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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: 2) by Fnord666 on Monday November 07 2016, @09:44PM
I think that's an important point to consider. If Soylentils who are subject matter experts submit technical articles from their areas of particular expertise on developments they consider important to their field, or that they know are fundamental for laymen to understand, then the chance that we all collectively learn from that goes way up.
The issue that I come across is that a lot of papers in my field are still, even in this day and age, locked behind a paywall. It's hard to have meaningful discussions about the content of a paper when no one can read it.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Phoenix666 on Monday November 07 2016, @10:35PM
Yeah that's the barrier I've run into in the past when trying to get better, crunchier stories--journal paywalls. I've thought about data mining the Open Data stuff that swept the scene a couple years ago, because that stuff is collected by the government and supposed to be free to you and me, but that's a lot of work for uncertain gain. I like geographical info and that sort of thing, but how many here do, too?
And that's part of the dilemma--there are a lot of subject matter experts who could write great stuff on what's state-of-the-art in their fields, but if it's too esoteric for a robust discussion to arise around it, it feels like a huge waste of time for the author, which means it would be the last time they ever did anything like that.
I've got a process down where I can put together a story submission in 2-3 minutes. Over my morning coffee I can submit 6-10 and get my news reading done at the same time--kills two birds with one stone. If any one of those submissions gets zero comments, it's not a big deal because it only represents 2 minutes of my time and meanwhile it at least supplied a headline on the main page that Soylentils can hearken back to if they want later. I try to spark discussion with an ice breaker or geek reference or lame humor, but it's not ideal.
So we work with what we have. Sometimes tech/science stories you can sink your teeth into come along in the dozens, and properly spaced out they can last you for a week. Honestly, though, most times there isn't much in the news to be gleaned. More sources can help there.
Or maybe we approach it like a traditional editor would, whereby they have stories people are working on that run when the "OMG did you hear what just happened?!" stuff runs thin?
Washington DC delenda est.