Exactly one year ago SoylentNews published its very first story: Welcome to SoylentNews!
And what a year it's been!
It all started with a posting at slashdot where an editor claimed they had "listened to their audience" about complaints about the new Beta version of the site that was being rolled out. Many noted that any changes were cosmetic — that it was the community that made that site what it was. And, in inimical nerd fashion, a "SlashCott" was scheduled from February 10-17 wherein the participants pledged to not visit /. for one whole week.
Others took a more active role. The source code for /. was originally made open source and was available on the internet. Sadly, that code had not been maintained and was several years out of date. Some intrepid souls labored long and hard to locate servers, coordinate activities, and get the code knocked into shape. The goal was to create an alternative site that was free from the manipulations of a corporate overlord.
That first story signified a major accomplishment, but the site was still unstable and many features were incomplete, non-functional, or just plain ugly. Many more days of implementation, debugging, and testing were to follow culminating with SN going live to the world on February 17, 2014: Welcome to the World of Tomorrow... Today!.
Much has happened since that nascent story first graced the 'net. There have been changes in our all-volunteer staff. We had votes for the name of the site. We implemented UTF-8 support so stories and comments can include any valid character. We incorporated as a Public Benefit Corporation — on USA's Independence Day no less! We have an on-line store where you can buy SoylentNews Swag. You can subscribe and help support our site.
By the numbers: Over 5000 accounts have been registered and nearly 5000 stories have been posted to the site. Each story is read from 500-2000 times by logged-in users, and approximately 10 times as many Anonymous Cowards. More importantly, nearly 150,000 comments have been posted by you, our community.
Today, we have a small but dedicated group of volunteers who keep the site running. They keep the OS up-to-date on our servers, maintain our Wiki, e-mail, and IRC channels. They add features and fix bugs in the SN code base. Others edit and publish stories to appear on the site. We have a Board of Directors who take care of the legal sides of things. A treasurer who follows the finances. And there are still others who help in a non-technical, but just as necessary capacity in keeping the site humming along.
So, hats off to all who have helped build this site to what it is today!
Related Stories
I feel that its fitting to post this today on July 4th, Independence Day, given the mission and unique history of SN. I'm going to do a follow-up post on Monday with more information on where we go now. Until then, have an awesome Independence Day, and a great weekend :-)
Thank You!
On the occasion of the site's sixth anniversary, I thought it fitting to mention some of the many ways that fellow Soylentils contribute to our community. This also seems like a good opportunity to mention some of the site's history, relate some staffing changes, mention other contributions by the SoylentNews community, and to wrap things up with some site statistics.
Please accept our thanks:
These thanks go out to all of you: my fellow members of the SoylentNews community.
To the Anonymous Cowards who post comments to our site (be they inciteful or insightful). To our registered users who not only post comments, but are also the only members who can moderate comments. No matter how long you have been here; whether you have just arrived (Welcome!) or have been with us from the very start... Thank You!
Speaking of which, thanks go to our staff who bludgeoned and duct-taped an ancient unmaintained open-sourced version of the code underpinning slashdot into some sort of basic functionality, and who have since made it the site you are enjoying today. Thanks, too, to our behind-the-scenes staff members, who keep the underlying services we depend on, running 24/7. Other staff members are more visible, like the editorial team who spend several hours every single day processing the stories that get posted to the site.
And let's not forget the members of the community who purchase subscriptions and thereby fund the operations of this site. We do have real world expenses: paying for our servers, domain registrations, and paying a CPA (Certified Public Accountant) to do our taxes.
Read on past the fold for all the rest!
(Score: 5, Insightful) by c0lo on Thursday February 12 2015, @07:40AM
Personal story: before SN launched, I was in a quite depressive mood; the reason (important for the context): at the office, we were circling a project for about 2 years, with no more than 3 false starts and heaps of effort wasted.
In this context, SN's birth reminded me that, somewhere on this world, there still are people that manage to do something with meaning in a short amount of time.
(an ode to the Duct Tape Programmer [joelonsoftware.com])
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 12 2015, @01:18PM
is it just me or does the very first story link https://soylentnews.org/article.pl?sid=14/02/12/0715245tid [soylentnews.org]
upon pasting the link into this comment i realise its the "tid" at the end
the proper link is: https://soylentnews.org/article.pl?sid=14/02/12/0715245 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Thursday February 12 2015, @01:39PM
Ugh, yeah that one's on me. I wrote a bug into the editors' page that causes it. Fixed for this story.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 3) by martyb on Thursday February 12 2015, @01:51PM
Actually, the trailing "tid" seems to have returned... edited story, deleted: "tid.*", and without previewing, saved the page. That seems to save a version to the DB that renders correctly. We may be one year old, but there's still the occasional teething problem. (I can't wait until we get to the "Terrible Twos"! =)
Wit is intellect, dancing.
(Score: 5, Funny) by Appalbarry on Thursday February 12 2015, @07:45AM
Go here, [soylentnews.org] and put your money where your (anon) mouth is.
Endorsement: "Since switching to Soylent from That Other Site, I've stopped experiencing erectile dysfunction, my dog has learned to fetch, and I find that I am entirely too attractive to The Ladies."
And yes, being elected to the Senate as a Republican doesn't hurt either.
(Score: 5, Funny) by q.kontinuum on Thursday February 12 2015, @07:49AM
THAT is a matter of opinion.
Registered IRC nick on chat.soylentnews.org: qkontinuum
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 12 2015, @09:56AM
Of course. If your opinion doesn't align with the republican party line, you'll probably have a hard time as a Republican senator (but then, you probably wouldn't be elected as one anyway).
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Daiv on Thursday February 12 2015, @02:56PM
Can we get a WHOOSH modification?
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Thursday February 12 2015, @03:06PM
Quite possibly. It'd certainly be regularly useful to mod me with at the least.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 12 2015, @08:03AM
Just mocking you, no hard feelings, right?
(Score: 3, Informative) by pTamok on Thursday February 12 2015, @09:22AM
There is an option in an account's preferences to not display the subscription star. Some people may be choosing not to display their subscription status.
This means you cannot assume that lack of a star means that somebody has not subscribed.
In my view, this is a good thing.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by c0lo on Thursday February 12 2015, @09:34AM
Yeah, maybe... I chose to let mine displayed because it's a "statement by example": the moment I'll see that counter showing 100%, then I'll hide it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 3, Insightful) by q.kontinuum on Thursday February 12 2015, @04:58PM
I won't. I think it is still is a good thing to set an example, even after 100% is reached. The more money comes in, the more possibilities to work on new features. IIRC there were some discussions to provide some disk space to share some pictures or similar things, and I still would like an option to get a diaspora account hosted on this server and tied to my account here. But this probably won't happen as long as the operating costs are hardly covered.
Registered IRC nick on chat.soylentnews.org: qkontinuum
(Score: 3, Informative) by The Mighty Buzzard on Thursday February 12 2015, @05:10PM
One of the perks of being small and lacking much in the way of bureaucracy: Custom requests can be handled on a case by case basis. Hit admin@soylentnews.org up with whatever idea you have and we should be able to get back to you soon-ish with an idea of if/when/how much.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 13 2015, @01:01AM
I block images (and pretty much anything that isn't readable text).
Does anyone read the site via Lynx or other text-only app?
-- gewg_
(Score: 1, Offtopic) by c0lo on Thursday February 12 2015, @08:19AM
(grin)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 12 2015, @01:04PM
Ah, it's almost that time again. Subscribed under an old nick, can't believe it's almost up. I must pick a new username, although I'm not sure what it should be.
Endorsement: “Since switching to Soylent from ash nazg…” *waits for the ominous cloud to pass* “I've trained a womyn-born-womyn in programming, increased my breast size by 2 cups, learned basic furnace repair, and found a time machine involving a convoluted love plot with the beefcake Brunel.”
Do your part! Service guarantees citizenship!
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Thursday February 12 2015, @01:25PM
Gives me an idea... What do you lot think about charging $5 or $10 to change a nickname but keep the same uid? Again, this ain't official. I don't make monetary or site policy decisions.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by tibman on Thursday February 12 2015, @02:50PM
Live journal still exists because of features like that. Want a little icon next to your name? That's $2. Want to get rid of ads? Subscribe. Want to give someone a "gift"? 2$. Not sure if LJ is a beacon of success but it is certainly a survivor.
SN won't survive on lurkers alone. Write comments.
(Score: 2) by Open4D on Thursday February 12 2015, @03:09PM
Seems fair to me, although I probably wouldn't use it, and I wonder whether enough people would use it to make it pay for itself.
Unless it was seen as an alternative way of accepting donations. Change your username, then 10 minutes later change it back again, etc.. (But for that kind of thing I prefer the ideas in comment #144144 below.)
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Thursday February 12 2015, @03:28PM
It really couldn't help but pay for itself since nobody here gets paid to work and our processors just skim off a bit with no up-front charge (bitpay skims from the customer, paypal skims from us). I was thinking entering the changes manually from a mysql prompt since automation could lead to people playing silly buggers with repeated nick changes but I suppose if they want to pay to play silly buggers, that's on them.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 12 2015, @05:10PM
Any chance on getting a different way to subscribe? I refuse to use paypal, and I am not a bitcoiner.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Thursday February 12 2015, @05:26PM
Yes, only not for a while yet. I'm on leave to move to a different state until March-ish which basically means a release around April 1 would only have one month for an entire dev and testing cycle, which I don't consider enough when handling other people's money. So, I'd planned on using March to fix as many bugs as I could find and start in on whatever was next in April. Thus, in all likelihood it will be at least June before we can get another payment processor (probably credit/debit cards via Stripe) hooked up.
Why am I talking like I'm the only dev? Because at the moment, that's exactly the case. paulej72 has been exceedingly busy with work for a while now and we are the only two code monkeys currently on the dev team.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 12 2015, @05:45PM
I will be glad to subscribe once we get to that point, bonus points if I can choose what to pay for my subscription on say a monthly basis.
(Score: 2) by paulej72 on Friday February 13 2015, @02:15PM
If we did monthly subscriptions, I would want to increase the cost probably to 2.50 a month to cover overhead charges.
Team Leader for SN Development
(Score: 0, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 12 2015, @04:13PM
(Score: 1) by TheSage on Thursday February 12 2015, @01:52PM
OK, you talked me into it.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by crutchy on Thursday February 12 2015, @08:17AM
SoylentNews is a great site to have awesome trollfests, but its more than just a wesbite. It has come a long way in the past 12 months, not only on the technical side with website improvements but also community building.
For me the best part has been the colorful discussions in various channels on the SoylentNews IRC server, where you can chat freely about anything with easy going staff and members from the site. SoylentNews has provided an opportunity to build friendships with like-minded people all around the world. #Soylent is a place where we argue about politics, analyze what we ate for lunch, and muse about ciri and the dreaded vibrating rooster sammich.
Hats off to all you guys (and gal) that have helped make a fun place to chill while coding, youtubing or browsing news sites. I look forward to hanging out for years to come.
(Score: 5, Funny) by Kell on Thursday February 12 2015, @09:07AM
Soylent News is people. We put our time and money where our mouths are - and some of us have very big mouths.
Scientists ask questions. Engineers solve problems.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by The Mighty Buzzard on Thursday February 12 2015, @11:52AM
You ain't just whistling Dixie there. Mine's occasionally big enough for my own foot and several others and yet they still alternately begged, cajoled, and tricked me into becoming staff when I just wanted to hurry along the features I really wanted by clearing out some bugs in my spare time. They did this even despite my requirement that I not have to give up the reason I visit the site in the first place, the arguing with intelligent folks that I use to refine or discard my own views.
So, Happy Birthday, oh favorite site of mine. And when I say that, I don't mean to the code or the servers. I mean to the people who make this whole crazy rebellion cum monkey pit work; both on staff and plying their opinions in the comments sections of every story. Without either the Internet would be a much duller and less inviting place.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 12 2015, @04:25PM
this whole crazy rebellion cum monkey pit
The obligatory fixed that for you:
this whole crazy rebellion monkey cum pit
(Score: 4, Insightful) by janrinok on Thursday February 12 2015, @08:22AM
Many thanks to all of those who have taken part in this project - and congratulations on all that has been achieved in the past year. Many of those who were part of the initial period - when every day brought another challenge or a seemingly insurmountable problem to face - have now, for various reasons, moved on to other things. But together in the end, we did it. And I use the word 'we' intentionally, for it is the community that has stuck with this project through thick and thin, or the more recent arrivals bringing fresh blood and enthusiasm, that have made it so rewarding to me personally.
I will confess to having had moments when I have asked myself whether it is worthwhile. The weekends when there are not enough stories to fill the queue and I have other people who want some of my time and would prefer that I switch off the computer. And then along comes one of those stories that receives thousands of hits and hundreds of comments and I get my answer immediately. Worthwhile? Of course, it is! So, a big thank-you to all of you for that.
Congratulations all around - and here's to the next year!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 12 2015, @10:51PM
Yes congrats.
Build a site for people. Run it the way /. did!
Due to excessive bad posting from this IP or Subnet, anonymous comment posting has temporarily been disabled. You can still login to post. However, if bad posting continues from your IP or Subnet that privilege could be revoked as well. If it's you, consider this a chance to sit in the timeout corner or login and improve your posting. If it's someone else, this is a chance to hunt them down. If you think this is unfair, please email admin@soylentnews.org with your MD5'd IPID and SubnetID, which are "xxxxxxxxxxxx" and "yyyyyyyyyyyyyy".
(Score: 4, Informative) by The Mighty Buzzard on Thursday February 12 2015, @11:05PM
Troll less maybe? That's an entirely automated bit of legacy slashcode and goes by the number of posts of yours that get modded Troll as AC. Complain all you like but you've only yourself to blame unless they're unjustified mods.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 5, Funny) by poutine on Thursday February 12 2015, @08:24AM
Let's go for double that in 2015.
(Score: 2) by aristarchus on Thursday February 12 2015, @08:39AM
Let's go for double that in 2015.
Yes, poutine will do that to you. I trust that our new overlords ( I cannot remember anyone referring to them as "owners") will be much healthier, and less Stephan Harper, in the second year!
And you know, I have to say, happy birthday, Soylent News! For truly you are people, and this is a good thing. Live long, and prosper.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 13 2015, @01:10AM
It seems an apt term for someone who paid for the domain name.
As I saw it, the first owner had a vague notion of the site being a profit center, based on his investment.
Next, came our angel investor, matt_ [googleusercontent.com] (orig) [soylentnews.org]
He only held it long enough to gift it to the community.
Now, ncommander holds the domain name in trust, so to speak.
-- gewg_
(Score: 3, Informative) by The Mighty Buzzard on Friday February 13 2015, @01:53AM
Technically, right now SN has no owners, just the same board of directors we've had since we incorporated. Soon to be rectified by swapping stock for debt to both NCommander and matt_ in equal amounts. Being as both of them are on the board, it's essentially a null issue; there's really nothing they can do as stockholders that they couldn't do as 2/3 of the board. But it does clear our books up so we can file taxes properly.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 12 2015, @08:44AM
You are not thinking out of the box mate, it's time to form a republic. Next year: hive mind. Two years from now: instrumentality [evageeks.org].
(Score: 4, Informative) by The Mighty Buzzard on Thursday February 12 2015, @12:10PM
Ya, I'm even glad to still have you around, poutine. Even our trolls are of a much higher average quality than the /. trolls and you're a big part of that, having been our first and most persistent troll of everything SN.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Thursday February 12 2015, @12:38PM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by janrinok on Thursday February 12 2015, @01:42PM
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 12 2015, @08:35AM
if you provide 24/7 uptime, please post them here, thank you.
(Score: 4, Informative) by bryan on Thursday February 12 2015, @08:41AM
How about Soylent News [7rmath4ro2of2a42.onion]!
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Thursday February 12 2015, @09:09AM
Why don't you post it, together with the dev version and the wiki onions in the "About" section?
After all, it's the first natural place someone really interested would look?
...blink...
...
..
(grin... large grin...)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 4, Informative) by The Mighty Buzzard on Thursday February 12 2015, @12:23PM
Heh, prolly because bryan runs pipedot [pipedot.org] rather than SN. I don't think we have onion routing for anything but the main site but I could very well be wrong on that. I'll see if we can get a link up on the main page soonish. I'd go ahead and put one up now but I'm still trying to avoid being an admin of any sort, no matter how much un-asked-for power paulej72 keeps giving me.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Thursday February 12 2015, @12:32PM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by Marneus68 on Thursday February 12 2015, @09:02AM
I'm happy to see SoylentNew thrive! I contributed, I commented, but it awesome because I wasn't the only one to do so!
Thanks to everyone involved for their hard work, even other contributors and commentators.
(Score: 2) by SGT CAPSLOCK on Thursday February 12 2015, @09:07AM
Seriously?! Man, time flies.
I remember the early days. The little wiki that got started, and then the irc channel on Freenode. There was a bit of an uproar when Soylent started its own irc server, too. I remember hanging out there for a while. There were some cool people around; I know a lot are still here, too.
I wish I'd put more effort into helping this thing grow, but I like to lurk. I don't think I even started commenting much until just recently. Hm... Ahh, I just come and go with the wind.
Happy birthday!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 13 2015, @01:44AM
The day a soylentil noted that the other site had done major backpedaling on pushing Beta.
OK, it didn't directly affect this site|community, but it did make me smile.
-- gewg_
(Score: 5, Interesting) by quadrox on Thursday February 12 2015, @09:34AM
I would be happy to pay more than $20 for a subscription - but currently I think there is no real way to do so.
It would be great to be able to have several pre-set subscription amounts, or to let the user choose any amount over the minimum.
Alternatively, a donate button would be great.
I do not wish to buy any of the swag - I don't need it, and some part of the money would not go to SoylentNews. Therefore the swag option is NOT an alternative to the above.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Thursday February 12 2015, @12:32PM
<unofficial answer>We're set to be looking over alternate revenue streams sometime this month. Look for an announcement of new ways to give us all your money as soon as we can work some out. I know this the same way everyone in IRC knows this and hold no special sway over funding matters, hence unofficial.</unofficial answer>
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Open4D on Thursday February 12 2015, @02:57PM
I agree with quadrox. I would propose a price of $4 or $5 per month. NCommander (who I hope is keeping well) set the price as $20 per year after he got the impression that the consensus was that his previous proposals were too expensive. Back To The Drawing Board: Rethinking Subscription + Explaing Expenses [soylentnews.org] But I don't remember seeing more than 1 or 2 people saying it was too expensive.
That same article also explains why there's no donate button. There was a legal problem with just accepting pure donations. I suppose that's why so many organizations just end up selling mugs and t-shirts instead.
There was a bit of a discussion about it in response to comment 60426 [soylentnews.org]. What could be allowed instead of donations?
I agree that swag is a poor alternative to donation. I hate the 'throwaway society'. I can't see myself ever ordering a mug / t-shirt / etc. that I don't really need.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Thursday February 12 2015, @03:11PM
Yeah, there's been some discussion of this recently on IRC and will be again in the next week or two sometime. Feel free to drop in and argue in realtime. Just look for matt_, mrcoolbp, and juggs on at the same time as they seem to have the most to say about it right now. It's not a formally scheduled thing though, so if you want you can wait for a thinned down list of proposals to hit the front page as a story as a request for comment.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by urza9814 on Thursday February 12 2015, @05:01PM
Yup, pretty sure I was one arguing against annual subscriptions at the time too. Somehow forgot all that and was hoping it'd be a pay what you want thing when I went to actually subscribe recently. I mean first of all, I never renew annual subscriptions. I've got a few monthly ones that have been going for years. I'm 24 now, and I've kept my monthly ACLU donations going since I was 16! I don't think I've ever once renewed an annual subscription though. Because it's a not automatic and because the cost is always higher.
I'd gladly put in $5/month for Soylent. I'd consider even $10/month. I can easily fit that into my regular monthly budget. Fitting an extra $60 all in one month would be annoying; fitting an extra $120, just for something like Soylent, is not at all possible.
The swag is cool and all, but frankly...I looked through the list and there's nothing I see myself actually using. I just don't need any more T-shirts or mugs. I'm a kinda frugal guy when it comes to spending on myself though, I can't think of much you could sell that I *would* be interested in. Maybe if someone comes up with a seriously epic design, then I might be into some swag, but otherwise it feels like a waste.
I think pay-what-you-want subscriptions (and maybe even merch, with a lower bound) would be the ideal solution, although I'm not sure about how much effort that would be to set up. Perhaps to simplify things they could do just a $1 monthly subscription in unlimited quantity? So if I want to do $5/month, I just do 5 concurrent recurring $1/month subscriptions. That might end up being even *more* complicated though, I dunno, I've never really worked with payment processing...
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 12 2015, @04:30PM
My plan (when I'm not broke) is to give gift subscriptions to users that make good contributions, but haven't subscribed yet. This may even guilt-trip them into doing the same to others.
(Score: 3, Informative) by mrcoolbp on Friday February 13 2015, @12:52AM
You can buy a subscription for as many years as you'd like, a few people bough 5 years worth (thanks guys!!).
(Score:1^½, Radical)
(Score: 5, Informative) by Covalent on Thursday February 12 2015, @10:05AM
I jumped the /. ship at the first mention of SN and am proud to say I haven't stopped my boycott. Dumping on your users in that way earned them a personal lifetime ban from me. It was made much easier by the higher quality of comments here at SN. Kudos and thanks for the hours of code cleanup. This soylentil appreciates it.
You can't rationally argue somebody out of a position they didn't rationally get into.
(Score: 3, Informative) by CoolHand on Thursday February 12 2015, @01:27PM
I'm in the same ship as parent. SN has been my only news/commenting site for the past year (except for an occasional buzz of |. - but never going back to /. ...). I hugely appreciate all the work everyone has done here, and hopefully it continues its success for many years to come (as long as it's roots are remembered).
Anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job-Douglas Adams
(Score: 1) by j-stroy on Thursday February 12 2015, @04:36PM
I m a frequent flyer here.. I do find I'm posting fewer comments than I did at the /.
My boycott is I don't post there anymore. I do check articles and am finding less and less there of interest and increasingly seeing intrusive ads, especially on mobile.. It's sad to see a place I enjoyed infested with giant crapware advertisements and weaker community, tho not as sad as if Soylent News didn't exist!!! It's my daily haven for what I crave. Thank you and keep up the good work!
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 12 2015, @10:33AM
I haven't visited /. since SoylentNews has gone live and haven't missed it once.
You guys did a phenomenal job and here's to four more years.
(Score: 2) by mrcoolbp on Friday February 13 2015, @02:39AM
Only four!? I've no intentions of stopping until heat-death you insensitive clod!
(Score:1^½, Radical)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 12 2015, @10:52AM
Congratulations to SN and staff and thank you.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Rosco P. Coltrane on Thursday February 12 2015, @10:59AM
Congrats! Now if you could bring back the TOR hidden service version of the site [7rmath4ro2of2a42.onion] that would be great :)
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Thursday February 12 2015, @12:35PM
Is it down? Doh! It must not have come back up after the recent reboot of all the servers for security updates. Stupid uncreated init scripts. Forwarded to the admin team.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 4, Informative) by mechanicjay on Thursday February 12 2015, @03:38PM
My VMS box beat up your Windows box.
(Score: 2) by Rosco P. Coltrane on Thursday February 12 2015, @04:32PM
Hey thanks!
Just one small issue: when you login on the onion site, it redirects you to the clearnet version. You have to login on both for your credentials to be taken into account on the onion version.
(Score: 2) by paulej72 on Friday February 13 2015, @02:23PM
Bug is filed, but that one's going to be a bitch to fix if it doing what I think it is. Slash does some things back-asswards at times. I think I'll look into that one this weekend as I will have some time on my hands.
Team Leader for SN Development
(Score: 2) by Rosco P. Coltrane on Saturday February 14 2015, @07:24AM
Wow, I'm more and more impressed with SN every day: there are actually people who care about issues, however small and obscure, and communicate on them. That *is* a change from /.!
Re this bug, don't sweat it too much: it's annoying but there's an easy workaround that doesn't involve dropping to plain http. Besides, I have a feeling not many people use SN's TOR server, as it had been down for weeks and nobody seemed to ask for a restart :) But in any case, thanks a lot for your efforts: they're much appreciated.
(Score: 2) by paulej72 on Monday February 16 2015, @10:24PM
I though I had this bug fixed this weekend, but it did not work. I need to go back to the drawing board and see if I can get it to work. Although my fix did make some code a bit simpler in the long run. Stay tuned for more details.
Team Leader for SN Development
(Score: 2) by paulej72 on Thursday February 19 2015, @12:08AM
New fix is in. Hopefully this one works.
Team Leader for SN Development
(Score: 2) by mtrycz on Thursday February 12 2015, @11:45AM
It's been a great ride, and I'm happy that things are going quite well.
Lets hope for 10 more like this :)
In capitalist America, ads view YOU!
(Score: 2) by mrcoolbp on Friday February 13 2015, @01:07AM
Blast from ye olde past! Nice to see ya on SN mate.
(Score:1^½, Radical)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 12 2015, @01:24PM
Can we get beyond the notability requirement, i.e. has SN "gained sufficiently significant attention by the world at large and over a period of time"? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Notability [wikipedia.org]
I think such an article (in various languages) would help make SN better known. Also I think it's a great feat and a story worth telling to a wider audience. We're not just complaining about things but setting them straight ourselves. Nerd power!
Congratulations to each and every last person involved and let's keep fighting the good fight soylenteros!
(Score: 2) by tibman on Thursday February 12 2015, @02:56PM
Slashdot is notable so i think SN splitting off from them should be a notable event.
SN won't survive on lurkers alone. Write comments.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Open4D on Thursday February 12 2015, @03:46PM
Unfortunately AFAIK, neither Soylent News itself, nor the fork from Slashdot has been covered by reliable sources [wikipedia.org].
Came pretty close though. If only the author of this article [washingtonpost.com] had seen the comment mentiong Soylent, and updated her story accordingly ...
Someone could try adding a few words about the fork at the bottom of the Slashdot#History [wikipedia.org] section, but if it gets removed then you wouldn't have a leg to stand on.
There is a whole separate guideline page about website notability [wikipedia.org]. If/when Soylent makes it, I presume it would go in Category:Virtual_communities [wikipedia.org] or specifically Category:Community_websites [wikipedia.org].
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Phoenix666 on Thursday February 12 2015, @02:04PM
SN feels older than a year, because it feels the same as Slashdot once was years ago. It is the full inheritor of that legacy. It has in its first year, though, improved on the best that Slashdot ever was, with its modifications to the moderating system (still the best thing to guide and focus discourse and collective action that I've ever seen anywhere); and I feel sure SN is just getting warmed up.
Like others, I haven't visited /. since SN came online. Not once. I had been a big supporter of theirs for years and had even gotten to be on a first-name basis with several of the editors; when they decided to ram Beta down everyone's throats I pleaded with them publicly and through back channels to reconsider. They didn't, and the rest is history.
From the first moment the quality of the discussion here was high, clearer and better than it had been for a decade at Slashdot. And it has been gratifying to see the numbers and engagement of the SN community steadily grow. It's not only growing into a vibrant tech news community, but I suspect a lot of world-changing projects will take flight from here as its members talk, brainstorm, and begin to collaborate. There's that sort of heady atmosphere here.
My wish for the future of SN is to continue its trajectory as a public mission inspired and challenged by vigorous discussion, to never give in to the siren song of the Dice.com's of the world. Function over form, forever!
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by kbahey on Thursday February 12 2015, @02:42PM
Congratulations to all of us, and many thanks to the team who keep SN going ...
The team here did amazing things. In mere months, they took the old SlashCode, and made UTF8 work. Something Slashdot never bothered to do despite a decade of complaints from its users. Also, they made the story visible at the top when you link to a single comment. That, and many many other changes. Amazing what motivation and freedom from corporate shackles can do ...
However, it is not all rosy, so we should not be complacent. I summarized that in this comment: Low participation is the chronic problem [soylentnews.org].
2bits.com, Inc: Drupal, WordPress, and LAMP performance tuning [2bits.com].
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 12 2015, @04:05PM
Congrats guys.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by girlwhowaspluggedout on Thursday February 12 2015, @05:08PM
SN's staff and users, past and present -- thank you from an old friend.
For as far back as I remember it, /. only existed because of its users, a community that grew around it for almost two decades now. Although it has dwindled down during the war of attrition from its ever-changing owners, that community is what's keeping the site alive.
But SN, as an upstart startup that aimed to promptly replace everything /. gained after years of operation, has always depended on its staff as well as its users. We're lucky that the two groups aren't mutually exclusive. Kudos and congrats, and any other synonym you can find, are in order for all of you. Thank you from uid 1223.
Hooray!
Soylent is the best disinfectant.
(Score: 2) by mrcoolbp on Friday February 13 2015, @01:06AM
Nice to see you, we haven't forgotten you. Hoping you are well.
(Score:1^½, Radical)
(Score: 2) by jmorris on Thursday February 12 2015, @06:10PM
Congrats for making it a year and providing a refuge from the swamp the green place turned into.
But at the risk of sounding like a grumpy old man on the verge of yelling about his lawn and keeping off it....
What is the deal with the difficulty and expense of running this joint? Is this what the great Internet age has given us for 'progress' after all these years? Taco built the original and ran it for years as a hobby project while a small group of friends wrote the code. Certainly ran it as a hobby long after it reached the traffic levels discussed above, before it was big enough to attract the first 'corporate overlord.' And lets face it, this is just an evolution of the original BBS concept and thousands of those were successfully thrown up by individuals, often bored teens, on primitive 8bit hardware. I know because I was one of them. Now we have 'progressed' to a point where the same sort of thing requires a budget, a dedicated effort by a team and an incorporated non-profit umbrella organization. Really?
And we wonder why business closings now outnumber business starts now here in the U.S. of A.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Thursday February 12 2015, @08:56PM
The PBC exists so no one person can ever have power enough to lose their mind and take us in a direction the community does not want the site to go. Decisions like major philosophy changes or sale of the site would have to clear a board of directors rather than a single owner, which right now includes both initial investors and a staff member with propositions to expand to include more staff and community members as well.
As for running a site like this at home? Give it a go if you like. It's technically possible for anyone with a static ip address, fifty bucks or so for a domain name and a cert, and a broadband connection. I do not envy you the amount of work it involves though. You better have a lot of free time in your day.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by jmorris on Thursday February 12 2015, @09:58PM
I do not envy you the amount of work it involves though.
Which is kinda my point. This site ain't got nothing a BBS didn't have to deal with and only the largest of BBSes had more than the Sysop doing it as a hobby after work and maybe a couple of trusted users to moderate busy message areas or approve uploads. You had your choice of at least a half dozen viable choices of software to run the system on at any point in time, most free (small f) for small sites and low price shareware for the bigger multiline ones. You could decide to put one up, scrounge up a spare 286 (or worse... some ran on 8bit platforms) and be configured and running the same day. Then call up the phone co and order another phone line and you were ready to announce your existence. I gather putting this site together involved somewhat more effort, which is what I'm pondering. Seems to be going the wrong way complexity wise. Probably because it 'just isn't done' anymore, all an end user is expected to do is post to Facebook or perhaps if they are truly ambitious they start a blog on one of the 'free' sites. Nobody hosts content, nobody is expected to do much of anything on their own, everything is to be put into the 'cloud' and 'they' do all the work.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Thursday February 12 2015, @10:04PM
Oh, I get ya now. Yeah, I don't understand that mentality. I gotta build shat.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 3, Informative) by mrcoolbp on Friday February 13 2015, @01:39AM
I'm probably a terrible person to answer this question but here goes anyway:
SN encompasses more than just slash. We have a mail server, wiki, load balancer, a node for directory services (LDAP / Kerberos), and we have a decent amount of traffic. We actually run 2 more instances of slash, a dev site, and a staff site (an experiment as a system for staff to communicate/collaborate with each other using slash!). We have a self-hosted IRC server, the list goes on.
Your next question should be "do we need all that??". The short answer is probably not. We are currently looking into reducing the amount of servers we have running. Some of those resources may not be essential to this project, but due to the global volunteer collaborative effort of this project, and our hopes for it to grow, we are reluctant to cut too much functionality and dependibility out of our current setup. I'm working with the admins on reducing our hosting costs, I'm guessing we can knock about 33% of the hosting costs if we really try, but it will take some work. Please stand by.
(Score:1^½, Radical)
(Score: 2) by joshuajon on Thursday February 12 2015, @06:27PM
I just wanted to say a huge THANK YOU to everyone involved. I've been following this site and it's progress since inception and I'm proud and honored to be a part of this community. I haven't contributed much except a few comments and a couple minutes moderating, but I'm happy to be here nonetheless. Congratulations to the staff and volunteers for a job that continues to be well done.
(Score: 1) by EmeraldBot on Thursday February 12 2015, @06:38PM
I'm really glad to see how far it's come over the last year. It's a really nice corner of the internet, and I look forward to being hear for years to come. Keep up the good work!
Give a man a fire, and he's warm for a day. Light a man on fire, and he's warm for the rest of his life.
(Score: 2) by unitron on Thursday February 12 2015, @06:39PM
...on what led up to the creation of SN in the first place?
I'm getting nostalgic for how much I hated Beta.
something something Slashcott something something Beta something something
(Score: 2) by NCommander on Friday February 13 2015, @02:28AM
Sounds like a possible idea for an article on the 17th ...
Still always moving
(Score: 3, Insightful) by DarkMorph on Friday February 13 2015, @02:30AM
Glad to see the movement was successful, despite the drama seeping out of every nook on the front page and in IRC in the early months, including the debate over domain name ownership and such. Glad to see a "primitive" web page design is perfectly usable and suitable despite the era we're in and what web tech has evolved into. It felt odd at first to abandon /. at the drop of a hat but it was not even two weeks until it felt natural to come to SN for news. Thanks to the creation of this community, I was inspired to give Ars Technica a chance to capture my readership, and now I loyally follow that and this website via RSS to make sure I never miss an article.
Thanks for all the hard work to get the Perl code up to speed, organising everyone who contributed to make this happen and keep it afloat. Thanks to the audience for participating and everyone who pitches in with money, code, or just general chatter. SN turned out better than a lot of people expected, particularly after its first annual anniversary. Congratulations staff for making it this far, and keep up the good work!
(Score: 2) by hellcat on Friday February 13 2015, @01:37PM
As a fast lurker and rationalizing rusher, I'm taking time to thank the tireless youngsters who make this possible.
I've sent some bucks, but when I hit the lottery you'll get a whole bunch more!
Thank you.