Q1. How is this site different from other news sites. (and I have no idea what SlashDot is)?

A1. SlashIndia differentiates from other news site in two ways:

1. It is a community led discussion forum, much like SlashDot is. The forum helps form perspectives on important issues. A moderation system ensures that the users have a choice to read only highly rated comments.
2. It is a news site to which the readers themselves submit stories to be deliberated upon. The focus is to include stories which really matter to India and are important enough to be deliberated and discussed upon (which rules out any stories like the "PM catching a cold", or one of those "PYT's winning some Ms. so-and-so title").

Q2.Is this a cheap imitation of SlashDot? Do you use SlashCode?

A2. Much of SlashDot's popularity rests on its wide user community, which is something this site cannot really imitate.

The appearance and focus on community based moderation is very similar to Slashdot, so yes there is an imitation there.

And nopes, the site doesn't use SlashCode (Perl was never my cup of tea). It uses Drupal. The theme however, is originally from SlashCode and has been ported to Drupal by Fredrik Jonsson.

Q3.Why didn't the story/poll I submitted get published?

A3. SlashIndia received quite a lot of stories and poll submissions, so it might just be the case that your submission is in the pipeline for getting considered. Currently we are able to process all submissions within 24hrs of them being submitted.

However, we also routinely reject quite a few submissions because they are inappropriate to the kind of stories that we feature on SlashIndia. Please read the submission guidelines to better understand the kind of stories that will be accepted on SlashIndia.