I can't believe this hasnt been done by now.
Per each topic, and each section, there should be
simple counts of the top level sites.
Eg: suppose a hardware story references:
extremetech.com/stories/blah/dvd/blah and
research.microsoft.com/domination/wearepure/whatever , then
extremetech.com would get a ++ as would microsoft.com
Okie, so this can show readers what are the popular
sites for this.
So you should be able to rip this idea of with about 3
minutes of programming, and make slashdot about 2x cooler.
Some ways you can extend this in the future would be:
-a trend analysis eg see which sites per section/topic
are popular each year (like the google zeitgeist, but
maybe done a little more scientfically given the nature
of the slashdot audience)
-even more levels of detail, maybe average in (or
compare outright) the values that slashdot sees with
the google count for the site:sitename feature
and so on....
