exception of site news written by the administrators. Registered users would submit stories to the submissions queue where other users would vote +1 FP (front page), +1, 0, or -1. If the story reached a predetermined threshold score, it was posted to the front page or to the relevant section, depending on the proportion of "FP votes". If it failed to make the threshold, other factors (such as number of comments, type of comments, and their ratings) could still cause the story to be posted to a section or to the front page. Otherwise, it was dropped.
One feature of the story queue was edit mode, in which a story was protected from voting for a period of time during which the author could make changes. Comments could still be made on the story to suggest changes before voting began. These comments were distinguished as being editorial or topical.
A further section was known as the diaries. Having no editing or moderation vetting, diaries were essentially weblogs. and formed the source of most of Kuro5hin's content by volume. However, unlike the edited article sections, they were not widely syndicated. Other users would also comment on these diaries in the same way as stories but with without the editorial or topical stipulation.
History
Rusty Foster named Kuro5hin — pronounced corrosion — as a pun on his first name. The site was powered by the Scoop collaborative system, originally written by Rusty himself, with the motto "Technology and Culture, from the Trenches".
Outages
In July 2000, the site was temporarily closed due to comment spam and denial of service attacks.
Financial difficulties
In January 2002, OSDN ended the advertising affiliate agreement with Kuro5hin. In June of that year, Foster suggested he might be forced to sell or shut down the site due to lack of funds. He solicited donations to support the site, and some users were critical of a perceived lack of active management and functional improvement.
Subscription
On March 25, 2004, Foster closed off new user accounts because a photoshopped pornographic image of his wife had been posted. On July 13, Foster reopened new user accounts and informed the community that he was abandoning the idea of user sponsorship. This user sponsorship initiative never came to pass.