What you, the reader, need to understand is that Slashdot is (or was at the time of this writing) a very busy discussion website. The site administrators post links to news items on other sites, with a little misspelled paragraph of explanation. Then the "Slashdot community" argues about it, discusses it, etc.
In the spring of 2000, for a post to draw much attention, it had to be within the first twenty or at most thirty posts in one of these "discussions". There might be twenty posts in the first five minutes.
Therefore, trolling Slashdot was like speed chess. You'd sit there reloading the front page regularly. When a new story was posted, you'd start writing like mad. I myself never wasted any time following the link to the news items the "discussions" were about. I'd just read the little explanatory paragraph and wing it, trying to come up with some angle on it that would infuriate people. Sometimes I'd guess right about what the story was about. Sometimes I'd guess wrong, but in a particularly infuriating way. Sometimes I'd fall flat on my ass and nobody would respond to what I wrote.