The temporary denial-of-service effect resulting from a website being linked to from a story on the front page of the Slashdot (www.slashdot.org) tech news website.

The phenomenon mostly affects websites on lower-capacity servers. They can run for years with low-medium traffic, but with the huge tsunami of requests that come from being linked on Slashdot, such websites can be effectively paralysed for half a day or more.