Kuro5hin

The site is remarkable for being almost entirely community driven. All content is generated by and selected by the users—with the exception of site news, which is written by Rusty Foster, the site's founder. Registered users can submit stories to the Submissions Queue. In the queue, users vote +1 FP (front page), +1, -1 or 0 (for an abstention). If the story reaches a predetermined threshold score, it is posted either to the front page or to the relevant section, depending on the proportion of +1FP votes. If it fails to make the threshold, it is dropped.

An interesting feature of the story queue is Edit Mode. Edit Mode means that a story is protected from voting for a period of time, during which the author can make changes. Comments can be made on the story during this time, and to aid the author, they are distinguished as being Editorial or Topical comments.

A further section known as the Diaries allows unmoderated posting by any user. Diary entries are essentially weblog entries, though their aggregation of posts by many users gives a more collective atmosphere.

Rusty Foster named Kuro5hin as a pun on his first name. The 5 was inspired by the name of the character Da5id in Neal Stephenson's science fiction novel, Snow Crash. Dylan Griffiths (Inoshiro) was second in command as site administrator for some time, but more recently has been largely absent from the community. Additionally, there are a number of other people with powers of story editing (although not comment editing) and site administration.

The community also holds a Wiki for Kuro5hin related material called Ko4ting (pronounced "coating" or "cavorting"). It houses information about the community, including a Greatest Stories Hall of Fame, Welcome/Introduction Guide, History of Kuro5hin, and a story directory.

In the second half of 2003, a large portion of the diarists abandoned kuro5hin and started posting diaries on Hulver's site (also commonly referred to as "HuSi") instead. Around the same time, complaints about trolls increased.

On March 25, 2004 Rusty closed off new user accounts [1] as a result of particularly offensive trolls attacking his wife, and no new users have been permitted since. This is believed to be the beginning of the end of Kuro5hin by many users of the site.[1], [1]. Some even believed that the whole scheme wouldn't work at all [1]. On July 13, 2004 Rusty reopened new user accounts [1]

Related articles

• Advogato
• Slashdot
• List of websites

• Kuro5hin.org
• Kuro5hin.org FAQ
• Ko4ting, a K5 Companion Wiki
• Interview with Rusty Foster of Kuro5hin.org, Dotcom Scoop, January 28, 2002
• Meatball Wiki's entry on K5
• Why sponsored users won't work., Ta bù shì dà yú