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from the I-thought-the-name-was-bacconmuffinnews dept.
After several early attempts, we have settled on a process for deciding on the final name for this site currently known as SoylentNews.org. You'll need to log in and go to: userprefs/homepage and check the box marked "Willing to Vote" if you'd like to participate (do this now, the submission round will go out soon). The vote will occur using an email-based solution loosely based on the Debian/Condercet method that we cooked up. Note: checking this box will indicate that we are scraping your email address from the database for participation (this is completely opt-in). If you wish not to participate, just make sure this box is unchecked (this is the default).
We are opening the floor to name suggestions. If you have suggested a name earlier, you'll need to re-submit it through this email voting system. Though we prefer available domains, if you have pre-purchased a domain (eg: to prevent squatters), by submitting the name you are stating that you are the owner of the domain(s) and will give it without strings attached to this project if it were to be chosen.
The criteria for an acceptable name:
- Unique and free of obvious trademarks
- Ideally be a bit technological/geeky and signal the site is "news"
- Domain should be available in all permutations: .com/.net/.org
- Easy to pronounce
- Easy to type
- Easy to 'market' or has a "hook" (imagine a mug with the name, a logo, slogans, plays on words, etc.)
- Passes the girlfriend / wife / significant other / random person at work - test
This is how it will work:
- The first round will go out asking for name submissions
- Submissions will remain open for 7 days
- The community will vote to yield 5 names
- Staff will vote and produce 5 names
- A final vote on all 10 names will be held
- At this point, the staff will have a second full vote on the same ten items the community voted on
- The result of this vote, and the community vote, including its runoff, will then be published
- The staff vote is the final decision. We have to live with this. But the community will have a powerful influence on the final staff vote.
If you're interested:
NCommander adds: So its finally here, and I wanted to apologize for the long delay before this actually happened. To the editoral team, please bump this to the top of the index for the next 24 hours so everyone gets a chance to see it (click 'fastforward' then save to autoupdate the timestamp). I promise a Featured Story option is coming in the next major update so we don't have to deal with this!
(Score: 5, Informative) by paulej72 on Wednesday April 09 2014, @12:06PM
If all three are available then there is less chance that there will be a IP issue with the name.
Team Leader for SN Development
(Score: 3, Insightful) by stderr on Wednesday April 09 2014, @05:27PM
Not really... Let's say foobar.com, foobar.net and foobar.org were all available, but foobar."everything else" were all taken by "the foobar group". Does foobar.{com,net,org} still sound like a good choice, if we only look at IP issues?
Besides, isn't IP issues already covered by the first criteria, "Unique and free of obvious trademarks"?
Suggestion: Change the first criteria to "... obvious IP issues" and drop the third criteria.
As long as you keep the third criteria, you're saying no to some really good suggestions.
alias sudo="echo make it yourself #" #
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 09 2014, @05:37PM
I presume you mean a trademark issue with the name.. I'm fairly sure the DNS system can handle different IPs for different domain names :)
(Score: 2) by stderr on Thursday April 10 2014, @01:19AM
DNS is WAY cooler than that.
Not only can it handle different IPs for different domain names, it can also handle different IPs for the same domain name AND!!! the same IP for different domain names.
Now, how cool is that?!
alias sudo="echo make it yourself #" #
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Thursday April 10 2014, @04:49AM
Not to mention the inevitable domain squatters if you don't also own the .COM -- and since browsers default to .COM, you lose that traffic (some of which will never figure out the problem) and help enrich a squatter.
So, yeah -- all three unencumbered makes sense.
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.