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posted by girlwhowaspluggedout on Friday February 28 2014, @05:00AM   Printer-friendly
from the soylent-news-is-(even-more)-people dept.

It's amazing what a small group of dedicated people can achieve in such a short amount of time. I'd like to thank you on behalf of the entire Soylent Staff, for helping us build a new community - a community of the users, by the users, and for the users.

Barabbas writes:

It's been a week (only a week!) since first rollout, and extrapolating from our usage we're serving 5 million pageviews per month. That's huge. For comparison, Slashdot serves an estimated 15 million pageviews per month.

The pageview rate is also climbing - we passed the 2 million mark somewhere around our 9th day online. We'll soon need a higher service tier.

The site's estimated value grew from $43 (Tue) to $639 (Fri) to $2000 (Tue - today). Woot!

It's been a wild ride! Read more about it below.

The sys team is building the infrastructure to support a mainstream site. We purchased 3 more linodes (full year, for a 10% savings), which are being provisioned for development, test, and production. The dev team is preparing a turn-key slashcode package that developers can run locally, and we have already started to see bug fixes appear in the live site, with more to come.

The style team has a long list of planned improvements, and the content groups have been feeding us a steady supply of delicious article summaries, spirited debate (IRC, forums), plans and roadmaps (Wiki, status posts), with contributions from many other groups. We have our own customer relations person!

I promised that the project would be community driven, and we are largely that. Each overlord has agreed to run their department by community consensus, only making executive decisions when there is no general agreement, or if there is a global overriding concern. This is working well. For the majority of cases consensus is clear and feels "clearly the right decision". For a split consensus, both choices seem equally good so it doesn't matter which one we choose.

The overlords have authority to make decisions in their area, which means people can get involved with areas that interest them without wading through everything. If you would like to participate, come join us!

Global issues will be decided by community vote. Notable votes coming up will be 1) Choosing a permanent name, 2) Choosing a business model, and 3) Choosing revenue streams. I have researched these and have notes and observations to set before the community as a starting point for discussion.

That's my next step: setting down the notes for discussion, some background information (such as projected expenses), and orchestrating the voting process. Once the business/financial models have been chosen we can start building a proper business.

It looks like we've got ourselves a winner!

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  • (Score: 5, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 28 2014, @05:05AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 28 2014, @05:05AM (#8283)

    >>The site's estimated value grew from $43 (Tue) to $639 (Fri) to $2000 (Tue - today). Woot!

    Only a week old, and already looking to sell out. I guess it's fitting seeing as everything else around here is a copy of Slashdot.

    • (Score: 3, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 28 2014, @05:09AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 28 2014, @05:09AM (#8286)

      This is not really a fair assessment.

      Any time you build a system you look for metrics of success.

      When comparing a reboot (like SoylentNews) with the original (Slashdot) there are lots of ways it could be done, and assessed monetary value is a reasonable way of doing so, especially when asking oneself about sustainability.

      Unless, of course, you're stepping up to support this whole thing financially out of the goodness of your heart. Oh, you're not? Sorry, rude of me to assume.

      • (Score: 1) by LowID on Friday February 28 2014, @03:26PM

        by LowID (337) on Friday February 28 2014, @03:26PM (#8542)

        I can't believe how much I was missing this:

        Woooosh!!

    • (Score: 5, Insightful) by Robotron on Friday February 28 2014, @05:20AM

      by Robotron (3099) on Friday February 28 2014, @05:20AM (#8292) Homepage

      I'll bite.

      Barrabas has and continues to fund the website. This place was introduced as a business; if you've a problem with that, you can go elsewhere. The fact an initial investment is seeing a return which is highlighted publicly to everyone is a sign of genuine enthusiasm rather than slavish devotion to cash. By comparison neither Malda or anyone at the old place talked money openly, preferring to cash in privately before revealing all in community tributes about how rewarding things were in a non-financial sense.

      • (Score: -1, Redundant) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 28 2014, @05:49AM

        by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 28 2014, @05:49AM (#8307)

        +1, Insightful.

      • (Score: 1, Redundant) by mrcoolbp on Friday February 28 2014, @06:51AM

        by mrcoolbp (68) <mrcoolbp@soylentnews.org> on Friday February 28 2014, @06:51AM (#8334) Homepage

        Mod parent up please.

        --
        (Score:1^½, Radical)
      • (Score: 5, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 28 2014, @06:56AM

        by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 28 2014, @06:56AM (#8338)

        In the early IRC days of altslashdot, many called for a non-profit. As soon as this is turned into a business that generates cash flows we cannot trust it anymore. No matter what is promised, why should we trust it?

        • (Score: 5, Informative) by Popeidol on Friday February 28 2014, @07:47AM

          by Popeidol (35) on Friday February 28 2014, @07:47AM (#8360) Journal

          Here's a comment from Barrabas a few weeks ago: http://soylentnews.org/comments.pl?sid=261&cid=560 6 [soylentnews.org]

          The key information:
          We haven't chosen a business/financial model as yet, but my best guess is that we'll be non-profit with either a board of directors or using the co-op model (everyone owns the business).

          This doesn't *completely* eliminate selling out, but the risk is spread among several individuals.

          • (Score: 5, Interesting) by TheRaven on Friday February 28 2014, @09:32AM

            by TheRaven (270) on Friday February 28 2014, @09:32AM (#8388) Journal
            I'm a bit surprised that they're paying for hosting. I can think of a few VM hosts that would be happy to donate some capacity in exchange for the publicity. If you ask your.org nicely, they'd be very likely to give you couple of FreeBSD VMs - they're very willing to support the open source community. If it's not commercial, then hosting in various universities is also a possibility. We have insane amounts of bandwidth on ja.net (I've had machines freeze downloading files because the disk cache fills up and the kernel can't service interrupts from the network and disk fast enough to allow it to do anything else until the download is finished), but a strict non-commercial condition of use. Sticking a VM that hosts the site in a university would be basically free, as long as you talk to the right person.
            --
            sudo mod me up
            • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 28 2014, @04:51PM

              by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 28 2014, @04:51PM (#8590)

              This is interesting and I'd mod you up if I had modpoints. But do you know who to talk to? I never heard a university would sponsor this although my universities had insane amounts of bandwidth and servers. Would they really affiliate themselves with a project like this? Is there some example?

              *THIS* would be trustworthy!

              • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 28 2014, @09:18PM

                by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 28 2014, @09:18PM (#8788)

                Perhaps an organisation dedicated to free speech. The one thing I already fear is that debate on certain topics is going to be stifled. The spooks won't take long to take over, just watch.

              • (Score: 2) by TheRaven on Saturday March 01 2014, @12:01PM

                by TheRaven (270) on Saturday March 01 2014, @12:01PM (#9067) Journal

                When Slashdot was popular in the late '90s to early 2000s, it had huge hosting requirements. Back then, a typical low-volume host could sit happily on a 1Mb/s link with a 100MHz CPU and would be completely overwhelmed if a significant fraction of /. readers clicked on a link to it. Now, the Slashdot effect is a tiny blip. A cheap VM will give you a 10Mbit or 100Mbit connection with a few GHz of CPU power. The requirements for hosting a site like this are in the noise for any moderate-sized hosting provider.

                If you want to host it in a university, then you might talk to various computer societies. The SRCF at Cambridge or SUCS at Swansea are the two I know of, and either of those probably has enough spare capacity. To be honest, I could probably host the site on the machine under my desk without anyone noticing.

                I'd be more inclined to talk to VM hosts though. Your.org is happy to hand out free VMs to FreeBSD developers, and if you talk to them nicely (and let them put 'We host Soylent News' on their web site if they want to), then they'd probably be willing.

                When I talk to people who have hosting problems, they're usually people who are saturating a 10GigE link and want to add more capacity, so the idea of something as low-volume as a site that serves almost exclusively text (and trivially cacheable images) seems a bit silly.

                --
                sudo mod me up
        • (Score: 1) by crutchy on Friday February 28 2014, @08:40AM

          by crutchy (179) on Friday February 28 2014, @08:40AM (#8377) Homepage Journal

          As soon as this is turned into a business that generates cash flows we cannot trust it anymore

          so where's the money going to come from to keep the site afloat?

          magic internet money?

          hmm maybe soylent should accept bitcoin donations from parent to fund site and facilitate a non-profit model

        • (Score: 1) by Yow on Friday February 28 2014, @02:44PM

          by Yow (1637) on Friday February 28 2014, @02:44PM (#8516)

          Trust is tricky. I'm going trust all of this right now because my vast trust wisdom has noted this site's discussion of growth presents as transparent: with discussion of funding/business model from the start. It is what it is.

    • (Score: 4, Funny) by iNaya on Friday February 28 2014, @07:20AM

      by iNaya (176) on Friday February 28 2014, @07:20AM (#8350)

      In Beta, values estimate you!

    • (Score: 3, Insightful) by mtrycz on Friday February 28 2014, @08:25AM

      by mtrycz (60) on Friday February 28 2014, @08:25AM (#8371)

      Since I participated (loosely) in this and having chatted with some of the finest folks here, I know that is not the case, I think we should have an "exit strategy" of sorts?

      What if unknown future conditions bring trouble?

      I think that maybe t would be a good idea to release the cond *and* the assets, so the community can start over (this time not from scratch), thus cleanly future-proofing the whole thing.
      Is that a good idea?

      --
      In capitalist America, ads view YOU!
      • (Score: 2, Funny) by DECbot on Friday February 28 2014, @06:39PM

        by DECbot (832) on Friday February 28 2014, @06:39PM (#8673) Journal

        I believe the exit strategy is something like this:

        1. Start a slashcott^w soylentcott.
        2. Fork the slash^w soylent code
        3. ???
        4. Profit!
        --
        cats~$ sudo chown -R us /home/base
    • (Score: 2) by bucc5062 on Friday February 28 2014, @01:56PM

      by bucc5062 (699) on Friday February 28 2014, @01:56PM (#8490)

      Slow down there slim, you missed the rest of the story

      "This website is estimated worth of 3,187$ and have a daily income of around $ 00.00."

      Now seems to me that if they don't make any money on a daily basis, the worth value is not really real either so I'd not get you undies in a wad just yet. Besides, TANSTAAFL. At some point these guys need to pay for the system and perhaps get a little compensation for the effort to provide you with a quality site. This whole thing started because people felt powerless in the face of big money? You think our new overlords would make the same mistake?

      Yeah, so do I, but then that is how the circle goes.

      Revolution, growth, security, establishment, gentrification, brittleness, instability, revolution.

      I'm just glad to be around for both the revolution and growth.

      --
      The more things change, the more they look the same
    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 09 2014, @04:54PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 09 2014, @04:54PM (#28911)

      bkeuFF http://www.qs3pe5zgdxc9iovktapt2dbyppkmkqfz.com/ [qs3pe5zgdx...kmkqfz.com]

  • (Score: 4, Interesting) by AnythingGoes on Friday February 28 2014, @05:23AM

    by AnythingGoes (3345) on Friday February 28 2014, @05:23AM (#8293)

    I think it is perfectly fine to compare and to value how great a site is - as long as it does not get sold out to large corporates (like another S....... site). The fact that the number of pageviews has gone up means that a lot of users have come in, and maybe the other site is starting to lose users.. (which makes future sales of sites like this much less profitable), and that is great for us

    • (Score: 5, Funny) by Popeidol on Friday February 28 2014, @05:33AM

      by Popeidol (35) on Friday February 28 2014, @05:33AM (#8298) Journal

      Given how much whatsapp went for, it's clear we should hang on until we're at least offered a few billion. Then we just deal out the money in a way inversely proportional to your UID number.

      So the first few thousand people will be able to retire on the spot, but the poor guy who signed up account #2003539 will get a voucher for a free cheeseburger.

      (Disclaimer: I stand to benefit substantially from this scheme)

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 28 2014, @05:52AM

        by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 28 2014, @05:52AM (#8308)

        With a 3-digit UID, that works for me.

        • (Score: 1) by TK on Friday February 28 2014, @07:51PM

          by TK (2760) on Friday February 28 2014, @07:51PM (#8725)

          You bring up an interesting point. Anonymous Coward has been here since day one (UID=0?). That flaming, troll-baiting racist is going to get a disproportionate chunk of the selling price!

          --
          The fleas have smaller fleas, upon their backs to bite them, and those fleas have lesser fleas, and so ad infinitum
          • (Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 28 2014, @09:21PM

            by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 28 2014, @09:21PM (#8792)

            But AC makes the best posts, which no one else is brave enough to make.

      • (Score: 2, Funny) by toygeek on Friday February 28 2014, @07:28AM

        by toygeek (28) on Friday February 28 2014, @07:28AM (#8354) Homepage

        Works for me!

        --
        There is no Sig. Okay, maybe a short one. http://miscdotgeek.com
      • (Score: 5, Funny) by Foobar Bazbot on Friday February 28 2014, @07:56AM

        by Foobar Bazbot (37) on Friday February 28 2014, @07:56AM (#8362) Journal

        Makes me almost as happy as you. ;)

        For an actual payout estimate, note that the payoff is a truncated harmonic series.
        IOW, the individual payoffs are k/1, k/2, k/3, k/4, etc., while the total payoff is k/1+k/2+k/3+...

        Fortunately, the sums of the truncated harmonic series are known as the harmonic numbers, H_n=1/1+1/2+1/3+...+1/n (H_n can be approximated as ln(n))

        Therefore, we can determine k, for dividing a given payout amongst n users, by dividing the total payout by H_n.

        Considering ten thousand users, H_1000 ~= 7.485 [wolframalpha.com].
        For a million users, H_1,000,000 ~= 14.39 [wolframalpha.com].
        (/. currently has UIDs up to 3555467, though there's only 2264017 [soylentnews.org] UIDs, which suggests an interesting rate of captcha and/or email verification failure...)
        Wolfram Alpha won't calculate H_3,555,467 or higher for free, but you can see each additional digit of UIDs increases the number by about 2, so you can extrapolate as you like...

        Now, let's suppose, for convenience sake, that a roughly /.-sized soylentnews (H_n=15) sells for about as much as whatsapp, but a bit goes to taxes, lawyers, etc., so only 15 billion is to be paid out to members. Paid out uniformly, that's $5000 or so each -- not shabby. But in the actual, UID-inverse-proportional scheme, k=(15G$)/H_n=1G$, so uid 1 would get k/1=1G$ -- but, wait, there is no UID 1 (is AC UID 1? Or is that UID 0? Anyway, let's suppose it's AC, and use the first billion for a lottery of some sort, so AC can get his share...)

        NCommander (the first actual user) gets a well-earned k/2=500M$. (And mcasadevall gets k/6=133M$ -- what would life be without a good double-dip!)

        You and I, farther down the list, get a modest k/35=28.6M$ and k/37=27M$, respectively. (Though my alt Barbara Feldon gets k/99 = 10.1M$, because if it's good enough for NCommander, it's good enough for me!)

        So the first few thousand people will be able to retire on the spot, but the poor guy who signed up account #2003539 will get a voucher for a free cheeseburger.

        Some schmuck joining today would get k/3476=288k$ -- I'm not sure that's retire-on-the-spot money (remember taxes), but it could be, depending what part of the country/world one's in.
        And that newish guy gets k/2003539, or not quite five dollars. Hey, that's two or three free cheeseburgers!

        • (Score: 2) by bucc5062 on Friday February 28 2014, @02:21PM

          by bucc5062 (699) on Friday February 28 2014, @02:21PM (#8503)

          I love math. Can I get my $21M now as an interest free loan? Honestly y'all wouldn't have to pay me when the community sells out. Just trying to buy a farm and am stuck in the numbers game right now. I'll take an advance of $500K and that can be deducted on payout...please?

          --
          The more things change, the more they look the same
        • (Score: 1) by Kromagv0 on Friday February 28 2014, @05:16PM

          by Kromagv0 (1825) on Friday February 28 2014, @05:16PM (#8613) Homepage

          New investment opportunity. 4 digit user accounts to soylentnews.

          --
          T-Shirts and bumper stickers [zazzle.com] to offend someone
      • (Score: 1) by cmn32480 on Friday February 28 2014, @04:58PM

        by cmn32480 (443) <cmn32480NO@SPAMgmail.com> on Friday February 28 2014, @04:58PM (#8597) Journal

        Anonymous Coward is gonna make a MINT!

        --
        "It's a dog eat dog world, and I'm wearing Milkbone underwear" - Norm Peterson
  • (Score: 5, Insightful) by quadrox on Friday February 28 2014, @05:30AM

    by quadrox (315) on Friday February 28 2014, @05:30AM (#8296)

    Staff members have previously stated that stories are deliberately put on a queue to be released at fixed intervals in order to give each story time to be seen and commented on.

    I strongly believe the effect is the complete opposite from what is intended. I frequently refresh the site to check for new stuff, but sometimes the amount of comments doesn't change much and if there is no new story I quickly close the tab again. If there was a new story I could read it and even comment on it, but as there usually isn't I can only do nothing.

    So please reconsider this policy. If there is good story material out there, post it as soon add it is ready and edited properly. Don't hold back, we can handle it!

    • (Score: 5, Informative) by clone141166 on Friday February 28 2014, @05:40AM

      by clone141166 (59) on Friday February 28 2014, @05:40AM (#8301)

      Interesting point of view; personally I am pretty comfortable with the rate of flow of news stories. I think it's nice to allow a little bit of time between each new story for comments (though perhaps not too long).

      This is only a partial solution but I assume you are aware that you can read many of the pending story submissions here http://soylentnews.org/submit.pl?op=list [soylentnews.org] - although voting/commenting on pending stories is not possible yet afaik.

      • (Score: 2) by mrbluze on Friday February 28 2014, @09:25PM

        by mrbluze (49) on Friday February 28 2014, @09:25PM (#8795) Journal

        Maybe have viewing options: view by number of posts in last day /week /month, by viees, by newest first etc?

        --
        Do it yourself, 'cause no one else will do it yourself.
    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 28 2014, @05:45AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 28 2014, @05:45AM (#8305)

      "Staff members have previously stated that stories are deliberately put on a queue..."

      [citation needed]

      • (Score: 3, Informative) by clone141166 on Friday February 28 2014, @06:00AM

        by clone141166 (59) on Friday February 28 2014, @06:00AM (#8313)

        If you look at the timestamps on the articles you will see that a lot of them are released in chains with each story being released roughly 1.5 hours after the previous one. Although there are the occasional shorter and longer gap, presumably when editors are available/busy doing other things respectively. Perhaps as the site grows this interval will be gradually reduced to a shorter period.

        • (Score: 3, Informative) by tibman on Friday February 28 2014, @06:21AM

          by tibman (134) Subscriber Badge on Friday February 28 2014, @06:21AM (#8316)

          I remember one of them saying something along those lines. That flooding the front page with submissions would dilute the discussion area. As more people join the site the rate would be increased.

          --
          SN won't survive on lurkers alone. Write comments.
        • (Score: 3, Insightful) by hemocyanin on Friday February 28 2014, @03:43PM

          by hemocyanin (186) on Friday February 28 2014, @03:43PM (#8554) Journal

          Hmmmm .... I can envision a highly successful firstpost script.

    • (Score: 5, Insightful) by chebucto on Friday February 28 2014, @06:24AM

      by chebucto (36) on Friday February 28 2014, @06:24AM (#8317) Journal

      I disagree; putting stories out with no schedule would bury the ones published first.

      One change I would like to see is more frequent stories; perhaps every half hour or every hour. Doing that depends on getting more stories submitted, though, and that part is up to the users.

      • (Score: 1) by quadrox on Friday February 28 2014, @06:27AM

        by quadrox (315) on Friday February 28 2014, @06:27AM (#8319)

        Buried? Haven't we all learned how to scroll on a webpage? Aren't you doing that anyway when you login for the first time after a period of absence, e.g. In the morning?

        • (Score: 1) by hubie on Friday February 28 2014, @02:54PM

          by hubie (1068) on Friday February 28 2014, @02:54PM (#8520) Journal

          It's not as simple as just scrolling. Stories get pushed to yesterday's news, and when you click that button to load them, the first N stories on that page are the ones that were at the bottom of the previous page, so you only end up picking up a relatively few extra stories on your current page, so then you need to click the button for the previous day stories . . .

      • (Score: 5, Insightful) by Popeidol on Friday February 28 2014, @07:34AM

        by Popeidol (35) on Friday February 28 2014, @07:34AM (#8356) Journal

        I like the queueing system for a few reasons:

        • It helps each story get approximately equal 'top of the page' time, which levels the playing field for starting conversations.
        • Editors don't actually have to be manning the page 24/7. The site can survive for a few hours by itself and stories will continue to be released. The site is new, having volunteer editors constantly available is not guaranteed (nor required)
        • Rushing the stories out would mean that 90% of the stories are posted at US peak times, and a lot of international readers would have to wait 8 hours for much new or interesting to appear on the page.

        One addition that could help could be a field to mark each item in the queue by time-sensitivity. A breaking story about scotland adopting Bitcoin as their national currency would automatically be bumped ahead of the piece about interesting historic trends in heatsink manufacturing (which can really go up anytime).

    • (Score: 1) by Barrabas on Friday February 28 2014, @06:35AM

      by Barrabas (22) on Friday February 28 2014, @06:35AM (#8325) Journal

      Talk this up!

      The staff takes feedback from these sorts of posts, and I'll flag this one especially for review.

      • (Score: 1) by mrcoolbp on Friday February 28 2014, @06:59AM

        by mrcoolbp (68) <mrcoolbp@soylentnews.org> on Friday February 28 2014, @06:59AM (#8342) Homepage

        See below comment...

        --
        (Score:1^½, Radical)
      • (Score: 5, Interesting) by lhsi on Friday February 28 2014, @08:28AM

        by lhsi (711) on Friday February 28 2014, @08:28AM (#8372) Journal

        As mentioned in another comment, some way of flagging "breaking news" type stories would be nice. I submitted one about the GCHQ webcam spying less than an hour after the news broke, but it is still pending (and according to the list of pending stories, there is another submission of the same news article, probably because it hasn't been on the site yet).

        It would still be an interesting story now, but might have been more relevant if it was on the site after a couple of hours, as opposed to a day or so later.

        • (Score: 4, Insightful) by Open4D on Friday February 28 2014, @10:45AM

          by Open4D (371) on Friday February 28 2014, @10:45AM (#8407) Journal

          I agree that breaking news should be given some special treatment. I assume you mean the submitter would flag his/her submission as such, so that the editors may more easily choose to consider it immediately - possibly even drafting in help ("dude I'm busy for the next two hours, could you take a look at this breaking news submission?")

          With regards to holding back stories, I agree there is some merit to spreading things out. But this shouldn't be an absolute rule, and for breaking news it's worth breaking the rule.

          A word of caution though. We shouldn't go too far in all this. The editors shouldn't be panicked into a race to publish first. If an editor is available to apply all the editorial standards and publish a breaking news submission to the front page fairly quickly, then great. If not, it doesn't matter that much. It's the discussion by the community that really matters, and timeliness is not the biggest factor affecting the quality of the discussion.

          And I hope it doesn't sound like we am loading onerous responsibilities on the the editors. Everything I've said here is what I'd consider an aspiration, never a grounds for criticism. I'm grateful for all the editors' hard work. Thanks people!

    • (Score: 1) by mrcoolbp on Friday February 28 2014, @06:56AM

      by mrcoolbp (68) <mrcoolbp@soylentnews.org> on Friday February 28 2014, @06:56AM (#8339) Homepage

      posted to suggestions@soylentnews.org "on behalf of quadrox (315)"

      = )

      --
      (Score:1^½, Radical)
    • (Score: 3, Insightful) by gringer on Friday February 28 2014, @08:00AM

      by gringer (962) on Friday February 28 2014, @08:00AM (#8364)

      I don't mind the interval-based release, but I do mind stale stories. If a story has been in the queue for a day and it is a time-critical story (e.g. "Tesla is live-streaming their test-drive of their newest car now"), then it should be dumped from the queue.

      For some stories time matters, but for others it doesn't. It's basically a scheduling problem.

      --
      Ask me about Sequencing DNA in front of Linus Torvalds [youtube.com]
    • (Score: 2, Informative) by LaminatorX on Friday February 28 2014, @01:36PM

      by LaminatorX (14) <{laminatorx} {at} {gmail.com}> on Friday February 28 2014, @01:36PM (#8475)

      [citation provided]We do generally aim for 90-120 minutes between stories, except for breaking news type events, so as to give each story it's moment in the Sun.[/citation provided] As far as gauging interest in each story goes, even some of the stories that aren't getting tons of comments are getting 800-1200 click-throughs (which surprised me).

      One thing that we could do as the site grows, is start posting stories to the Topics (News, Science, etc.) pages more frequently, while still keeping the Main Page pace a little more measured. So far we have been posting to Main Page exclusively. I don't know that we have the numbers to support fracturing our feed like that as yet, but we do keep growing. I'm just an Editor though, what do you think?

      • (Score: 3, Interesting) by tynin on Friday February 28 2014, @04:47PM

        by tynin (2013) on Friday February 28 2014, @04:47PM (#8586) Journal

        Having never submitted a story to /., and getting my first story accepted on SN, I never expected it would be almost 12 hours before it would get posted (I think it got accepted at ~11am and was posted at 11pm). It was on the weekend, and I saw a story consistently coming out every ~90 minutes, so I suspected it might be queued.

        The only suggestion I would make would be to provide a little more feedback to the submitter when a story/article gets accepted. Instead of just accepted, if it would include queue position and ETA till it is posted, I could then know to come back around the time the story would show up, so I could have talked with others instead of only finding out the next day.

        Thanks for everything!

  • (Score: 2, Funny) by X1 on Friday February 28 2014, @05:43AM

    by X1 (1221) on Friday February 28 2014, @05:43AM (#8304)

    The site's estimated value grew from $43 (Tue) to $639 (Fri) to $2000 (Tue - today). Woot!

    That's triggering flashbacks to when I'd look up the value of my MtG collection in Scrye... I kid, I kid :)

  • (Score: 2, Interesting) by rob_bruce on Friday February 28 2014, @06:10AM

    by rob_bruce (2536) on Friday February 28 2014, @06:10AM (#8314)

    Great to hear Soylent is doing well from a user-base standpoint. Are there any future plans for revenue generation to pay for site hosting costs, etc.? I apologize in advance if this was posted on a wiki on the site. I enjoy this site and hope it'll continue to grow. If that means a small payment per year, I'm willing to donate.

    rob

    • (Score: 1) by quadrox on Friday February 28 2014, @06:29AM

      by quadrox (315) on Friday February 28 2014, @06:29AM (#8322)

      Agreed, I am perfectly willing to spend some of my money to keep this thing going and community centric.

    • (Score: 5, Informative) by Barrabas on Friday February 28 2014, @06:32AM

      by Barrabas (22) on Friday February 28 2014, @06:32AM (#8323) Journal

      Rob: Yep, wait a week or so. (I've got a throat infection that's kicking my butt.)

      I've identified 7 possible revenue streams, I've got notes and analysis on each to set before the community, and I'm intending to decide which ones to use by community vote. Also, there's more finance info in an "AskSoylent" post that should be coming up soon.

      • (Score: 1) by Castout on Friday February 28 2014, @08:30PM

        by Castout (1914) on Friday February 28 2014, @08:30PM (#8751)

        Cool! I've mentioned this before but I had always thought an ad page could be done that is just that, an ad page. Whenever you want to support the site, you click to the link, it loads ads structured nicely, have them tech relevant, and you can just go on a clicking spree (in a sandbox Linux VM) to support the site.

        demonlapin (925) also posted "Actually, a page of affiliate links to Amazon, Newegg, Monoprice, etc., wouldn't be a bad idea. Just ask people to use them whenever they're planning a purchase."

        Would keep the main pages clean but allow some unobtrusive easy access ad revenue

        --
        "Think outside the box but park between the lines!" - Castout
  • (Score: 2, Interesting) by hash14 on Friday February 28 2014, @06:40AM

    by hash14 (1102) on Friday February 28 2014, @06:40AM (#8328)

    You guys are doing a fantastic job, and this is something former slashdot users have sorely needed for a long time, though I hope that we keep this a community site. Now that the site is starting to get a lot of traffic, I think subscriptions with various simple benefits are starting to become feasible options. My only question is why the traffic is on the same order of magnitude as that of slashdot while the comment counts are still rather small by comparison. But it's about quality, not quantity right? I guess slashdot had more shills and trolls than we originally thought ;-)

    • (Score: 5, Interesting) by mrcoolbp on Friday February 28 2014, @07:02AM

      by mrcoolbp (68) <mrcoolbp@soylentnews.org> on Friday February 28 2014, @07:02AM (#8343) Homepage

      S/N = signal to noise = )

      --
      (Score:1^½, Radical)
      • (Score: 4, Interesting) by Open4D on Friday February 28 2014, @10:50AM

        by Open4D (371) on Friday February 28 2014, @10:50AM (#8408) Journal

        Very good, that should be an alternative site motto. I wonder if someone could work it up into a clever logo or graphic of some kind, to go on t-shirts and things.

    • (Score: 5, Insightful) by Phoenix666 on Friday February 28 2014, @11:02AM

      by Phoenix666 (552) on Friday February 28 2014, @11:02AM (#8412) Journal

      I dunno, the comment counts don't feel that much smaller than they what they got on /. once the Slashcott started. Considering the smaller initial user base here that's not bad. I was reflecting on these sorts of questions over the weekend and it seemed even the lower modded comments here are higher quality than much that would float to the top on /., so it seems the user base at SN, while smaller so far, is more robust. Also, the weakness of Slashdot's moderation system was that posting earlier strongly boosted chances of higher mods, so more well-thought out posts that took longer to compose so frequently lost out to funny or knee-jerk group-think responses. We don't yet know if SN's mod system will shake out differently at high volumes, but so far it's been refreshing to see high-quality posts from top to bottom. So I find I am content. I don't care if SN never achieves the traffic Slashdot had. My purpose is met. I come here to learn from other members of the community who know far more about other areas of tech or science than I do, and to test the mettle of my own ideas in areas I think I know more about by placing them before a peer group whose opinion I respect. And I do love the nerdy, witty humor that wends its way through that discourse, too.

      Congrats to SN on a successful launch. May its success sustain it, its mistakes inform it, and its circle of friends grow and grow.

      --
      Washington DC delenda est.
      • (Score: 2) by SlimmPickens on Friday February 28 2014, @01:22PM

        by SlimmPickens (1056) on Friday February 28 2014, @01:22PM (#8464)

        so far it's been refreshing to see high-quality posts from top to bottom. So I find I am content. I don't care if SN never achieves the traffic Slashdot had. My purpose is met.

        Hear, hear!

      • (Score: 1) by strattitarius on Friday February 28 2014, @09:05PM

        by strattitarius (3191) on Friday February 28 2014, @09:05PM (#8773) Journal

        I was reflecting on these sorts of questions over the weekend and it seemed even the lower modded comments here are higher quality than much that would float to the top on /., so it seems the user base at SN, while smaller so far, is more robust.

        I could not agree more. This site is already a success. I am ready to become a paying member!

        --
        Slashdot Beta Sucks. Soylent Alpha Rules. News at 11.
    • (Score: 5, Insightful) by mcgrew on Friday February 28 2014, @01:04PM

      by mcgrew (701) <publish@mcgrewbooks.com> on Friday February 28 2014, @01:04PM (#8458) Homepage Journal

      My only question is why the traffic is on the same order of magnitude as that of slashdot while the comment counts are still rather small by comparison.

      Because the would-be clowns trying to be funny and clogging up comments with worthless tripe thankfully stayed at slashdot. Personally, I'd rather not have thirty good comments buried in 200 trash comments. I've been promoting "S/N" to be the shorthand for soylent news for a while now for that very reason. Too much noise over there, not enough signal.

      --
      "Nobody knows everything about anything." — Dr Jerry Morton, Journey to Madness
  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by Khyber on Friday February 28 2014, @06:54AM

    by Khyber (54) on Friday February 28 2014, @06:54AM (#8337) Journal

    "We'll soon need a higher service tier."

    This site can't seriously be chewing up that much bandwidth, given it's almost entirely text, can it?

    --
    Destroying Semiconductors With Style Since 2008, and scaring you ill-educated fools since 2013.
    • (Score: 1) by Blackmoore on Friday February 28 2014, @03:22PM

      by Blackmoore (57) on Friday February 28 2014, @03:22PM (#8537) Journal

      yeah; it can. but it's the number of pages/s that's racking up. which when you realize a page on here loads twice as fast as the old S site is damn fine thing.

  • (Score: 4, Informative) by Pslytely Psycho on Friday February 28 2014, @06:56AM

    by Pslytely Psycho (1218) on Friday February 28 2014, @06:56AM (#8340)

    https://pipedot.org/ [pipedot.org]

    Hey, it's kinda dead over there, but I think we should support this effort as well. And hey, I love SN, I loved /. for many years (latecomer though...) and I can make room for another branch. (/. evolving into multiple distros....Kind of like a certain OS?)

    --
    Alex Jones lawyer inspires new TV series: CSI Moron Division.
    • (Score: 1) by Pslytely Psycho on Friday February 28 2014, @06:58AM

      by Pslytely Psycho (1218) on Friday February 28 2014, @06:58AM (#8341)

      Unfortunately they won't let me use a (space),(underscore) or (dash) in my name...
      (poutsincorner)

      --
      Alex Jones lawyer inspires new TV series: CSI Moron Division.
    • (Score: 2, Informative) by mrcoolbp on Friday February 28 2014, @07:04AM

      by mrcoolbp (68) <mrcoolbp@soylentnews.org> on Friday February 28 2014, @07:04AM (#8345) Homepage

      Pipedot is a friend of the site. We are linking on the wiki. Zenbi is a great person in my experience. Just sayin'.

      --
      (Score:1^½, Radical)
      • (Score: 1) by Pslytely Psycho on Friday February 28 2014, @07:16AM

        by Pslytely Psycho (1218) on Friday February 28 2014, @07:16AM (#8349)

        Very good...I only stumbled across it this morning myself.

        --
        Alex Jones lawyer inspires new TV series: CSI Moron Division.
    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 28 2014, @01:53PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 28 2014, @01:53PM (#8486)

      On pipedot, you cannot post without being logged in.

  • (Score: 2) by unitron on Friday February 28 2014, @09:43AM

    by unitron (70) on Friday February 28 2014, @09:43AM (#8393) Journal

    ...pageview extrapolation thing work?

    If present trends continue, on what day of what month do you expect to actually be able to say "In the last 4.33 weeks we had 5 million pageviews, also known as one for every 3 that Slashdot got in the same time period."?

    --
    something something Slashcott something something Beta something something
    • (Score: 1) by dilbert on Friday February 28 2014, @03:25PM

      by dilbert (444) on Friday February 28 2014, @03:25PM (#8541)
      Obligatory xkcd [xkcd.com]
  • (Score: 5, Interesting) by Open4D on Friday February 28 2014, @11:05AM

    by Open4D (371) on Friday February 28 2014, @11:05AM (#8413) Journal

    The dev team is preparing a turn-key slashcode package that developers can run locally, and we have already started to see bug fixes appear in the live site, with more to come.

    What's the latest view on how long before there is a full re-write of the code base? Not in the remotely forseeable future? Already under way? Somewhere in-between?

    Or have you considered some kind of merger with http://pipedot.org/ [pipedot.org] - SN's community with Pipedot's code?

                                                        `
    An answer to this would give me an idea of how motivated I should be to investigate potential bugs - perhaps quite minor ones - in the currently deployed slashcode, with a view to reporting [soylentnews.org] them to http://sylnt.us/bugs [sylnt.us]

    • (Score: 1) by Daniel Dvorkin on Friday February 28 2014, @06:39PM

      by Daniel Dvorkin (1099) on Friday February 28 2014, @06:39PM (#8671) Journal

      Or have you considered some kind of merger with http://pipedot.org/ [pipedot.org] - SN's community with Pipedot's code?

      This is a fine idea. I don't know if |. will make it as a site or not (I hope so, not counting on it) but "Pipecode" is good stuff and I'd love to see it in use over here.

      --
      Pipedot [pipedot.org]:Soylent [soylentnews.org]::BSD:Linux
    • (Score: 1) by tdk on Friday February 28 2014, @09:16PM

      by tdk (346) on Friday February 28 2014, @09:16PM (#8786) Homepage Journal

      have you considered some kind of merger with http://pipedot.org/ [pipedot.org]

      pipedot [pipedot.org] doesn't support moderation yet (it's coming this week according to the owner).
      There's also technocrat.net - which seems dead, with most posts from Bruce Perens.
      Don't forget Usenet - there are a lot of ex-slashdotters on comp.misc and misc.news.internet.discuss.

  • (Score: 3, Funny) by deif on Friday February 28 2014, @01:28PM

    by deif (92) on Friday February 28 2014, @01:28PM (#8467)
    --
    ∀(x, y ∈ A ∪ B; x ≠ y) x² - y² ≥ 0
  • (Score: 5, Interesting) by tempest on Friday February 28 2014, @03:01PM

    by tempest (3050) on Friday February 28 2014, @03:01PM (#8524)

    Is Soylent contributing back to slashcode? Malda open sourcing slashcode is a big reason why this site exists. He gave us the power to "fork" his own project if discontented with the very site he started, and I'd like to see that tradition continued. I'd hope the cycle doesn't repeat itself with Soylent, but who can tell what the future will hold for this site?

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 28 2014, @03:34PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 28 2014, @03:34PM (#8552)

    That site says: soylentnews.org is 1 year 7 months old

    Errr what?

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 28 2014, @05:50PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 28 2014, @05:50PM (#8641)
    Does HTTPS logins work yet?