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SoylentNews
The observant reader will notice that we have reduced the number of stories we post on weekdays from about 15 stories per day to about 13 stories per day. We would certainly like to continue with the higher rate, but we have been struggling to do so with current staff.
We try to post enough stories each day so that there is "something for everyone". Ultimately this site is for the community. It is also by the community; it does not run all by itself.
We Need Your Help
People's lives change. They move, get married, have health issues, change jobs, etc. All of these place additional demands on their spare time. SoylentNews is not immune to this; in fact we have experienced all of these. With less free time available, more work falls upon the other staff members — whose lives are already quite full.
What would help?
Volunteer! Have you ever thought about being an editor at SoylentNews?
You'll get to learn a super-sekret handshake, the passcode to enter our volcano-lair, and the admiration of your fellow Soylentils!
Right from the start, let me point out that we — SoylentNews — aim to be impartial. If you have an agenda that you would like to push or advocate (or denigrate) then skip to the next story.
On the other hand, not a great deal of time is needed. Even if you have only an hour or two per week that you could contribute, that would be greatly appreciated!
An earlier request for help summarized things nicely (slightly updated here):
Well we are all volunteers, so we contribute what we can, when we can, no one is expected to edit X stories/day (make your own hours). I would say a strong recommendation (maybe not requirement) is signing onto IRC once in a while (especially when editing) so one can communicate with the other editors. Editing a few stories a day, or even a few a week would be welcome. A typical submission takes me about 15-30 minutes to edit, usually on the longer side if I'm expanding or adding a balanced point of view without trying to put words into the mouth of the submitter. The rest is pretty much what you'd expect:
- Opening up a story
- Checking links
- Checking basic grammar and spelling
- Correcting wording
- Expanding a weak submission (sometimes it's just a few links and a sentence or quote)
- etc.
One also needs to:
- Learn the editing interface (not particularly hard but it has its quirks like UTC 24 hour time and the interface could use a little polish)
- Learn the SN Style Guidelines
How else could I help?
Nominate someone. Have you noticed someone who tends to compose well-written comments or journal entries? Think they might be a good fit? Please let us know!
How else could I help?
Submit a story! A well-written story that needs little editing takes a huge load off of the editorial staff. If just a few Soylentils submitted a story each day it would make a world of difference. Ideally, a story submission would be grammatically correct, have no spelling errors, be balanced and impartial, and be "publication ready". But even if your writing skills are not up to (or are even far from) that level, we are experienced at "cleaning things up", so do not let that keep you from making a story submission! If you see something tech-related that you think would be of interest to the community? Send it in!
How can you reach us?
Send an email to editors (at) soylentnews (dot) org. Or drop a message on our IRC (Internet Relay Chat) channel. Just issue the command "/join #editorial" and leave a message expressing your interest, along with your SoylentNews nickname, and someone will get back to you.
What's in it for me?
That is a good question. Speaking for myself, it started with my getting onto IRC and occasionally pointing out an error I'd seen in a story. Sometimes it would take a while before I could get the attention of an editor who could make the correction. I got frustrated. Finally, I suggested that if I were made an editor, I could fix things myself without having to track people down. Over the 5 ½ years since then, I have made mistakes... and learned how to own them, in writing, in front of all of you. I've developed a thicker "skin". I've made great friendships with people all around the world. The technical expertise on staff here is amazing; they've taught me so much. And, I hope, I've been able to teach them a thing or two, too.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Tuesday January 14 2020, @03:14PM (5 children)
Say, how about you make a stat on percentages of submissions by humans vs topics and post it here. Feeling of my guts, /dev/random should beat everything by a largish margin; if my guts are right, something is askew with the topics some editors prefer.
In regards with the topics, some are absolutely deprecated. Look, who the hell thinks "Mobile" is a topic still worth individualizing? It's like trying to say "Computers" are in interesting topic.
But of course there isn't!
Because
1. some editors are keeping the door shut for it and resist even a simple yes/no poll consultation with Soylenters
2. the fucking Politics is a node (or whatever the slashcode terminology), very much like "Breaking news", "Meta", "Reviews", "Community". Each of this nodes has the same list of topics.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by janrinok on Tuesday January 14 2020, @03:57PM (2 children)
No we are not. We are simply following what the site was created for and is well documented. Go back in the logs and read it for yourself. We have created the politics nexus (or section if you prefer) and asked for people to edit it. How many volunteers did we get. None! People might 'want' something but nobody is prepared to do the work involved in supporting it. Having a politics topic needs additional staff or else the existing editorial coverage is reduced. We are struggling to maintain the current status quo with the existing staff who all have other commitments and real lives to live too.
Precisely the point we are making - and it has always been thus. If you want a politics 'topic', volunteer to help us please.
There is no such thing as a 'simple' poll - as we learned the hard way last time. There are all sorts of potential problems - duplicate accounts and sock puppets which several of our community have created and use to unfairly influence voting or even their own moderation, huge investment in manpower, writing the code (and with only one dev active at the moment we cannot even do site updates when we would wish to do them), making sure everyone who is entitled has a chance to vote etc. This story is all about getting more support to do the actual work.
I encourage you to join the team - in any role that suits you - and you will see that many of your claims are simply entirely unfounded.
(Score: 2) by aristarchus on Tuesday January 14 2020, @09:10PM
Ah, the infamous "Soylent McSoylentface" naming poll! What a fiasco! "Many Shubs and Zulls knew what it was to be roasted in the depths of a Sloar that day, I can tell you!"
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Tuesday January 14 2020, @10:47PM
In all seriousness, I'm not in a situation I can make a commitment i can reliable keep, not even one that would allow predictibily for the times I'm unavailable and the length of the unavailability.
That's the only reason I don't volunteer now.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 15 2020, @12:23AM (1 child)
I've actually wanted to compile those stats for awhile, but the state of the API endpoint won't let me. The topic/nexus search for stories is broken, and IIRC there is no way to check submissions beyond the subs queue. Although I can't double check that last one, as I keep getting the error:
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 15 2020, @01:38AM
TMB has gone full retard.