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from the trying-to-please-the-Momma-Bear,-the-Papa-Bear-AND-the-Baby-Bear dept.
We get a lot of story submissions here on SoylentNews. Well over 37,000 so far and still counting. (THANK YOU!)
We occasionally see a story submission from an Anonymous Coward or new user that is an obvious attempt to increase the number of views of the linked story. We regularly decline to publish those stories. The self-seeking or self-promoting aspect is rather obvious. Or they have a political viewpoint they want to spearhead. They stand out from the more mainstream stories that you have seen posted here over the past 5+ years.
The next-scheduled story gave me pause.
I was somewhat hesitant because of the foregoing reasons. But, I decided to accept it anyway and I'd like to explain my reasoning. One, the story submission comes right out and candidly admits it is from the author. Two, the story provides a level-headed description of a technical problem, its causes, and suggestions for mitigations. Three, it provides reasons why the suggested changes would be beneficial to all readers; not just people in the target audience. Further, the submitter has been an active member and contributor to the site — even before it went live. I've seen him at work and have never seen any self-seeking behavior or pushing of an agenda of any kind. Quite the contrary, all of the contributions I have seen have been strictly for the benefit of the site and the community. Lastly, the submission had been reviewed by another editor and the only question is the one that is now posed to you here.
What do you think?
Is this the first step down a slippery slope? Should we have a "bright line" policy that strictly rejects even the appearance of self-promotion? Should the editors just use their best judgement, based on their past experience and informed from the feedback to this story? Other?
(Score: 1) by yuhong on Saturday November 23 2019, @08:50AM (10 children)
I just submitted a new draft of my Google DoubleClick Mozilla overview:
http://yuhongbao.blogspot.com/2019/11/google-doubleclick-essayoverview-third.html [blogspot.com]
Is any reader interested in the topic?
(Score: 2) by NotSanguine on Saturday November 23 2019, @01:20PM (1 child)
Submit it and if it gets rejected, put it in your journal. Or put it in your journal and if it's good, likely someone will suggest you submit it or do it themselves.
That's what the rest of us do, mostly.
Out of curiosity, do you earn money from ads on your blog? If that's your goal, you'll likely not get much out of this bunch, as most of us use ad blockers.
No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
(Score: 2, Interesting) by yuhong on Sunday November 24 2019, @01:30AM
No, I don't do ads on my blog, but the entire point of the essay/overview is about the history of Google advertising.
(Score: 3, Informative) by janrinok on Saturday November 23 2019, @04:35PM (7 children)
If its a draft, we'd rather wait until you have finished it.
If it is the 3rd version (maybe it is an update of version 2 because things have changed etc) then it is not a draft.
Finally, explain why you have written it and why you think it is of interest; if you do that then you will stand a better chance of having it accepted. "Google DoubleClick Mozilla" doesn't actually tell us as much as you think it does. What is 'DoubleClick', why does it need reviewing?
There might be nothing wrong with your 'overview' but I'll bet that nobody has gotten around to reading it yet.
(Score: 2) by coolgopher on Sunday November 24 2019, @01:07AM (6 children)
Wait? Someone who doesn't know who DoubleClick.net [wikipedia.org] are? They've been a favourite for a 127.0.0.1 entry in /etc/hosts for a very, very long time.
(Score: 2, Informative) by yuhong on Sunday November 24 2019, @01:18AM (5 children)
What is hard to find is when they merged the DoubleClick data with other data like AdWords (from 2000).
(Score: 2) by coolgopher on Sunday November 24 2019, @01:42AM (4 children)
Fair point. I guess much of the knowledge has come from steady perusal of sites like SN and Slashdot over the years, with no one place/article that has the full story.
(Score: 1) by yuhong on Sunday November 24 2019, @01:43AM (3 children)
I really wish the press would cover the topic.
(Score: 2) by coolgopher on Sunday November 24 2019, @02:24AM
One issue I guess would be that it's of a technical nature and thus not readily digested. Another would be that they might just not be aware of it. If some geeky person or other actually collected all the information and submitted to <paper of choice> as a scoop, there might be some traction.
(Score: 2) by janrinok on Sunday November 24 2019, @08:09AM (1 child)
We might publish it ourselves - once it is finished and no longer a draft. If you follow the suggestions that I made a few posts back then it could be a very good choice. But remember your audience - people here are usually much more tech savvy than the general public.
Bear in mind 'double click' means different things to different people - is it a multiple click of a mouse, is it an ad management program, and does it belong to Google or Mozilla? I never see any DoubleClick garbage because my ad-blocker prevents it. All cookies are deleted whenever I shut down my browser. So just quoting 3 or 4 words does not provide a very explanatory title to someone who is not familiar with your work and area of interest. Does your blog explain why DoubleClick is good or bad? If 'bad, does it explain how to defeat it or, if 'good', how to make better use of it? The advice immediately below the title field on the submission page says "Be descriptive and concise! " - it is good advice.
Finally, and as a slight aside, I can see that there have been 4 comments made to the page of your blog that we are discussing, but they have all been removed by a 'blog administrator'. While there are sometimes good reasons to delete comments, without any further explanation it could look to the unfamiliar reader that you suppress comments as you see fit. You must surely know that here on this site we encourage free speech and our community likes being able to express their own opinions without having them removed.
(Score: 1) by yuhong on Sunday November 24 2019, @08:39AM
Mostly spam comments. I assume that most SoylentNews readers are tech savvy, this is not Slashdot.