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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: 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.