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SoylentNews is people

posted by martyb on Monday February 19 2018, @01:00PM   Printer-friendly
from the cake-for-everyone! dept.

It is my great pleasure to announce that SoylentNews has just celebrated four years of service to the community! The very first story on the site appeared on 2014-02-12 and actually went live to everyone 2014-02-17.

It all started when a story on Slashdot made reference to its "audience" which ticked off quite a number of people. Soon after came a boycott of Slashdot — aka the "Slashcott". While this was in effect, an intrepid few people somehow managed to take a years-old, out-of-date, unsupported, open-sourced version of slashcode and somehow managed to get it up to speed to run on much more recent versions of Apache, MySql, etc. Recurring crashes and outages were the norm. (See last year's anniversary story for many more details!) Further, on July 4th, 2014 our application to become a Public Benefit Corporation was approved — this set the stage for us to be able to accept funding from the community.

By the time you read this, we will have posted 20,980 stories to the site to which over 639,907 comments have been made!

We could not have done this without all of you. You (the community) submit the stories for the site. You write the comments... and moderate them, too. You made recommendations for improvements to the site. You are SoylentNews.

It has been my privilege and honor to work with a great group of folks who have done the behind-the-scenes skunk-work which has kept this site running. It does bear mentioning that this site is entirely staffed by volunteers. Nobody here has received even a penny's worth of income from the site. Like you, we have home and work responsibilities, but in our spare time we still strive to provide an environment that is conducive to discussions of predominantly tech-related matters.

Having said all that, I must add that income to the site has dropped recently. Having let my subscription lapse in the past, I know how easy that can be. Take a moment to check your subscription status. We have on the order of 100 people who have subscribed in the past, have visited the site in the past month, and whose subscription has expired. If your subscription is up-to-date, please consider either extending it or making a gift subscription (default is to UID 6 - "mcasadevall" aka NCommander). NB the dollar amounts presented are the minimum payments required for that duration -- we'll happily accept larger amounts. =)

If financial contributions are infeasible for you, we always appreciate story submissions. Submit a link, a few paragraphs from the story, and ideally a sentence or two about what you found interesting and send it to us. Any questions, please take a look at the Submission Guidelines.

Of course, the comments are where it's at. Thoughtful, well-reasoned, well-supported comments seem to do best here. Inflammatory histrionics garner attention, and usually down-mods, too. Speaking of which, if you have good Karma, and have been registered with the site for at least a month, you are invited to participate in moderation. Unlike other sites that up-mod or down-mod to infinity, we have something more like olympic-scoring here. A comment score can vary from -1 to a +5. This is how I look at scores: -1 (total waste of your time), 0 (meh), +1 (okay), +2 (good), +3 (quite good), +4 (very good), +5 (don't miss this one!).


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  • (Score: 5, Insightful) by c0lo on Monday February 19 2018, @01:46PM (6 children)

    by c0lo (156) Subscriber Badge on Monday February 19 2018, @01:46PM (#640076) Journal

    Happy birthday, S/N, many happy returns, where else I can waste my time more fruitfully?

    Thanks to the editorial board and site maintainers, in the first place.
    And to TMB second, for his active coding and admining wizardry. And for the occasional chuckle caused by his posts - don't tell him the socialists are after his code mainly, pecuniary interests secondary, he won't believe you (understandable, dabbling even occasionally into PERL has to have consequences on mental well-being)

    Hat tip for NCommander if someone has seen him. Hope he's still around, not totally lost in a Dwarf Fortress, rotting in a pile of small stout corpses.

    Nice bunch you soylenters, see you around for another 100 years... maybe we'll get to outlive the green site some day - that's not the point anymore, but what soylenter in her/his full mind expects the comments to stick or even have a point?

    Of course, this wouldn't be one of my serious posts without ending with a (large smile) (grin)

    --
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
    Starting Score:    1  point
    Moderation   +3  
       Insightful=3, Total=3
    Extra 'Insightful' Modifier   0  
    Karma-Bonus Modifier   +1  

    Total Score:   5  
  • (Score: 3, Funny) by fishybell on Monday February 19 2018, @04:35PM (5 children)

    by fishybell (3156) on Monday February 19 2018, @04:35PM (#640136)

    Nice bunch you soylenters

    I see you must be new here

    • (Score: 3, Touché) by hemocyanin on Monday February 19 2018, @04:55PM (4 children)

      by hemocyanin (186) on Monday February 19 2018, @04:55PM (#640144) Journal

      Compare UIDs to figure out who is new between you two.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 19 2018, @07:11PM (3 children)

        by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 19 2018, @07:11PM (#640200)

        Heh, look at ^this sucker buying into the bullshit of UID seniority. Hate to break it to you but AC was there even before UID 100 :P

        • (Score: 5, Informative) by aristarchus on Monday February 19 2018, @08:50PM (2 children)

          by aristarchus (2645) on Monday February 19 2018, @08:50PM (#640257) Journal

          In the beginning, was the AC, and the AC was peaceful, and darkness prevailed.

          Then the Founder said, "Yo, codemonkey, let there be SoylentNews!" And there was light.

          The AC felt much consternation, but he fit in after a while. At least he was not Eth, most of the time.

          Happy birthday, Soylentils!

          • (Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 19 2018, @09:19PM (1 child)

            by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 19 2018, @09:19PM (#640272)

            You know that EF only posts AC if it ("it" b/c probably identifies as attack helo) has something useful to say right?

            • (Score: 2, Funny) by Sulla on Tuesday February 20 2018, @04:34AM

              by Sulla (5173) on Tuesday February 20 2018, @04:34AM (#640461) Journal

              Wow rude. If you had any common sense and decency you would know that "it" is misgendering for an attack helicopter. AAFSS or AAH you INSENSITIVE CLOD

              My browser says misgendering is spelled incorrectly but msgendering or miss gendering will probably also get me in trouble in Canada

              --
              Ceterum censeo Sinae esse delendam