We've had over the years a mix of entrepreneurs, activists, archivists, makers, artists, engineers hackers, musicians, gamers, sysadmins, writers, actors, and even the occasional gadfly ... who else would you like to see in that mix?

Some people are harder to reach than others, and some people we'd like to interview either don't want to or aren't able to. But the more ideas we have on this front, the more interesting a mix we can bring to the table. (And, if you have a line on anyone in particular, we'd love an introduction or a personal plug.)

So: if you have someone in mind, or even just a class of someone's generically defined, please pass it along, so we can try to get in contact. Send email to us at with "interview" somewhere in the subject line. Taxonomy, phylogeny, etc. Since perception of worthiness is unevenly distributed, please give as much information as you can:

• WHO - (By name, or at least narrowed down to an identifiable class)
• WHY - Why do you want this person on Slashdot? (Use small words; reputation is a sometimes thing.)
• WHERE - We hope to be able to get more of our interview guests on video; if they're in the U.S. or Canada, that's much easier to arrange.
• HOW - Do you know the best way to reach your intended interview target? Let us know!

(And Yes, this is an attempt to get a jump on a New Year's resolution.)

Besides appearing on the site proper, Slashdot stories are mirrored with various degrees of human involvement in several different ways — they go out in curated newsletters (especially good for people who can't view the site at work -- available in daily headline and best-of-the-week flavors), via RSS, on Twitter, and on Slashdot's page at Facebook. This week, we (overdue!) finally swapped out the low-res Slashdot logo that had been on the Facebook page with a slightly better one -- but the replacement had some flaws, too. "What's with the weird artifacting around the characters?" asked reader ModernGeek, and promptly supplied a better version. With his permission, we're now using that one instead — Thanks!

Related, eldavojohn's tessellation (one of the logos that appeared last month, long may they wave) has been reworked as the cover image for that page. Do you have any appropriate art you'd like to see there? If so, we'd like the chance to consider it, so email us at feedback@slashdot.org.

(And reader Wilhelm Rahn had his own idea, too, about improving &mdash YMMV — the 15th anniversary logo that ThinkGeek came up with.)

YOU SPOKE. At least, some combination of bots and human users spoke! ;)

Of many logo entries we recieved for last month, we could only run 31 of them on the front page (one for each day of October). We listed several of our favorites in a poll, and asked you to weigh in. Several thousand clicks later, voting has slowed, and it looks like Ignacio Marquez's Memory Test of October 29 is the winner, with 22 percent of the vote, so Ignacio takes the Nexus 7 tablet. (Actually, he'll have to wait while it ships to Argentina.)

Many thanks to all of the artists who submitted ideas -- we hope you had as much fun in making them as we did in seeing them.

Many thanks to all the readers who've sent in logo designs (NOTE: the last few days are all filled out now; further submissions will be enjoyed, but only as art ;)), asked questions of Linus, Richard Dawkins and our other interview guests this month, or gotten to meetups to hang out with fellow readers. Some of them are happening this weekend, too -- check out the Anniversary Parties page: (If one's in striking distance, feel free to show up -- T-shirts are limited, but at the larger parties especially there will likely be a few extras. I know I'm bringing a small handful to Houston's gathering this evening, 8 PM at Agora -- 1712 Westheimer Rd, Houston, TX 77098.)

On that last front: If you made it to a meetup and took any pictures, we'd like to hear about where they're posted (send email to feedback@slashdot.org with "photos" somewhere in the subject line), so we can attach them at least to the photo gallery on our linked Facebook page.

Tease of the week: You can look forward soon to an announcement about Slashdot Mobile for tablets.

And a request for feedback, too: Who should we interview? A future blog post may explore this is greater depth, but if you know of someone you'd like to see interviewed in Slashdot style, or via video, use that feedback@slashdot.org address again, but but "interview suggestion" in the subject, and let us know not just a name, but your reasoning. Appropriate contact information is always useful, too.

Just a few quick notes today:

- The 15th Anniversary Slashdot meetups are in progress! Some have already taken part (like Seattle's and Pasadena's), and many are taking place this weekend and next (In Toronto, Mexico City, Raleigh, Ann Arbor, NYC, Dallas, Houston, Austin, San Francisco, and many others). Continuing thanks go out to the organizers and attendees for bearing with the glitches in our process in putting these together. Many lessons learned for the next go-'round.

We'd appreciate it, if you're attending or organizing one of these gatherings, if you tag any photos / tweets / etc. with "slashdot15" (As here, on twitter, and/or "slashdot," and/or slashdot15-$TLA, where &TLA is replaced with the three-letter airport code of the nearest major airport.

- We've been happily overwhelmed by the clever submissions which have rolled in to replace for each day of this month the normal Slashdot logo. Take a look at the ones we've selected so far. You're welcome to submit one, too -- selected artists will get one of the limited edition Slashdot anniversary T-shirts, and the artist judged best of the month will land a Nexus 7 tablet.

- Next month, you'll hear more about the Slashdot Mobile alpha for tablets; one step at a time.

- A video experiment in the works: Hallowe'en. This is tentative, but we think it would be fun to showcase readers' cool and clever Hallowe'en projects. So: Are you animating your house demons? Scaring children any technically interesting way, with candy-serving robots, automated strobes, or talking gravestones? Using Arduinos to control LEDs on your costume, or serving blue drinks with rising mist? If so, we'd like to see some video about it, and show it off to the rest of the world, too. If you've got a geeky approach to October 31st, send email to feedback@slashdot.org with "halloween video" in the subject and tell us some details. If you've already put video on a site like YouTube, mention the link, too!

The 15h anniversary extravaganza month of October continues, and with it two reminders:

First, you're invited to meet up with other readers in real life at crowd-sourced Slashdot gatherings. New party registrations have closed, but you can still sign up to attend one of the anniversary gatherings, and we hope you do. While we can't send T-shirts to every party organized (though ThinkGeek would love you to consider the conventional T-shirt-acquisition method), several hundred of them in total are on the way to the larger reader-organized parties in the U.S. and Mexico.

Second, we hope you're enjoying the reader-submitted logos that have been appearing in place of the regular Slashdot logo each day this month; it's been a blast to see the creative designs that come in. Engineer Tim Vroom today set up a page showing all the logo designs that have run so far, if you want to check them out in one spot. We'll be asking for reader reaction soon (when the month is through) on which one is "best of show" (worthy of a Nexus 7 tablet). If you think "Ha! I can do better!", well, then — submit a design. Nothing says you can't submit (or be selected) for multiple days. We've got some great options for the days to come already, but we hope you'll try to top them with clever ideas, even if in the end the near-sighted and ignorant judges don't appreciate your efforts.

One more note: if you're using a recent smart phone, we hope you'll point your phone's browser to the revamped Mobile version of the site, currently in beta. There are some features that are still to come, but the Mobile site works on a wide range of devices, and is a lot easier on the eyes than reading the full-sized site on a tiny screen. Your participation will help make it better, too.

Slashdot is turning 15, which is ancient in Internet years. How far has it come?

Site Development

Slashdot started in 1997 as Chips and Dips by Rob "CmdrTaco" Malda. He posted links to news articles that interested him, mostly on open-source software and tech news. Between working as an ad programmer and going to college, he ran it off of a single server. In October of 1997, he registered it (with financial backing from Jeff "Hemos" Bates) as Slashdot.org.

It exploded in 1998. After adding new servers, Slashdot added Web forms for story submissions, as opposed to sending them directly to Malda's email. In March of that year, Malda rewrote the old website, introducing the "New Slashdot" on the 28th.

Slashdot introduced user accounts in the summer of 1998. "Ask Slashdot" debuted on May 13 of that year, with a question on potential ways to convince hardware manufacturers to be more compatible with Linux.

In 1999, moderation broadened from 25 editors to a rotating pool of more than 400 users. It was followed by metamoderation in September, which let the older user accounts on the site rate moderations as fair or unfair.

Slashdot introduced subscriptions in March of 2002. For every 1,000 pages, $5 bought users a no-ad experience. In 2003, subscribers were allowed to view articles 10-20 minutes before they were published.

For April Fool's Day 2006, Malda announced that Slashdot didn't have enough female readers. Accompanying this announcement was a hot pink layout that replaced the familiar "News for Nerds. Stuff that matters" with "OMG!!! Ponies!!!" It lasted for only a day, but the comments ranged from "This. Is. Sooo awesome! You guys are totally invited to my sleepover" to "April Fools. Haha. Now PUT IT BACK. My eyes are bleeding already." For another April Fool's Day in 2009, Slashdot introduced User Achievements. There were a few joke ones, but the feature does actually exist.

In June of 2006, Alex Bendiken won the Slashdot CSS Redesign Contest, prompting Slashdot's first permanent layout change since 1998. The second site redesign happened in January of 2011.

On August 25, 2011, Malda dropped a bomb on the community by announcing his resignation from Slashdot. He had posted more than 15,000 stories to Slashdot in his 14-year tenure. "For me," he wrote in his final post, "Slashdot of today is fused to the Slashdot of the past. This makes it really hard to objectively consider the future of the site." He did not list any plans for the future, but in March of 2012, he found a new home as Chief Strategist and Editor-at-Large for WaPo Labs at the Washington Post.

Slashdot launched Slashdot TV on March 28, 2012. The videos are filmed by the Slashdot crew and posted exclusively to the site.

Corporate
To support its growing readership (and time-consuming nature), Slashdot went into business. In 1998, the editors formed Blockstackers to become the "corporate shell" for Slashdot, said Malda. The site began selling advertisements. The first few, with Herman Miller and Penguin Mints, were barter ads that resulted in furniture and caffeinated mints for the, according to Slashdot editor Rob "samzenpus" Rozeboom.

On June 29, 1999, Slashdot was sold to Andover.net, with the stipulation that creative control remained with the Slashdot editors. Malda reported it was the best way they could think of to support operating costs. And Andover.net was happy to let them keep on doing what they were doing.

Andover.net embarked on a path riddled with name changes. In February of 2000, it merged with VA Linux. Slashdot became a part of their subgroup, Open Source Development Network (OSDN), said Timothy "timothy" Lord. VA Linux became VA Software in December 2001. In 2004, OSDN renamed itself the Open Source Technology Group (OSTG), which changed in 2007 to SourceForge, Inc. The organization changed names yet again in 2009 adopting the brand Geeknet Inc.

Slashdot and the News

Slashdot is well-known for its users. They might not be the first to break the news, but they are the first to go at it--fact checking, discussing, and debating. Sometimes, though, they make the news.

On October 4, 1999, Johan Ingles, the deputy editor of Jane's Intelligence Review, reached out to Slashdot concerning an article on cyber terrorism he had received. He wanted readers to go over the piece and answer some questions. After compiling the comments, Ingles decided he could not run the original article. Instead, he wrote a new one based on interviews with the Slashdot community.

In early March of 2001, an anonymous user posted a comment that contained the whole text of OT III, which was copyright material of the Church of Scientology. The church contacted the editors, threatening legal action if the content was not removed. Slashdot conceded, at the advice of their lawyers, but posted links to the copyrighted material that was located in other places on the web.

Milestones
The oldest article in Slashdot's archives, "Become 007 on The Internet" from 1997, is not its first one. Rob Rozeboom estimated about 1,000 earlier articles were lost in a database migration.

In April 2001, Slashdot Japan launched, publishing its first article on the 5th of that month.

Slashdot's 10,000th article was published on February 24, 2000 and the 100,000th story was published on December 11, 2009.

On November 3, 2004, Slashdot published the article "Kerry Concedes Election to Bush." The piece generated more than 5,600 comments, making it the most discussed submission in Slashdot history. That August, Slashdot's most visited submission, "ISP Owner Who Fought FBI Spying Freed From Gag Order" was posted, which has generated more than 1.2 million hits.

Featured Interviews

In July 1999, a flipside of "Ask Slashdot" was introduced where users could pose questions for a guest, and the highest-rated questions were answered. Bruce Perens, a big name in the Linux/Open Source Movement, was their first interview.

Slashdot Interviews are conducted regularly. Some star interviewees include: Bruce Sterling, the sci-fi author who helped shape the cyberpunk genre, William Shatner, Neil Gaiman, Jimmy Wales, the founder of Wikipedia, and author Neal Stephenson.

Onward!
So where does Slashdot go from 15? "This year we've branched out more with some video coverage of the same kinds of topics we've been into for a long time... and a bit of live blogging, which I suspect we'll see more of," said Lord. "But a lot of Slashdot is about the user experience, and I think that the future holds a lot of improvement in that aspect of the site."

A message from Gaurav Kuchhal (Head of Product, Slashdot)

Today, on the 15th Anniversary of Slashdot, we are thrilled to announce a brand new mobile experience. The new mobile interface is an indication of what to expect from Slashdot as it embraces the personal and mobile Web.

Without further ado, we present the new Slashdot Mobile Web App (Beta) for iPhones and Android phones. Just direct your mobile browser to mbeta.slashdot.org.

As we built this new mobile experience, we followed three guiding principles:

1. Let the community shape it.
2. Embrace open HTML5 web architecture.
3. Provide a clean, modern, fast experience.

This Slashdot mobile experience has been shaped by the feedback received from hundreds of alpha users over past few weeks. We want to thank all the alpha users for your enthusiasm and critical input, as we couldn't have done it without you!

What can you do with new Slashdot Mobile?

• Read comments and stories in a mobile-friendly view
• Find "Most Discussed" stories at the top
• Share stories and comments
• See rich user profiles of your friends and foes
• See beautiful achievement badges
• Quickly participate in polls
• Show off your latest Gravatar
• Access previous and next stories with a swipe

From Alpha to Beta

Because we've adopted a rapid and iterative method to develop this new mobile experience, we've been able to quickly make changes based on your feedback.

Here are a few features that testers asked for during Alpha, delivered today in Beta:

• Show preview of story on the home page
• Ability to expand -1 comments
• Load more comments initially
• Remember which stories or comments you were reading
• First select and then vote on a poll, eliminating unintentional voting
• Improved comment filtering interface

What's Next?

We're not done yet. This mobile web app is optimized for iPhones and popular Android smartphones (version 2.2 and up). We will continue to support more devices.

We're also adding many of your most-requested features, including the ability to view notifications, as well as submit stories, moderate others' submissions and comments, and set your own mobile preferences — just to name a few.

A tablet app is also in the works. If you own an iPad or Android tablet and can't wait to get your hands on a Slashdot app for it, you can participate in the Tablet Alpha.

We hope that you continue to shape this mobile experience by providing us feedback.