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SoylentNews is people

posted by mrpg on Tuesday July 11 2017, @11:00AM   Printer-friendly
from the where-are-we? dept.

tl;dr:

This is a meta post concerning Soylentnews' background, finances, operations, staffing, story scheduling, and a conclusion. If this is not your cup-of-coffee++ (or tea, etc.), then please ignore this story — another will appear shortly.

Background:

In February of 2014, a group of ticked-off Slashdot users got together, said "Fuck Beta!", and launched an alternative web site focused on the community. It started with an out-of-date and unmaintained open source version of slashcode which was promptly forked and renamed 'Rehash'. We incorporated as a Public Benefit Corporation. We experienced site outages, questions of leadership, and faced predictions of failure. Thanks to persistence, dedication, many late nights (and some very early mornings), we persevered and are still here today.

Soylentnews is a place for people to engage in discussions about topics of interest to the community. Not all topics are of interest to everyone, of course. In large part it is up to the community to submit stories — the large majority of these do get accepted to the main page. This is all the more important during the "silly season" &mash; summer in the northern hemisphere — when many people are on vacation and fewer scholarly articles are published.

Finances:

We are still an all-volunteer organization. Nobody here has made a profit off this site. In fact, Soylentnews is still in debt to the founders who put up the funds required to get us up and running. I am happy to report that we have finally made enough progress that some payback to the founders may be possible.

Here are the unaudited numbers from site subscriptions for the first half of our fiscal year (2017-01-01 through 2017-06-30):

Base goal: $3000
Stretch goal: $2000
Subscription count: 133
Gross subscription income : $3795
Net subscription income: $3645 (estimated - after payment processor fees)
Net over goal: $645

So, thanks to all you Soylentils who have donated, we have a surplus at the moment. The ultimate decision is up to the Board of Directors, but the current sense is that we should build a prudent reserve of some months' operating expenses before paying back the founders. In light of the foregoing, we are aiming for the same fundraising goals for the second half of the year... $3,000 base and $2,000 stretch goals. More in line with business norms, however, these are now being presented in the "Site News" box as quarterly goals: $1,500 base and $1,000 stretch goals, respectively.

Operations:

We've been forthright and upfront right from the start and it is our continued commitment to keep you informed of any issues in the site's operations.

To wit, we recently received a notice from our web-hosting provider, Linode, that one of our servers had been reported as having been added to a spam-blocking list. Staff immediately responded and found a misconfiguration in our link-shortening service. (It was only supposed to shorten links originating on Soylentnews.org, but was accepting links for other domains, as well.) A dump of the database was taken, non-SN sites were purged, the shortening service was updated to correctly implement the restriction to only shorten links from soylentnews.org, and Linode was informed of these actions.

We also recently experienced a problem with our slashd daemon which, among many other tasks, hands out moderation points each night. This fell over on us for a couple of nights leading to our handing out mod points manually to all users. This seems to have been rectified — please let us know if you see a recurrence.

Staff:

Lastly, one of the senior editorial staff has been on hiatus to deal with major illnesses in his family. His dedicated efforts in helping them has brought ill health upon himself, as well. I ask you to keep janrinok and his family in your thoughts and, if you are of a mind to do so, in your prayers.

Scheduling:

There have been discussions in the past as how we should best handle circumstances when there is a dearth of acceptable stories in the queue. Do we post something marginal just to fill the time or should we hold out and only publish when we have enough suitable material to publish. Past efforts and comments have suggested the majority prefer we avoid posting stories just to fill time slots. In short: quality over quantity. Further, staff cannot work 24/7/365 without a break either. We all need a break sometimes and summer is a good time to take one. In other words, we have been running with reduced staffing for the past couple of months and will continue to do so for the next few months as well.

The result? Over the past month or so, we have experimented with further spacing out stories on holidays (Independence Day in the USA) and on weekends. Instead of the usual cadence of a story appearing every 90 minutes or so, we have tried slowing to posting a story every 2 hours or even every 2.5 hours.

My perception is that this has worked okay. At least I have not noticed any complaints in the comments. It could well be that I had missed something, too. So I put this question to the community: How has the story spacing been working out?

Finally:

Please keep those story submissions coming, please continue to subscribe (you can offer more than the minimum suggested amount), and — most importantly — please keep reading and commenting! Discussion is


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  • (Score: 2) by kazzie on Tuesday July 11 2017, @04:25PM (17 children)

    by kazzie (5309) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday July 11 2017, @04:25PM (#537649)

    On that note, how often does a story here hit 500 comments? Could it be the case that with a (very) high number of stories posted, each story gets relatively few comments, and thus not much of a conversation?

    It's occurred to me recently that several stories are failing to get double figures of comments. I don't know if this is related to the type of story, the timing, or something else...

    Starting Score:    1  point
    Karma-Bonus Modifier   +1  

    Total Score:   2  
  • (Score: 2) by takyon on Tuesday July 11 2017, @04:32PM

    by takyon (881) <reversethis-{gro ... s} {ta} {noykat}> on Tuesday July 11 2017, @04:32PM (#537655) Journal

    https://soylentnews.org/meta/hof.pl [soylentnews.org]

    As expected, politics and terrorism/disasters (with a couple of meta posts) get the most comments. Low triple digit and high double digit counts are common.

    This does not necessarily mean that there is less interest in actual sci/tech stories. Those stories might not have anything to argue over back-and-forth, and may get less page hits simply because less users are checking back due to comment reply notifications.

    --
    [SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
  • (Score: 2) by darnkitten on Tuesday July 11 2017, @05:59PM (13 children)

    by darnkitten (1912) on Tuesday July 11 2017, @05:59PM (#537709)

    I'm usually late to any discussion, as I can only check in in my "spare time," when I'm not helping patrons or supervising volunteers, for example.

    I've found, of late, that most of the time, when I finally I get to an article, the commentary has already become dominated by the Eternal, only-tangentially-related-to-the-article political/social/cultural-Argumentation that has become the norm, and no one is actually discussing the original article or its implications.

    I find that I rarely have anything useful to contribute when the Commentary has reached that point, and the Commentarians are by then more likely to react than respond, so I generally peruse rather than participate.

    Even on the occasions where I find something (usually in the early comments) where I feel I can contribute, despite my lateness, often the person to whom I would be responding has posted AC, and therefore won't even know I've responded; and no one else will notice my contribution due to the conversation having turned into the aforementioned Eternal Argumentation.

    Happily, when I am able to respond to a logged-in Soylent (Soylentils sounds really awkward in my head), I usually get a good response, one which either compels further discussion, or which, at the least, makes me think. Unfortunately, at that point, a patron usually walks in the door and I don't get back to the discussion for a couple of days, which doesn't make me the best conversationalist.

    -

    TL;DR, the noise is increasingly drowning out the signal, but the quality of my fellow Soylents' comments when they are not argumentating keeps me coming back.

    -

    On an unrelated note, do we really only have around 7000 (registered) members? I wonder how many users log in in a typical month, and how that has changed as we have grown...

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 11 2017, @07:43PM (1 child)

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 11 2017, @07:43PM (#537762)

      ermagerrrrd, stop just adding "ating" to every verb!!!! Yes I will be that person.

      • (Score: 3, Informative) by darnkitten on Wednesday July 12 2017, @01:59AM

        by darnkitten (1912) on Wednesday July 12 2017, @01:59AM (#537902)

        Argumentation and Argumentating as useful terms go back at least to the 1700s, and were used by both the unlearned and the scholar, my friend...

        Argumentation, as opposed to Argument carries the sense of 'arguing for the sake of being troublesome, quarrelsome, nitpickish or "just plain being annoying;"' and thence comes the coinage, The Eternal Argumentation.

        -

        ...and yes, I am that person as well...but I own it.

    • (Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Tuesday July 11 2017, @07:50PM (8 children)

      by tangomargarine (667) on Tuesday July 11 2017, @07:50PM (#537766)

      often the person to whom I would be responding has posted AC, and therefore won't even know I've responded

      See, I keep thinking this, but often ACs actually respond faster when I reply to them than logged-in users. I'm not sure how they do it.

      --
      "Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
      • (Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Tuesday July 11 2017, @08:33PM (2 children)

        by maxwell demon (1608) on Tuesday July 11 2017, @08:33PM (#537778) Journal

        See, I keep thinking this, but often ACs actually respond faster when I reply to them than logged-in users. I'm not sure how they do it.

        By remembering where they posted and checking the page for answers?

        --
        The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
        • (Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Tuesday July 11 2017, @09:51PM (1 child)

          by tangomargarine (667) on Tuesday July 11 2017, @09:51PM (#537811)

          So many tabs...you'd think it would be easier to just make an account rather than keep flipping back to them and refresh to see whether somebody replied. And like I said, they seem to do it so fast.

          Instead, they could be receiving SN's artisanal, hand-crafted notification emails, lovingly deposited in your inbox by our team of tireless, overcaffeinated Internet fairies.

          --
          "Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
          • (Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Wednesday July 12 2017, @04:30AM

            by maxwell demon (1608) on Wednesday July 12 2017, @04:30AM (#537947) Journal

            So many tabs...

            You are aware that not every AC post is by the same person?

            And no, you don't need to keep the tabs open. You just need to look at the stories and open those you commented on.

            And it's not as if everyone is interested in every story.

            --
            The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
      • (Score: 3, Informative) by takyon on Tuesday July 11 2017, @08:36PM

        by takyon (881) <reversethis-{gro ... s} {ta} {noykat}> on Tuesday July 11 2017, @08:36PM (#537780) Journal

        1. Lots and lots of open tabs, ready to refresh at any moment. Find a way to refresh all tabs at once. Close each comment or story after a few days.
        2. Bookmark every anonymous comment you make, or at least the ones you want to keep up with.
        3. Add some identifying info to each comment so that you can use the search engine. Wonder why people keep telling you to get an account already.

        --
        [SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
      • (Score: 2) by darnkitten on Wednesday July 12 2017, @01:42AM

        by darnkitten (1912) on Wednesday July 12 2017, @01:42AM (#537895)

        If I can respond early, in the conversation, there is usually prompt response, but once the Argumentation starts, the AC responses drop off quickly, I presume because getting pissed-off or indignant followed by some yelling is more entertaining than discussion.

        Me, it just get old quick, 'ey?

        -

        --man--if it weren't for the customers, I'd've finished this response a couple of hours sooner.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 12 2017, @02:54AM (1 child)

        by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 12 2017, @02:54AM (#537927)

        We are legion, that's how.

        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 13 2017, @07:25AM

          by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 13 2017, @07:25AM (#538616)

          We are legion, but we speak as one.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 12 2017, @07:46PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 12 2017, @07:46PM (#538269)

        In a somewhat related vein, the ability to tag posts so that you get notified of replies like they were your own would be nice. This would make it easy to follow interesting conversations and also make tracking posts made as AC easier for those who do do while logged in. An option to set notifications to occur at certain depths of replies would be nice too.

    • (Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Tuesday July 11 2017, @11:38PM (1 child)

      by Phoenix666 (552) on Tuesday July 11 2017, @11:38PM (#537844) Journal

      That's kind of always been the case from the early days of Slashdot. The most discussed articles there were not "Which Linux Distro is Your Favorite, and Why?" but 9/11 and Columbine.

      On Soylent that same dynamic presents, but there are some cross-cutting technical subjects that do garner a lot of discussion. Standards is one such. Tool suites is another. The more isoteric articles like "New Metallurgical Approach Found" don't get discussed because there usually aren't that many metallurgists who can speak with authority and everyone else, unless they have something witty to say, keep mum because they don't want to sound dumb.

      For me, toward the end of my time on Slashdot I only ever checked in for good geek humor, not to have bracing technical discussion.

      --
      Washington DC delenda est.
      • (Score: 2) by darnkitten on Wednesday July 12 2017, @03:04AM

        by darnkitten (1912) on Wednesday July 12 2017, @03:04AM (#537932)

        I guess it depends on the type of "bracing technical discussion"--some of it I enjoy, some I ignore. Humor as well--while not being exactly humorless, many days I find my "funnybone" is less ticklish than others,' and I find myself more bemused than amused.

        What I do enjoy is learning something new, gaining a fresh insight into how someone else thinks or views a problem, perceiving suddenly someone's very obvious passion for a subject in which I would not have been remotely interested ten minutes earlier, or making any of the myriad tiny connections possible in a place like SoylentNews.

        Momentary, flashing disconnections from the stress or business of the day.

        That's kind of always been the case from the early days of Slashdot. The most discussed articles there were not "Which Linux Distro is Your Favorite, and Why?" but 9/11 and Columbine.

        I understand that--I'm objecting more to actual, interesting discussions being dragged into the monotonous regularity and sameness of argumentation (see my earlier post on "argumentation" vs "argument")--hobbyhorses are no match for the real animals.

        -

        Oh, yes--Ubuntu Studio, with a few KDE elements replacing some from Xfce.

  • (Score: 2) by hendrikboom on Wednesday July 12 2017, @04:07PM (1 child)

    by hendrikboom (1125) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday July 12 2017, @04:07PM (#538143) Homepage Journal

    The proposal was for 500 comments, not for each single story with 500 comments.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 15 2017, @04:51AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 15 2017, @04:51AM (#539469)

      The 500 was said in jest. Please replace with "some arbitrary number."