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As promised, here's the round-table discussion post that I said on Wednesday was coming. We have a long history at SoylentNews of listening and responding to our community; I genuinely hope that never changes. I also recognize that I may have ruffled some feathers in the last few weeks with original content postings so here's the best place to get this all out.
I am mindful of the community's support and goodwill; I don't want to squander any of it. Yes, there are times where my hand may be forced (e.g., DCMA takedowns). Still, I'm always a bit hesitant whenever I post on the main site for anything that isn't site update news or similar. I may be the de facto site leader, but I want my submissions to be treated like anyone else's — I want no favoritism. The editorial team does review my stories and signs off before they go live (unless it's an "emergency" situation such as the last time we blew up the site). However, as the saying goes, the buck stops with me.
SoylentNews accepts original content. I'm also aware that I've probably submitted the most original content so far (See "Previously", below for some examples). I'm grateful for the community's apparent acceptance of my submissions and the positive responses to them. What I don't know is if there is an undercurrent of displeasure with these. Maybe everyone thinks these are all fine. Then again, maybe somebody has an issue with them. Rather than assume anything, let's get it all out in the open.
What I want to cover in this round-table discussion is original content and having images in posts as well as topics such as yesterday's Live Show on Improving Your Security -- Wednesday June 3rd, 2020.
So, contributors and commenters to SoylentNews, get that Reply button hot and let me hear your feedback. As usual, either a member of staff or I will respond to your comments below,
73 de NCommander
Previously:
(2020-06-03) Live Show on Improving Your Security -- Wednesday June 3rd, 2020
(2020-05-24) Retrotech: The Novell NetWare Experience
(2020-05-14) Exploring Windows for Workgroups 3.11 - Early 90s Networking
(2020-05-10) Examining Windows 1.0 HELLO.C - 35 Years of Backwards Compatibility
(2020-05-15) Meta: Having a Chat about SoylentNews' Internet Relay Chat
(2018-10-25) My Time as an ICANN Fellow
(2017-10-09) soylentnews.org experiencing DNSSEC issues
(2017-04-20) Soylentnews.org is Moving to Gentoo...
(2017-04-17) SN Security Updates: CAA, LogJam, HTTP Method Disable, and 3DES
(2017-03-13) Xenix 2.2.3c Restoration: Xrossing The X (Part 4)
(Score: 5, Interesting) by janrinok on Monday June 08 2020, @02:57PM (14 children)
Using images in material processed by the editors is relatively safe. Part of their job is check the suitability of material for release. Images in journals could be much more problematic. There is no editorial check of journals - nor should there be. But that means that a journal could easily contain links to material that is either unsuitable or illegal. Who is responsible for checking that every quoted link points to something that isn't going to end up with us in a legal battle?
As we all know, we cannot even afford to mount any legal defence and the presence of such material could easily lead to a situation where the site is closed down simply because we cannot afford to argue that we are not responsible for the contents of journals. Somebody with an axe to grind could easily leave something in their parting journal entry intended to cause a major problem for us as a site. For that reason I would strongly recommend that images are reserved for published stories only, and not included in journals or comments.
As for original material my view is let's be having it! We often stretch the boundaries of topics to cover stories that might generate an interesting discussion so, as long as they are factual and researched and written with references to sources where necessary, then I can see such material only enhancing the site. However, material based on personal opinions or views should be kept for journals.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 08 2020, @03:09PM
Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition but everybody expects the ancient Greek mathematician...
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Monday June 08 2020, @03:21PM (1 child)
I agree but not on disk space not copyright or legal grounds. Text is every bit as copyrightable as images are and Journals are no more or less our responsibility as a site than comments are. But images take up way more space if we store them in the db and cause extra headaches for me to code around if we allow <img>/<video> tags to world+dog.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by hendrikboom on Tuesday June 09 2020, @09:21PM
But most of us can write text. But few of us can make decent images, so there's a greater temptation to filch them from elsewhere.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by shortscreen on Monday June 08 2020, @03:55PM (6 children)
Just for the record, I have no opposition to ncommander or others who are invested in the site posting their own stuff on occasion. But you and TFS appear to be soliciting original content from the wider user base. If so, are there more guidelines about this? For instance, what would distinguish a submission that is worthy of the front page vs. a journal post? What topics are welcome? And if images/etc. are to be permitted, would those be hosted by SN and how would they be submitted?
(Score: 4, Informative) by The Mighty Buzzard on Monday June 08 2020, @05:17PM (4 children)
Not an editor but what we discussed in our super secret IRC channel that motivated this discussion mostly boiled down to we don't really want to be posting any original content besides tech/science type stuff to the front page. Op-ed, politics (unless we get an interview or one of the community is running for office or something), and such need to go in a journal. But it's just a general consensus of whoever was around on IRC at the time not a rule, which is why NC asked here.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by fustakrakich on Monday June 08 2020, @07:26PM (1 child)
mostly boiled down to we don't really want to be posting any original content besides tech/science type stuff to the front page. Op-ed, politics (unless we get an interview or one of the community is running for office or something), and such need to go in a journal.
That's perfect! Who the hell is arguing against it? If you spot a particularly interesting journal, can they be cross posted to the front page?
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 2) by NCommander on Tuesday June 09 2020, @01:11AM
We can *sorta* cross-post a journal to the main page. This is actually part of rehash, and code we inherited from Slashdot. As we got it though, the feature was partially broken so it's currently disabled (and has been since GoLive). It's been something I've been meaning to fix for ... oh say five years now?
Maybe something I'll do on one of my hacking streams.
Still always moving
(Score: 0, Disagree) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 08 2020, @11:38PM (1 child)
That's backwards, let users write and submit political articles under the politics nexus. People who hate politics should just hide those stories in their preferences or ignore them. Politics and opinion are more discussed than anything else here, and we'd see far more interesting original content if it wasn't relegated to journals.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Tuesday June 09 2020, @04:44PM
I get your point but it would also lead to mountains of butthurt. We'd turn down a huge majority of politics op-eds for being poorly written, outlandishly biased, or just because we don't like to run more than one or two a day max.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 5, Informative) by janrinok on Monday June 08 2020, @06:29PM
We have always encouraged original material provided that it meets all the other requirements that are expected of front page material.
The expected topics are the ones that we have always covered. So, if you have something that you have researched or even have a significant interest in and which fits into the topics that we usually cover (Business, Career & Education, Code, Digital Liberty, Hardware, Mobile (devices), OS, Science, Security, Software, Soylent. Techonomics etc) then by all means submit it as you would any other submission. However, like any other submission, we would expect it to contain supporting references for any claims that you rely on and not simply be your own personal views or opinions. You should be able to defend your submission to critical review and back up your own claims by either your own research or by references from a reputable source, or at least be able to sensibly and logically argue your findings to the community in the subsequent discussion. It would help us significantly if you clearly identify such submissions as 'Original Material' so that we can process them appropriately.
NCommander's articles are a very good example of what we would like to see. He has resurrected software that was obsolete many years ago, and he has looked at how it was developed, what design decisions appear to have been made, and their long-term implications etc. It fits into several of the topics that we cover and, as a result, it received a positive response from our community and generated a good discussion.
Original material submissions would usually have to be by a named member as it is very likely that the editorial staff would need to contact you to discuss the submission during its processing to make sure that we are representing your submission accurately, but if you are prepared to provide us with a contact method we can protect your identity when/if the submission is published.
But do not let what I have written dissuade you from making the submission - we can always help you to put your submission together into something that we can work with and which will interest some of our community and generate a discussion. We would all , manpower permitting, prefer to spend time helping someone put a submission together rather than have to rely on bots to find suitable material for our site.
If you want to express your own opinions or even insightful views on a topic but it is not something that you have researched or have specialist knowledge about, then that would be more appropriately placed in your own journal.
That is part of what we are discussing in this thread. However, the ability to include images or other media in submissions is built into the system although it is currently disabled for the wider community, partly because of security reasons but also for technical reasons. Currently we tend to use simple links to external sources where images are essential to explain the content under discussion
Other editors might - in fact, almost certainly will - have different views on this topic hence the discussion.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by VLM on Monday June 08 2020, @08:51PM (3 children)
I'll see your "illegal images" and raise the stakes with "illegal numbers"
This rather large binary number was VERY illegal about 13 years ago. 09F911029D74E35BD84156C5635688C0 I don't think anyone cares about that number anymore, but it was a big deal a long time ago.
Other examples of illegal numbers: Absolute power corrupts absolutely and its illegal in some backwards parts of the world to not bow down to claims about "the six million". Ironically given that one extremist group has absolute power over that topic, and everyone knows absolute power corrupts absolutely, the people most responsible for encouraging holocaust denial are the people who wrote those theoretically well-meaning yet despotic laws.
Another psuedo illegal number can be seen in statistics. Its borderline illegal in 2020 to notice the mathematical fact that 13% of the population commit 52% of the murders.
My point is the pix aren't a new issue, and theres lots of existing law and tech to handle illegal content that already applies to the site.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 09 2020, @05:05AM
It is called criminal stupidity, and it seems to have a non-zero transmission rate. Sorry you caught it, but treatment is available whenever you get desperate enough to be taken seriously.
(Score: 2) by janrinok on Tuesday June 09 2020, @07:11AM (1 child)
I remember that number too!
However, my concern would be with something like child pornography or material which aids terrorists, where the laws in the US take a very unusual stance. It is has appeared on your server - even if subsequently removed - you can still be accused of distributing such material. We cannot even afford to have a lawyer go to court to plead our case so I suspect that, in US law at least, we would be guilty.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Wednesday June 10 2020, @12:02AM
Same thing applies to someone posting song lyrics or plenty of National Security stuff. We start down the road of censoring any time someone might take us to court and it'll quickly descend into absurdity, because you can take folks to court without the slightest bit of merit to your claim.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.