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SoylentNews
So, as per usual, I like to occasionally check the pulse on the community to make sure that people for the most part are happy and satisfied with the day-to-day operation of the site. For those of you who are new to the community, first, let me welcome you and explain how these work.
When I open the floor to the community, the intent is to provide a venue to discuss anything related to site operations, content, and anything along those lines. I actively review and comment on these posts, and if one issue pops up multiple times in comments, I generally run follow up articles to try and help address issues the community feels is important before someone decides to take rehash and form a spinoff. Feel free to leave whatever thoughts you want below.
In contrary to my usual posts, I don't have that much to say to this, so to both the community and editorial team's relief, I'll cut this off right here before it becomes Yet Another NCommander Novel.
~ NCommander
(Score: 4, Interesting) by SomeGuy on Monday November 07 2016, @01:44PM
You might think the OP is funny, but there is a somewhat serious side to that. I've noticed that many articles here get very few comments. They are the sort of simple, decently written stories that one can just read, have nothing to say about or read more about, and scroll down to the next story.
If you have ever wondered why stories on a certain other site were half baked, incomplete, trollish, and so on, it was in part to built a comment base. Laziness and incompetence were just sort of a bonus :P . But more user comments translates in to a larger community, larger Googlable content base, and more page hits.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 07 2016, @03:53PM
You seem to think the OP was praising this site for not being full of shitposters.
I think you radically missed the point.
(Score: 3, Informative) by AthanasiusKircher on Monday November 07 2016, @04:23PM
But more user comments translates in to a larger community
Well, at least to a larger perceived community. Some news organizations with comment sections have actually looked into stats on comment sections, and generally only a tiny fraction of registered users (let alone site visitors) contribute actively to comments.
When NPR recently closed down comments [npr.org], it noted that only 0.06% of users to the site actually tend to make comments. And of that small group, more than half of comments were due to tiny group of core users (around 2,600), for a site that has 33,000,000 unique users in a given month.
Of course, things are a bit different here (and on that other site). NPR, like most major news sites, isn't really about the comment system, but the other site sort of became known for it... and we have something like it here. So having comments here might seem more important.
But I just wanted to note that if people are actually coming here for a good selection of news (or at least interesting stories), the comment numbers are not necessarily reflective of how large the overall readership community could be.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by NCommander on Tuesday November 08 2016, @12:52AM
I've noted in other posts that we're growing on the whole, and our bandwidth and load requirements have steady gone up year after year. While we might be just 'medium' sized, we're much more active than many other sites, and we allow anonymous posting which helps a lot.
I may ask permission from the community to run some statistic logging again so we can get a better idea of traffic and site growth and such.
Still always moving
(Score: 5, Insightful) by gman003 on Monday November 07 2016, @06:09PM
You joke, but this is in fact my #1 problem with the site, and the main reason why I visit rarely and post even less often. The community here is turning toxic. You get racist, sexist comments on any website that allows comments, but here, they've been getting modded to +5. Say what you will about Slashdot, but at least there the trolls get modded down instead of up.
Even outside the obviously-problematic comments like that, there's smaller problems everywhere. Politics gets dragged into everything, and the tone is always "the system is broken, we're all fucked". Same for the perennial hating-on-Microsoft, hating-on-Apple, and hating-on-Google. And the alt-right tribalistic hating-on-SJWs, which goes hand-in-hand with the racism thing earlier (I hate the SJW tribalistic hating-on-rightists too, but there's none of that here so it's not relevant). The overall tone of the site itself seems to be nihilistic despair. I'm a generally negative person but even this is too much for me. I get my tech news mostly from Ars, Anand and El Reg directly these days, because most of the stories here and elsewhere are links there anyways, or somewhere copying one of their articles. Hell, their comments are better than Soylent's, too.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 07 2016, @08:41PM
Toxic is exactly the right word to describe this place.
Want to fix it?
Allow only positive moderation, kill the +5 moderation cap, and make moderation non-anonymous.
(Score: 3, Touché) by zafiro17 on Monday November 07 2016, @09:08PM
It's everybody's duty to help fill this place with quality, intelligent conversation. The more good stuff posted, the more the crapola can be drowned out, or modded down into oblivion. Go tell your smart friends about this place.
Dad always thought laughter was the best medicine, which I guess is why several of us died of tuberculosis - Jack Handey
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 07 2016, @09:34PM
It's everybody's duty to help fill this place with quality, intelligent conversation. The more good stuff posted, the more the crapola can be drowned out, or modded down into oblivion. Go tell your smart friends about this place.
The last time I downmodded something one of the site admins disagreed with me and banned me from moderation for a couple of weeks. I haven't downmodded anything, even obvious trolls, since that little episode.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by NCommander on Tuesday November 08 2016, @12:53AM
Citation?
Mod bans are only handed out due to spam, or abusing the moderation system. I can see the mod logs, so if you link the post(s), I'll look into it and any staff members involved.
Still always moving
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Tuesday November 08 2016, @11:25AM
Yeah, Citation Needed. The only moderations we override and ban for are misuse of Spam and mod-bombing. You're allowed to moderate as poorly as your little heart desires, you're just not allowed to abuse the system.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 07 2016, @10:37PM
> Go tell your smart friends about this place.
Wishful thinking dude.
The problem with letting enough shitposters have their way is that they chase out the smart people. It just simply isn't worth the effort of dealing with with the shit. What's the upside? To end up covered in shit? Fuck that. Easier just to move on and leave the pigs to wallow in their own filth.
(Score: 2) by zafiro17 on Monday November 07 2016, @11:00PM
... and yet, here you are, posting. Seeing as how you plan on sticking around, make it worthwhile.
Dad always thought laughter was the best medicine, which I guess is why several of us died of tuberculosis - Jack Handey
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 08 2016, @01:00AM
I've been here from the beginning, I've submitted hundreds of stories and I have a LOT of free time due to being bed-ridden for the last year. Once I am healed enough to have a life again, the value calculation of putting up with the shitposters will change and I will drift away.
(Score: 2) by lgw on Monday November 07 2016, @09:20PM
I really appreciate the near lack of SJW-bait stories here. Let Slashdot be the "Women in computing" bitchfest. Soylent already has better story selection than Slashdot - just drop the SJW clickbait stories and not only will the trolling go way down, but story selection will be great.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 07 2016, @10:34PM
Oh look, exactly the kind of person gman was complaining about. Funny how that works.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Phoenix666 on Tuesday November 08 2016, @01:19AM
Well, I am guilty as charged. Though I would observe that politics is pervading everything and getting everyone down these days, so how would you expect that Soylent wouldn't also? We'll see if that continues past tomorrow, though probably half of America and most of the world will be pissed off either way, and the other half of America will be merely relieved. I would also observe that a lot of SN's community tends a little older than other online communities; we've been through a lot of tech ups & downs, trends, and innovation, and this era we find ourselves in isn't like those of efflorescence we've known in the past. The last strong tech economy we can remember was in the late 90's. So there you have two significant overlays that might be coloring what you're perceiving.
If you have significant cause for hope, please bring it. If you feel ebullient, share why. Today feels me like how the Byzantines must have felt on the Eve of the Fall of Constantinople, so if there's cause to hope it would be welcome.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by gman003 on Tuesday November 08 2016, @05:07AM
Entire countries have moved to renewables. There's a new Space Race going on with goals of actual colonization. Every major auto maker has electric cars either in production or in development. A self-described Democratic Socialist ran for nomination in America and was taken seriously. AI is starting to take off as a real solution to real problems.
There's plenty to be terrified about (I am literally packing a bug-out bag right now in case of post-election rioting tomorrow) but there is room for hope.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Tuesday November 08 2016, @11:29AM
Socialism of any stripe is not reason for hope but for despair. It takes those who produce and makes them slaves to those who do not.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by NCommander on Tuesday November 08 2016, @12:49AM
On the whole, we are growing. Originally, we shot up from 100 user accounts to about 3000 when we launched. Since then, we've put on about 1000-1500 accounts per year (max UID 6399 as of writing). The problem I've noticed is a lot of niche articles tends to not get a lot of comments as a lot of users aren't knowledgeable in that subject and tend to stay quiet; this has happened with original content I've posted as well.
Unfortunately, the stuff that gets the most comment bait are the type of articles a lot of people dislike, such as politics and such.
Still always moving
(Score: 2) by mojo chan on Tuesday November 08 2016, @08:54AM
I do think about commenting on the more technical stuff or the original content stories, but I tend not to bother because when I have posted thoughtful, complex arguments before all I get in return is down-modded and shitpost replies.
Unfortunately shitposting is a really effective way to drive people off a site. All you have to do is copy/paste some standard talking points, carefully designed to frame every debate in the shitpost narrative. People soon learn not to bother responding because aside from the down mods they get, it's a complete waste of time. You waste your precious time deconstructing and refuting their points, and they just copy/paste some more shitposts in response.
I don't know how to fix it. It's a problem everywhere. Slashdot included, although at least there are enough good moderators there to reduce its effectiveness a bit. From what I hear the site owners have been wielding the banhammer quite a bit since the take-over, to try to sort this out.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
(Score: 2) by NCommander on Tuesday November 08 2016, @10:21AM
I suspect a part of it is that for many people, its psychological that they don't want to downvote someone. We have some breaks in the system as ACs start at 0, and you need high karma to post at 2. We could wield the banhammer with abandon, but that's just going to encourage more people to troll more; best way to get rid of is to ignore (and/or moderate it out of existance). ACs are de-facto banned if their IP subnet drops below -25 karma. If memory serves, logged in users drop to 0 at -10 karma, and -1 at -25.
I'm well open to ideas on how to improve it, but its not an easy problem to solve in the slighest.
Still always moving
(Score: 2) by mojo chan on Tuesday November 08 2016, @10:40AM
The only thing I can think of is reviewing mods personally. Meta-moderation is supposed to do it, but I think you need more users for it to be effective. People who moderate things troll, offtopic, overrated or whatever just because they agree should not get more mod points. Hopefully then the problem will self-correct over time.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Tuesday November 08 2016, @11:31AM
Yeah, the problem is finding someone capable of being absolutely impartial to do it.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by mojo chan on Tuesday November 08 2016, @01:07PM
The usual solution is to have simple guidelines that cover the worst abuses. Doesn't have to be perfect, only 80% coverage with low false positives.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Tuesday November 08 2016, @02:35PM
Yeah, I just don't trust guidelines when it comes to screwing with someone's speech. They may be good, they may be bad, but they're always going to be interpreted differently from person to person. Which is why I did my best to spell out really, really clearly what is and isn't Spam when that moderation came out. And there are still disagreements and butthurt to be found.
Mind you, this ain't all up to me; that's just my personal opinion on the matter.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by mojo chan on Tuesday November 08 2016, @02:57PM
It's impossible to have perfect moderation, but if you don't try you end up with 4chan. So the real question is, where on the spectrum between 4chan and a moderated political debate do you want be?
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Tuesday November 08 2016, @04:05PM
Nah, I trust you guys to shut the channer types down through numbers. When/If that starts to not happen it'll be worth revisiting but not quite yet IMO.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.