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SoylentNews
from the editorial-staff-is-getting-TIRED dept.
I will put this to you, the community, in a very straight, simple (hopefully understandable) way.
The editorial staff is a small, hardworking group. There are currently about 5 of us that are actively pushing stories out on a regular basis, and we need help.
We humbly come to you, the community, to solicit for a volunteer or two. We will provide all the necessary training, at a cost of just 3 easy payments of $999.99US, or entirely free if you apply before 1 Apr 2099.
For that pittance, you can expect to learn:
- The editing process
- How to get onto the bouncer for IRC
- The best ways to abuse The Mighty Buzzard
- The secret staff handshake
- How to be abused, and learn to like it
- How to deal with having your name in lights
- and much much more!
In all seriousness, we all are busy and have lives. So do you, and we get that, but for this community to continue to thrive, we need a little fresh blood on the editorial staff. Some of us have been at this since the site went live almost 3 years ago (janrinok and martyb have posted over 3000 articles EACH). To put it in perspective, the site has only run about 14,500. Some of us came on almost a year later, but like any organization, there has been attrition, and we need to replenish.
We are starting to see some of the tell-tale signs of burnout, and to avoid that, we need your help.
If you are interested, please feel free to reach out in the comments below, via email ([nick] at soylentnews dot org), or hit us on IRC. If we aren't there (we all LOOK like we are logged in all the time due to the bouncer, but we may not actually be there), /join #editorial and leave a message — we will get back to you.
Remember, it isn't all doom and gloom! Working on staff, you will be on a team with a fantastic group of REALLY smart (myself excluded) people. I can honestly say I have made some really good friends from this experience, and I've even gotten to meet one of the guys in meat space. It is something that I am truly glad I took advantage of when the opportunity came around.
Thanks for listening, and with a little luck, we will see one or two of you pretty soon.
Live Long and Prosper,
-cmn32480
[TMB Note: Seriously. You really don't want me having to pick stories.]
[Update: see this comment below if you've expressed interest in volunteering.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 14 2016, @06:57PM
This site exists because Slashdot was going Beta. That is no longer the case (they were bought by someone else). We post the majority of articles that Slashdot posts. Why do we need to exist? What makes us different enough to be worthwhile? The site was a success, it achieved it's original purpose. Why continue? Record all the steps taken to get here and keep them stored for the next time Slashdot starts to die.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 14 2016, @07:17PM
Why not this site? I only come here and post stories here. I don't really care to hit a bunch of sites every day, so I've settled on this one and I'm happy with it.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by requerdanos on Monday November 14 2016, @07:21PM
Because we are a community of regulars who work, each in our own way(s), to enrich our own community and help it to thrive and grow.
Yes, there are other sites on Internet, including slashdot, that do similar things, but this site is ours.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by ledow on Monday November 14 2016, @07:23PM
Because Slashdot still regularly goes downhill?
The quality here is much higher. The first time I hit a racist troll post here, I modded it to oblivion because that sort of thing just doesn't fit here. On Slashdot, it's still "accepted" somehow.
The stories here have a much high quality but less quantity of comments. Slashdot is still on life support as far as many users are concerned.
(Score: 2) by Gaaark on Monday November 14 2016, @10:48PM
Yes, the quality here is much better than the quantity there (although I haven't been THERE in a dogs age)
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 15 2016, @02:47AM
I dunno that it's that much better here than over there. I only post AC when I post on both sites because it's not worth my time to deal with the obvious trolls.
I find myself posting less and less because the SNR is getting pretty bad.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 14 2016, @09:30PM
We post the majority of articles that Slashdot posts.
I don't think this is true. There may be some overlap, but I'm confident it isn't the majority.
There will always be cross-coverage of technology news between this site and Slashdot because there is an overlap in interest and neither site will specifically avoid topics because the other site published it first.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by The Mighty Buzzard on Monday November 14 2016, @09:51PM
Let me answer that by bringing up the dev team. Slashdot, under shiny new management, has been promising unicode support for the better part of a year now. I coded it up for this site (having never looked at slashcode before) in around three weeks worth of spare time. And I'm fairly sure both NCommander and paulej72 are better than me at perl. And let's not forget martyb who could tear up an anvil given five minutes of playing with it. That's a quality you really want in a QA guy, though it is annoying when you think you're done with something and he shows you you're not.
There's also the editorial team. Click on the original submission link next time you see a story from MrPlow or exec. These guys do a lot of work that I'm very glad is not on my plate. Stories about every 90 minutes five days a week, every two hours on weekends, all year long. They don't let the site sit without a story even if they have to go out and find one when there's nothing in the submission queue and it's a holiday weekend with no significant news.
Not to neglect the admin team or anyone else. They know what they do, they do it well, and the rest of us are all very glad it's not our problem.
I dunno what kind of folks they got working for them over at Slashdot but I know we got one seriously badass team for the job here.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 15 2016, @03:53AM
What is even more sad is you fixed *THEIR* code. They could take notes and fix what is left. People have been telling them in the comments for the past year it is fixed. They have no interest in fixing it. That much is clear.
Their site does *not* work well if you turn javascript off. 99.99% of the time I try to comment it pretty much lets me do 1 maybe 2 comments a day as AC. Where as here I can comment pretty much as much as I need on a post as AC so long as I do not do it too fast.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Tuesday November 15 2016, @11:53AM
I did offer to help them. It would take me all of a morning to get their shat unicode-friendly after putting so much time in on ours. Even with the divergent code bases. They weren't interested.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 15 2016, @02:26PM
If you use TBB you can just copy your comment/title, go back to the comments.pl page with all the get fields tacked on it (the later ones with no option are 'post' form/cgi submissions and don't properly reset) and do new circuit, and usually get a 'fresh' ip to post more stories from. Soylentnews doesn't have that problem, however if you connect to the clearnet site over tor there is an issue with your comment audorization token not matching up with the ip address if your circuits change between clicking reply, and when your comment is finished and you hit submit. Slashdot has the same shortcoming (likely intentional anti-spam feature, but it obviously doesn't provide that benefit if switching circuits and hopping through three pages allows you to submit anyways.)
(Score: 4, Insightful) by caffeine on Monday November 14 2016, @10:04PM
For me switching from Slashdot to SoylentNews was not driven by a desire to avoid the beta version. After years of being a SlashDot regular, I was getting tired of all the idiots posting strong opinions on every story. It seemed the signal to noise ratio was deteriorating and I was looking for an alternative.
From time to time I look at SlashDot and the problem there remains the same. It would be a great pity if SoylentNews does not continue.
On that note, I'd be willing to help by working as an editor.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 14 2016, @10:42PM
Why do we need Trader Joe's? We already have Whole Foods.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 15 2016, @01:03PM
Q: Why do we need Trader Joe's?
A: Cheap. Drinkable. Wine.
Q: We already have Whole Foods.
A: Expensive. Undigestible. Quinoa/Kale/Linoleum.
You're comparing decent apples to douchebag oranges.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 14 2016, @11:58PM
A bit off topic, but let me start by saying I love Soylent News. It reminds me of what Slashdot used to be. But the community seems to be really small. I think some of it could be the name "Soylent" News. I just Googled Soylent News and I got...news about the meal replacement product "Soylent." It seems like it might be beneficial to think about a rename/rebrand. Slashdot is geeky but makes sense to people that have worked on the command line or program. Soylent just sounds a bit off putting. Are you trying to be a funny fiction product from a really old movie that a lot of people these days probably haven't seen, or don't remember? Are you a news site about Soylent(TM) Brand Meal Replacement(R) products?
Just seems like a more tech/geek friendly name would help from a marketing aspect.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 15 2016, @04:11AM
I just logged into register.com and tried a bunch of names. Everything obvious has been taken; this is the best one I found:
Congratulations, your domain is available!
ohpointone.com ...............................
(Score: 2) by DECbot on Tuesday November 15 2016, @07:18PM
SoylentNews Name History [soylentnews.org]
The first week or so, the site was AltSlashdot in Usenet fashion. Discussion soon pointed out that the name had to be changed to avoid future legal entanglements with Dice or whatever future overlords who may own Slashdot. A contest was held which encouraged geeky/scifi names that avoided words like slash, dot, and beta. SoylentNews won the vote as it recognizes the merit of /. to be the community itself as well as a referencing a terrible, obscure sci-fi cult film.
If we're renaming the site, I'd like to suggest "colonptth.org" and "colonsptth.org" just so our path could be http://:ptth [:ptth] or https://:sptth [:sptth] if you're using ssl. ://: might make for some pretty cool short hand too that's easier to type than !β.
cats~$ sudo chown -R us /home/base
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 15 2016, @03:35AM
I can think of several reasons, so let me state a few of them.
One, monopoly sucks, competition and alternatives are good, no matter how tiny. Why do we need Firefox when there is IE, why do we need Androids when there is iPhone, why do we need Google Plus when there is Facebook... (OK, that last one may be a bad example, but you catch my drift.)
Two, some of us prefer a small community. Like living in a small town vs living in a metropolis. Even the village idiots get more endearing. (Hi, Ethanol-Fueled! Hi, Oh Powerful Birdster!)
Three, Eternal September. No, no, hear me out. The next time Slashdot screws up and there is another Buck Feta Exodus, a bunch of new people will switch over to SN. Then we, the Old Guard, can start complaining about all the newbs destroying our community and how much better it was in the old days, and ain't that the primary role of communities?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 15 2016, @08:12PM
Let a hundred flowers blossom.
-- Mao Zedong
It`s your pasture now, and it`s not so big-only three thousand miles from east to west, only two thousand miles from north to south-but all between, where ten thousand points of light prick out the cities, towns and villages, there, seeker, you will find us burning in the night.
-- Thomas Wolfe
[...] a brilliant diversity spread like stars, like a thousand points of light in a broad and peaceful sky.
-- George H.W. Bush