[At the time of this submission] There are only 3 stories in the queue.
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There are Only 3 Stories in the Queue
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(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 09 2015, @07:27PM
has SN been hacked or are you really posting this ?
(Score: 2) by ikanreed on Monday February 09 2015, @07:32PM
He's trying to promote people submitting things. The problem is all I've got to possibly submit aren't interesting enough to post. But maybe it works on getting people to post more stories.
Fewer stories means a higher percentage of spam, among other problems.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by ilPapa on Monday February 09 2015, @10:24PM
Don't sell yourself short. I'll bet you have something to share that will interest a significant portion of readers.
You are still welcome on my lawn.
(Score: 1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 09 2015, @07:45PM
I was going to submit "SN Has Way Too Many Self-Referential Meta-Stories (Like This One)"
(Score: 4, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 09 2015, @08:22PM
I'd like to know how Bennet Hasselton feels about it.
(Score: 2) by nitehawk214 on Monday February 09 2015, @08:55PM
In response, I would like to refer you to the GP post.
"Don't you ever miss the days when you used to be nostalgic?" -Loiosh
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 09 2015, @07:31PM
..slow.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by dx3bydt3 on Monday February 09 2015, @09:07PM
This AC was modded redundant, but they have a point. I saw the queue was small this morning, so I went to my usual science news sources looking for something worthy to submit, but I was unable to find anything good that hadn't already hit the front page over the weekend.
(Score: 1) by wantkitteh on Monday February 09 2015, @09:21PM
I saw the queue was that short and did nothing about it - what with it being 4am Monday morning.
(Score: 4, Funny) by dyingtolive on Monday February 09 2015, @10:37PM
You don't understand man, if the queue drops below 3 submissions, we're all DEAD!
Don't blame me, I voted for moose wang!
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Monday February 09 2015, @07:39PM
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 3, Interesting) by frojack on Monday February 09 2015, @09:06PM
You'd be surprised how many times I work up a story, have it half typed in, and then bail on it while doing further
research. Sometimes the subject turns out to be junk science, sometimes I can tell it will just attract trolls,
other times the story is all over the news sites, and everybody has already seen it elsewhere.
I suspect that latter bit is the situation you find yourself with the Samsung TV story.
Still some people might find themselves with that TV purchased by a parent, spouse, or something
and a discussion of what to do about it might be worthwhile.
The wider the hue and cry, the more likely this nonsense is to stop. Note: (and story idea), Comcast is advertising
similar capabilities for their upcoming series cable boxes. We might be able to head that off at the pass if we bitch loud and long.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 09 2015, @10:00PM
have it half typed in, and then bail on it while doing further research
I've done that numerous times as well.
Surprising, huh?
-- gewg_
(Score: 4, Interesting) by anubi on Tuesday February 10 2015, @01:15AM
You have posted quite a few stories here, frojack. Thanks!
I know it takes time to "get the wrappings on straight" for presenting it.
I have posted a couple myself and I would like to thank the editors here for dressing it up properly, as all I had submitted was just a link I thought was interesting.
For anyone else reading, the editors here are great at "fleshing out" a submission. You need not be an eloquent presenter to submit, you just need an interesting link.
If you enjoy this site, chances are if you found some interesting tidbit on the web, the rest of us are likely to find it interesting as well.
Its hard to tell what people here will find extremely interesting. For me, I was highly impacted by c0lo's submission on DRM in farm equipment. I note the whole forum became abuzz with lots of excellent comments from experts in the field ( pun intended ) and highly moderated as well.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: 2) by mrcoolbp on Tuesday February 10 2015, @08:03PM
We'd much rather have a link to an interesting story with little-to-no summary than no submissions at all. Just sayin'.
(Score:1^½, Radical)
(Score: 2) by Marand on Tuesday February 10 2015, @03:54AM
That's usually my experience, too. If I see something I'm interested in submitting, I'll look into it and find it's usually one of the following:
1. already on the site
2. in the queue already
3. regurgitation of old news that a site's re-running with a minor change because of a need to meet quotas on a slow news day.
That not counting all the stuff that just doesn't seem interesting enough to submit. Due to sites wanting to post MORE MORE MORE instead of BETTER, most of the stuff that shows up in my RSS reader is barely interesting even on a good day, so I just skip most of it. On a slow day there's maybe one or two things worth reading and they're already on here and Slashdot, sometimes more than once.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Nerdfest on Monday February 09 2015, @07:43PM
I'm going to go somewhat off off-topic here to ask if anyone else has noticed a big up-tick in the interest of many stories lately. Either the site has gotten way busier, people have become more involved, or the stories have been that much more interesting (perhaps a combination of the three). Hell, there were an astounding number of comments on a thread about GPL related compiler changes. I like the way the site is shaping up. The recent moderation changes seem to be working quite well so far as well.
Perhaps in addition to lobbing some interesting stories onto the queue, people could do post a reminder to people that we're still around is whatever forums or social networks they spend time on.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by morgauxo on Monday February 09 2015, @07:56PM
I still have both this and that other site in an RSS feed agregator. My hope is that some day that other site will be totally redundant and I can remove it. Anyway.. it wasn't looking good until recently. Almost everything that interested me showed up at the other one first. Lately however I've started noticing things hitting Soylent first!
Awesome!
(Score: 4, Insightful) by ticho on Monday February 09 2015, @08:17PM
For me, it's not really about where it appears first - here, as well as on Slashdot* the stories usually hit at least a day after they break on many other sites - but more about quality of the discussion underneath each piece. And on Slashdot, it's been getting pretty youtubecomment-ish lately, while over here, quality is going steadily up. Kudos you all of you! :)
*(Yes, I am not afraid to write the name you all seem to dread so much. Candyman, candyman, candyman! Grow up.)
(Score: 3, Insightful) by GungnirSniper on Monday February 09 2015, @09:08PM
The top comments over there are nearly just as good as the top ones over here. If we want to make Dice pay, beating them to publication or at least matching them will be required. I don't think that's our goal for whatever reason though.
Tips for better submissions to help our site grow. [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by mrcoolbp on Tuesday February 10 2015, @08:07PM
Hi GungnirSniper! I don't think that it's ever *not* been our goal to beat anyone to publication, if we had tons of submissions and tons of editors, I'm sure that would become a nice ambition. We do what we can.
(Score:1^½, Radical)
(Score: 2, Troll) by buswolley on Monday February 09 2015, @09:38PM
Agreed. I do go to the other site to see if there is anything interesting, but I never post there unless I want to AC troll an idiot moron ass, which is not often.
subicular junctures
(Score: 3, Funny) by fadrian on Tuesday February 10 2015, @02:19AM
Damn! He said it! Now we'll never hear from him again, as they who will not be named will rain beta down upon all of his user interfaces. He is damned now.
That is all.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 09 2015, @08:11PM
> ask if anyone else has noticed a big up-tick
Hell yes.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by frojack on Monday February 09 2015, @09:08PM
The moderation system changes have helped this.
Before, you had to hold off commenting if you planned to moderate. Now that you can moderate anything but your own posts I've noticed an uptick as well.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 4, Disagree) by arashi no garou on Monday February 09 2015, @09:23PM
I see that trend as well, however I still refuse to moderate at all in a thread I've commented in, and I try really hard to resist the urge to comment in a thread I've moderated in. I feel that I have the right to do one or the other, but not both. Maybe that's a holdover from when I frequented OSNews, I don't know. I just feel that if I've commented, any moderation I do in that thread would be "cheating", even if I mod up someone I argue with, or mod down someone I agree with.
I'm also hesitant to use the "disagree" option; on other sites I've always stopped myself from downmodding if there was even a shadow of a thought that I just disagreed with their opinion. In my mind, downmodding should be reserved for obvious trolling, overt flamebaiting, spam, and wildly off-topic (to the point of being detrimental to the conversation) posts. Mildly off-topic comments, sharp wit, foul language, and even wildly inaccurate posts should be addressed via reply, not simply downmodded into oblivion, at least in my opinion.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 09 2015, @09:41PM
Look more people have moderator points no.. Most in fact. Think of it as personal leverage, but leverage everyone also has, so its all fair.
(Score: 2) by frojack on Monday February 09 2015, @09:52PM
Agreed, I tend to avoid modding threads (not storied, but comment threads) that are subordinate to one of my posts.
I make an exception if someone comes back with a good counter argument to something I've posted, such as this post by hairyfeet https://soylentnews.org/comments.pl?sid=6024&cid=142754 [soylentnews.org]
Had he agreed with me, I wouldn't have modded him up, but because he made a cogent argument counter to my posting I thought it deserved modding up.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 5, Informative) by cmn32480 on Monday February 09 2015, @10:32PM
Disagree is a 0 value mod.
It is not a down mod, as there are no negative consequences to it.
A simple solution, mod with a disagree, then POST WHY. It helps to spur discussion.
"It's a dog eat dog world, and I'm wearing Milkbone underwear" - Norm Peterson
(Score: 2) by opinionated_science on Tuesday February 10 2015, @05:42PM
i proposed a "citation" tag?
(Score: 2) by frojack on Wednesday February 11 2015, @01:10AM
Interesting idea.
But all too often, people demanding citations won't accept any posted sources anyway, and will dismiss any citation you post as insufficient to meet their high standards.
Oddly, if you put the citation right there in your original claim, this seldom happens, and mostly no one takes issue with your citations.
But once someone stands up and ASKS for a citation they seem never to want to sit back down and accept what was provided, and instead they want to bicker about the authority of the citation. I've found its seldom worth the effort, and its a thankless task to respond to a request for citation. If they were truly interested they would google it themselves, but mostly they are only interested in an argument.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2) by opinionated_science on Wednesday February 11 2015, @04:26PM
well it gives the opportunity for those who know an appropriate citation to guide the discussion. In science there is often a diversity of opinion, but then there are things that are just plain wrong. Discerning the difference is part of the trick!!!
(Score: 2) by mmcmonster on Monday February 09 2015, @09:08PM
I think there are certain topics here that get a lot of comments.
The ones with the most comments are meta-stories about the site itself.
Next most are general topics like GPL, larger OSs/distributions, and hot general interest topics (ie: Tesla Motors, the latest terrorist event, etc).
Not that it's a bad thing.
Perhaps have a couple general interest topics on the main page every day to draw in the comments and crowds and a couple more specific stories is a good way to grow user interest?
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Ethanol-fueled on Monday February 09 2015, @10:01PM
Say it with me, everyone --
Soylent News is about the discussions.
I'll admit I haven't been the most prolific submitter lately. Now that that's out of the way, people should submit stories here regardless of how old the article is, who did or did not cover it first, perceived interest/potential number of comments (it's not a game!), and topic itself.
You never know. Maybe a surprising number of people will take interest in your super-niche submission. Maybe if not, one good comment will get a good discussion going.
Here are another couple suggestions:
- Don't talk shit about any submissions if you have never submitted yourself. If you're itchin' to talk shit, then take a deep breath and submit your own story. Too chicken to submit a story? Then shut the fuck up.
- Do be a subject matter expert and/or actively participate in a discussion of a story you submitted. That will at least help guide and carry the discussion along to increase the discussion's potential quality and impact.
The quality of the submissions has been improving greatly and these last few days in particular were outstanding (regretfully, I haven't the time to participate in a meaningful manner). We have Dice beat, the only caveat is that we have to maintain activity and pitch in. I may not have much free time on my hands anymore, but surely many of you do. How would you feel if this place ceased to exist?
(Score: 2) by GungnirSniper on Tuesday February 10 2015, @03:49AM
That's what drove me away from submitting original content for stories. It takes time to read, write, and link the content all together. It is disheartening to get trolled for doing so, even if sometimes I deserved it. [soylentnews.org]
Tips for better submissions to help our site grow. [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Marand on Tuesday February 10 2015, @04:06AM
That's what drove me away from submitting original content for stories. It takes time to read, write, and link the content all together. It is disheartening to get trolled for doing so, even if sometimes I deserved it.
Don't let that discourage you from submitting.
You can't please everybody, so don't expect to. Any time you put something out there for the world to see you're opening yourself up to criticism, and there will always be someone to criticise you, no matter how great your contribution is. You could discover a way to make FTL travel feasible and someone would complain that you should have been putting that effort into AIDS research instead, and on Slashdot all the armchair physicists will be going "well duh, any idiot knew that, why's this fool getting recognition? I did this in my mom's basement eight years ago"
That's just part of it, and something you have to accept and deal with, even when your creation is something as trivial as a comment. Even if it's negative, at least you garnered enough interest to be remarked upon; the worst thing is when you take time to create something and nobody cares, not even enough to say something bad.
(Score: 2) by fliptop on Tuesday February 10 2015, @10:50PM
That does kinda suck [soylentnews.org] but since I got the latter I guess it's ok.
To be oneself, and unafraid whether right or wrong, is more admirable than the easy cowardice of surrender to conformity
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 09 2015, @10:23PM
Parkinson's Law of Triviality [google.com]
-- gewg_
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 09 2015, @09:14PM
Either the site has gotten way busier, people have become more involved, or the stories have been that much more interesting (perhaps a combination of the three).
All the snow storms mean people have less options for their entertainment.
It is easy to double or even triple activity when the level was so low to start with.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 09 2015, @11:18PM
Unfortunately any story about real science draws only two or three comments tops. :(
(Score: 5, Insightful) by tibman on Tuesday February 10 2015, @12:17AM
That doesn't mean that people aren't reading it though. Much of the science stuff is very interesting to me but also outside my "comfortable to discuss intelligently" area. You are certainly right, there is room for improvement. Though I don't think improvement would be everyone throwing in their opinions on something they don't completely understand. No sure : /
SN won't survive on lurkers alone. Write comments.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 10 2015, @03:11PM
Asking questions can spur discussion, so don't worry about not being an expert. Nobody is an expert in everything.
(Score: 2) by boristhespider on Tuesday February 10 2015, @07:26PM
I think that's actually not true - there have been a couple of stories on cosmology in the last few days that have had 30+ comments on them. (Amongst which are my patented walls-of-text pitched at wildly varying levels.) Of course, there is always the debate on whether cosmology actually counts as real science. My masters supervisor advised me not to go into it because "it's not really physics and they've only got one experiment and they can't even run that one again"...
(Score: 2) by goodie on Monday February 09 2015, @08:01PM
Seems that it's worked already there are 9 stories in queue at the time I saw this.
(Score: 2) by Jeremiah Cornelius on Monday February 09 2015, @08:07PM
I don't mind...
You're betting on the pantomime horse...
(Score: 4, Informative) by maxwell demon on Monday February 09 2015, @08:20PM
Makes me wonder … there's a topic "Slash" and a topic "Soylent". What is the rule whether things go into "Slash" or Soylent"?
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 5, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 09 2015, @08:30PM
if it's fan-fiction of a sexual nature, it goes into 'Slash'
(Score: 4, Funny) by tangomargarine on Monday February 09 2015, @09:09PM
/./fic
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 2) by The Archon V2.0 on Monday February 09 2015, @10:48PM
Well, this took bloody forever to find. One of the things from the old Brunching Shuttlecocks site:
http://s91291220.onlinehome.us/formica/lore-warmembrace.jpg [onlinehome.us]
(Score: 2) by buswolley on Monday February 09 2015, @09:43PM
I didn't see Soylent as an option. My mistake!!!
subicular junctures
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 09 2015, @10:32PM
I don't see Soylent as a topic at all at the submissions page.
It must be another of those account-only things.
If I was to differentiate the 2 headings, Slash would be Slashcode--kinda like the Gecko rendering engine--while Soylent would be more the Firefox|Iceweasel|PaleMoon|SeaMonkey layer on top of that.
-- gewg_
(Score: 3, Interesting) by maxwell demon on Monday February 09 2015, @11:20PM
I just checked the submission page, and indeed I can't find it there either. However it's shown at the Topics link [soylentnews.org] in the navigation, and given the large number of articles under this topic, there must be (or have been) a way to post under this topic. Maybe it's reserved for Soylent staff?
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by The Mighty Buzzard on Tuesday February 10 2015, @12:35AM
You're likely right. I'm gonna go out on a limb and say it's a bug. Not likely to get fixed before the next site update though as I'm too busy getting ready to move/moving/unpacking to put in any code this month.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by mrcoolbp on Tuesday February 10 2015, @08:20PM
I would say the topic "Slash" should cover articles on the code behind our site, code deploys, other slash sites (like http://barrapunto.com/), [barrapunto.com] etc.
Articles that are discussing our direction, updates from staff, questions to the community would fall under "Soylent" (this article should probably be under "Soylent").
That being said I'm not against them being merged into "Soylent".
(Score:1^½, Radical)
(Score: 4, Insightful) by iwoloschin on Monday February 09 2015, @08:13PM
Maybe it's time to start soliciting some "special interest" type stories? One idea that could go for quite a while is asking people to write a small blurb about their favorite piece of software. Maybe to start limit it to open source projects to avoid any sort of "soylentisment" sort of thing, but it might also be interesting to hear about small widgets and tools that other people use to become more productive. I wouldn't limit this to any particular field, if there's a tool/application/etc you use and find awesome, write about it and spread the word!
I could probably write up one or two to get us started.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Monday February 09 2015, @09:03PM
Or you could go topics + discussion. Topic: "The most important emacs extension." My contribution, "helm". go go go list some more.
You can either reply to the topic thread with "surely flycheck has saved my butt more times" or reply to individual contribution threads like my "helm" suggestion with either "I still use ido" or "and don't forget its cousin help-projectile"
(Score: 4, Interesting) by mmcmonster on Monday February 09 2015, @10:38PM
I'm actually writing down my first year experiences with my new Tesla. Was thinking of posting it to a /. journal entry, but I'll just post it to my SN journal instead.
We all have to do our parts. :)
(Score: 2) by Marand on Tuesday February 10 2015, @04:26AM
One idea that could go for quite a while is asking people to write a small blurb about their favorite piece of software
I did something like that a while back asking about people's preferred browser addons and listing some of my own as a topic-starter. It seemed to generate a fair amount of discussion, including the usual "wtf why is this on SN it's not news OMG" that those sorts of things always attract. They're good for discussion because it's a completely opinion-based thing, so everybody can chime in.
I'd actually like it if others did the same, because the submissions and the comments that follow can be good for finding new software or learning about improvements to old software that I've tried and discarded in the past. Plus it helps give exposure to promising software projects.
I've considered submitting more like that myself, but figured I should wait a while between, lest I become the SN Bennett Hasselton.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by pkrasimirov on Monday February 09 2015, @08:31PM
Talking about where stories appear first, here or on the *other site, I can share my own experience. When ISS had the ammonia leak alarm I got it very quickly and came here to check. There was nothing. I went to SD to check -- nothing! Then I decided it's time to submit my first story [soylentnews.org]. I did, also put BREAKING NEWS in the title. I also sent email to LaminatorX notifying about the news. And then nothing happened for few hours. The news stayed in the queue, new stories were submitted after it. Only after a while Blackmoore put it on the front page. The situation in space was pretty stable at this time so it was not a big buzz anymore.
Overall it's cool but if we can break the news quickly it will only serve us better.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Sir Finkus on Monday February 09 2015, @09:09PM
I've had similar thoughts. Maybe there should be a checkbox somewhere that indicates that this is a breaking story and puts it at the top of the queue?
Also, I've found that bringing up the submission in IRC can help sometimes. There's usually an editor on that can fast-track approval if you poke them correctly.
Join our Folding@Home team! [stanford.edu]
(Score: 4, Interesting) by frojack on Monday February 09 2015, @09:26PM
here's usually an editor on that can fast-track approval if you poke them correctly.
But we shouldn't have to "poke them", and that would quickly become abused by the IRC dwellers.
With all the great changes that the devs have put in recently, they are probably tired, but maybe its time
to update the list of topics to include "Breaking News" in addition to "news" as well as some other topic areas
"Space"
"Medicine"
"Government"
"Rants"
etc....
And why do we have two topics "Software" and "code" which seem pretty much the same to me?
Maybe a Poll is in order ?
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2) by Sir Finkus on Monday February 09 2015, @09:45PM
Oh, I agree, there needs to be a way to fast track stories, I was just suggesting a temporary solution.
Join our Folding@Home team! [stanford.edu]
(Score: 4, Funny) by c0lo on Monday February 09 2015, @09:46PM
Well, at least the current (old) poll is in order. An ascending one.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0
(Score: 2) by Open4D on Tuesday February 10 2015, @03:33PM
Nice idea. That would be the KISS approach.
FWIW, I had a proposal for a slightly more elaborate system, discussed a bit here [soylentnews.org].
(Score: 2) by mrcoolbp on Tuesday February 10 2015, @08:29PM
Go to chat.soylentnews.org [soylentnews.org] ("IRC" link in left sidebar), join the #editorial channel, poke some editors (they should have a "+" in front of their nick). No IRC client needed, you get to engage with the editors, ask/respond to questions if you want, can remain annon etc.
I'm not seeing a downside to that approach. I also don't see a downside to adding a "Breaking News" topic and I'll go ahead and add that to the bug tracker as a "Feature Request".
(Score:1^½, Radical)
(Score: 2) by aristarchus on Tuesday February 10 2015, @05:54AM
There's usually an editor on that can fast-track approval if you poke them correctly.
Could you provide more details on correctly poking an editor? On second thought, I don't really want to know. As long as the stories keep coming. . . .
(Score: 2) by frojack on Monday February 09 2015, @09:15PM
Noticed the same thing on occasion, timely "posted here first" articles that I submitted got held, and showed up a few days later, long after /. had them up.
It looked like I mined the other site even though I had posted it hours ahead of them.
On the other hand our editors do a pretty good job if you ask me.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Monday February 09 2015, @09:17PM
Scheduled stuff has done enormously better than in the past. I was worried the story about the spacex launch being delayed wouldn't post till after the launch (was going to be about 3 hours from now, now rescheduled yet again due to weather till 27 hours from now).
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 09 2015, @09:43PM
As someone who has submitted many stories, I have experienced how a slow approval can be a personal bummer. It's like bringing something cool for show and tell and then the teacher doesn't call on you. But, I think slow approvals aren't much of a problem for the site at large because comments are where the value is at and some amount of delay can even enhance comment quality as events progress from initial reporting.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by buswolley on Monday February 09 2015, @09:46PM
or maybe a way to spend karma to move a story up in the queue if it is breaking.
subicular junctures
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 09 2015, @10:51PM
I don't remember exactly where I saw that story first.
I do remember Googling it up to see who had more details.
(Adding &tbs=qdr:d to the Google URL gets you only the last 24 hours; substitute w, m, or y for longer spans.)
Eventually, that turned out to be another of those "headline news" things:
Nobody was hurt; the personnel were shunted to another portion of the space station; it was just an instrumentation malfunction.
Rumors and jump-the-gun sensationalism are not what I want to see here.
I actually like it when the facts have been shaken out and the dust has settled a bit and some cool-headed analysis has been done.
-- gewg_
(Score: 5, Interesting) by lubricus on Tuesday February 10 2015, @12:12AM
This is the primary reason I stopped submitting to Soylent. It's hard to get motivated and write a good submission when you know it could sit in the queue for over a day sometimes. ..long enough for others to accuse you of copy pasting from the other site [soylentnews.org].
... sorry about the typos
(Score: 3, Informative) by janrinok on Tuesday February 10 2015, @09:02AM
I understand your disappointment - but the the most prolific editors are located in predominantly 2 global areas - the US and western Europe. Our activity patterns tend to cover the same hours as much of membership. We, like all the community here, are also volunteers with other commitments and responsibilities. I try to keep stories prepared for release to cover the next 3 - 6 hours and others have similar work patterns. Despite this, there are times when there just isn't an editor sitting looking at the screen waiting for something to do. If, by the time that I get to releasing some more stories, your hot story is no longer as timely as it was when you submitted it, I have to consider its merits on content alone. I also keep an eye on TV news for any breaking stories that are likely to be of interest and, if one occurs, I try to log on here as quickly as possible to try to cover it. I check my emails once a day - I decide how to live my life, not my email queue - so flagging up an urgent story to me via email would serve no purpose. Furthermore, receiving an email during the night (in Europe) is guaranteed to do absolutely nothing at all.
I encourage you to continue to submit stories on any topic that interests you. Perhaps we will discover that we have a number of like-minded individuals who each think that they are on their own. If you submit an urgent story then put the word 'BREAKING' as the first word of the title but please use this only in cases where it is justified. It will help catch our attention and might result in a better release time.
Currently, due to external pressures and commitments, only a handful of editors are actually able to support the site on a day-to-day basis. We will do the best that we can but, at times, we have to pre-load the release queue and go live the rest of our daily lives off-line. What would help us is having plenty of submissions, ideally well researched and linked, and covering a multitude of diverse topics.
This is not offered as an excuse - simply an explanation of how stories get to the front page (or not!). We cannot provide a 24hour reporting service or hope to compete with the wire services that have the world covered by a network of paid reporters. But, as has been stated in the comments here and many times elsewhere - the story is only the start, it's the comments that make it a good read!
(Score: 1) by Refugee from beyond on Monday February 09 2015, @08:48PM
Shouldn't that “slash” icon be replaced with something else? I dunno, meta or something.
Instantly better soylentnews: replace background on article and comment titles with #973131.
(Score: 3, Funny) by VLM on Monday February 09 2015, @09:06PM
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slash_%28musician%29 [wikipedia.org]
Or more specifically
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/e/e6/Slash_live_in_Rome_by_Paride.jpg/299px-Slash_live_in_Rome_by_Paride.jpg [wikimedia.org]
(Score: 2) by goodie on Tuesday February 10 2015, @01:15AM
Works with me :D
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Random2 on Monday February 09 2015, @08:51PM
I know I personally don't really watch many news sites, here, the other site, and random articles on other people's feeds throughout the day. I imagine a good portion of the user base (on either site) primarily uses both sites as a source of news, meaning they won't have much to contribute in the way or articles.
I can't say I was on the other site when it was getting over its early growth hurdle, but it would be interesting to look back and see what they did to go from a few dudes doing stuff in their spare time to being what they were at their peak. Was it hiring editors? Was it 'being different'? Was it the random success of luck giving its blessing? And drawing on that, what can we incorporate into our site to help grow from a small, independent site to a medium (or even large!) one? Should we form teams who go to other news sites and report their stories? Encourage people to do original research and submit it? Something else entirely?
The site being volunteer run does impede it somewhat in terms of finding and publishing stories, although that's not to suggest it needs to change immediately. Our editors do as good of a job as one can expect someone to do for free, but they simply don't have the time to dedicate to news hunting/sourcing in the same way that a professional editor would.
Growing takes time, and the hardest thing to do is wait. Wait for the momentum, wait for the activity, and maintain the enthusiasm as things build and solidify. Which is why we should focus on finding ways to leverage what we have now to build the site into a medium-sized platform while taking particular care to keep what we have stable and as untaxing as possible, although I profess I don't have any feasible ideas for going about this.
If only I registered 3 users earlier....
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Phoenix666 on Monday February 09 2015, @08:57PM
I'm a bit of a maker & tinkerer, and I've often thought, and have suggested a few times on SN, that it would be fun and interesting to have some more of that kind of content here, especially Tips & Best Practices. Sometimes when I get stuck at some point I hit the Google machine to try to find tips, but weeding through the several thousand paid-for links is time consuming and counter-productive. Then, inevitably, months later I'll stumble across an off-hand remark by someone at a site like this that points me to a goldmine of resources that they've "known about for years." If we had those kinds of tips, links to particularly good videos, technical specs, etc, collected here by topic and moderated with our usual excellent moderation, it would be enormously helpful, like a virtual toolbox.
Also, a couple of recent posts, like the one where the Soylentil debuted his gamification site, has made me think that perhaps it would also be fun and useful to have call-outs to folks to work on open-source projects. Hackathons I've participated in here in NYC have functionality for that sort of thing, but SN would be a better platform, I think; Also, it would be good to have more knowledgeable folks kibbutz on project concepts (none of us is good at everything). Other worthy projects have started like that in the past (such as Linux itself), and I suspect there are many more that could take off from here.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Tuesday February 10 2015, @12:43AM
Sub us some original content like that and I will personally kick editors in the shins until it's queued for publishing.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Tuesday February 10 2015, @02:30PM
Thank you, I will do that.
On a separate note, but related to the strength and engagement of the SN community, is there any talk among the editors of being able to hashtag other users, articles, or posts, so that if I, for example, want to reference something that another user posted in a separate conversation that's not a direct reply to him, that he'll get a heads-up (eg. #HairyFeet or #Thexalon)? A Twitter-like overlay, if you will. I personally have no use for Twitter itself, but that feature set could be a nice enhancement here.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Tuesday February 10 2015, @03:31PM
Ya, that's really not a bad idea. We already put in user referencing with @user name: or @#uid: and their comments are down at the bottom of the page it links to but we've only just barely started figuring out how and what we want to do with that type of stuff.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Tuesday February 10 2015, @07:25PM
Got it. I'm posting this here for context but will proceed on IRC from here:
I don't want to be the guy who chimes in with ideas he has no intention of helping realize; I joined IRC with my same username and am going through the dev wiki now. Is #dev the best channel to talk feature sets, or is #Soylent better?
Cheers
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Tuesday February 10 2015, @10:40PM
Either/or when I'm not having a nap.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Tuesday February 10 2015, @07:32PM
The most natural thing to me would be a message (like the messages you get for replies to your comments) reading something like "User XY/An Anonymous Coward referenced you in [Link to comment]."
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 09 2015, @09:24PM
can we keep stories on the front page longer time somehow?
to let there be more discussions on each thing and thoughts about what happens a longer time., not just "forgotten" to page two.
(Score: 2) by GlennC on Monday February 09 2015, @09:53PM
I just submitted another story (this one less likely to be viewed as troll-bait).
It may or may not be accepted, but at least I submitted something.
Sorry folks...the world is bigger and more varied than you want it to be. Deal with it.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by turgid on Monday February 09 2015, @10:02PM
This site is excellent. Please keep up the good work.,
I really appreciate the quality of the stories and the discussions. There is a high signal to noise ratio.
While there may be some trollish types complaining about regular contributors being "biased" and such, that is to be expected when challenging stories and opinions are posted. Please do not pay attention to the trolls.
I wish I could contribute more by submitting stories and posting some comments. Often there are times when I'd like to write a few paragraphs, but I'm very busy, as I'm sue most of us are.
Once again, keep going. It's still early days. You're doing great.
I refuse to engage in a battle of wits with an unarmed opponent [wikipedia.org].
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Kell on Tuesday February 10 2015, @02:49AM
For those who weren't around the old site long enough, this is sort of what it was like (except with more grits). There was a reason Slashdot was successful, and we all knew it when we abandoned ship. In the downward slide to the Great Schism, the green site became a festering pit of political partisanship. Soylent has a strong flavour of libertarianism to it (for good or bad, you decide), but on the whole the discussion is more high brow and earnest.
Scientists ask questions. Engineers solve problems.
(Score: 1) by turgid on Friday February 13 2015, @09:10PM
Naked and petrified?
I refuse to engage in a battle of wits with an unarmed opponent [wikipedia.org].
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Robotron on Monday February 09 2015, @10:20PM
I still browse the other site a few times a week, but those embedded auto-playing videos are an excruciating reminder of how little of Slashdot's soul remains. I don't think their editorial has much power in and of itself anymore, and will not so much as fart without Dice's say so. Anyway, each trendy misstep means more exodus here. Viva Soylent!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 10 2015, @06:51AM
I can no longer browse /.from my phone. The incredible amount of extra stuff going on slows it to a crawl. The silly number of content reflows from css and ads means that it takes almost 30 secs for the page to stabilize - if it didn't "forget" and suddenly redirects you back to beta or the terribad mobile edition.
Soylent? Loads instantly
(Score: 1) by OwMyBrain on Tuesday February 10 2015, @03:17PM
Those videos are the reason I created my SN account today.
(Score: 2) by Open4D on Tuesday February 10 2015, @03:39PM
I suppose Dice could argue that it's for the user to choose whether their browser is going to auto-play videos or not, so they're entitled to include them on the page? But then, I rarely visit the Slashdot website so maybe I don't know how bad it is ...
P.S. Welcome!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 10 2015, @12:41AM
I submitted a stroy once, one I actually took the time to do some research on and include some links to that, only to see it disappear completely from the submissions and then replaced by somebody else's copypasta submission of the same subject, that did not inlcude a balanced viewpoint. So, I do like this site, and as on the other site, sometimes comment, but mostly lurk, and do not submit at all, because well, it seems pretty useless to me.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 10 2015, @01:37AM
Shit happens sometimes. Sheesh
(Score: 4, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 10 2015, @02:12AM
What actually happened is the other submission was made before yours and was in a limbo between approved and posted.
The latest version of the software now displays the titles of the approved queue so you can get an idea of whether or not the story you want to submit is pending.
(Score: 2) by Marand on Tuesday February 10 2015, @04:37AM
What actually happened is the other submission was made before yours and was in a limbo between approved and posted.
The first time I submitted something here, my submission vanished into that approval/posting limbo and it confused the hell out of me. I spent time checking for errors, formatting, etc. and didn't know why it'd have just gotten executed like that; then it showed up sometime the next day and I figured out the approval limbo you mentioned.
The latest version of the software now displays the titles of the approved queue so you can get an idea of whether or not the story you want to submit is pending.
That's awesome to know and should help a lot with submissions. When my mod points refresh I'm going to upmod you so hopefully people see that.
(Score: 1, Offtopic) by fadrian on Tuesday February 10 2015, @02:16AM
... at least they aren't lonely.
Other than that? It's a very curly representation of 2+1? Triangles rule? I could get into category theory now, but I think I have already made my point - the number three isn't thatinteresting.
That is all.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by kbahey on Tuesday February 10 2015, @04:13AM
I have said this before, for example, here [soylentnews.org] and here [soylentnews.org].
Don't get me wrong! I love this site and appreciate all the effort put in it. Slashdot has been going down in quality ever since the beta fiasco that was the reason for the birth of SoylentNews, and Bennet Hasleton, and Dice articles. But what they have going is lots of people discussing articles and arguing and flaming and trolling. In other words, the community.
As I said in the links above, SoylentNews has to continually attract new people, so that enough of them would post stories, comment on them and moderate. Otherwise, some will leave slowly and the site will slow down considerably.
Moderation participation is a problem. Look at most articles, nothing moderated above 2 on most articles. Why? Low participation.
What can be done about it? Attract more people. How? That is the question ...
2bits.com, Inc: Drupal, WordPress, and LAMP performance tuning [2bits.com].
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Thursday February 12 2015, @03:33PM
The giving everybody mod points every day seems to have helped. If it turns out to not be enough we can always bump the number of points.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by kbahey on Thursday February 12 2015, @04:15PM
Personally, I can't tell if it helped or not. My empirical observation is "how many comments are modded 4 and higher". I see some articles pass this threshold, but other articles have 3 or 4 comments in total.
Obviously, the site team can dig deeper into the database and do total number of comments per week, how many modded above 4 from the total, ...etc. and compare week to week. If this can be done, or a variant thereof, then it would be a better measure than my guess. Perhaps a monthly report that is posted somewhere?
2bits.com, Inc: Drupal, WordPress, and LAMP performance tuning [2bits.com].
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Thursday February 12 2015, @10:56PM
Yeah, not a bad idea. I'm personally more concerned with bad downmods than lack of upmods but that's a personal peeve.
I'd planned on doing up a "the month before" and "the month after" mod changes but if paulej72 wants to run some queries while I'm on leave I've got no beef.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 12 2015, @04:39PM
I'd say we have the better community even if there are more people on the old site. If we're to attract more people. then everybody who feels Soylent is a worthy effort should simply contribute more. More code, more money, more stories, more moderation, more comments. And finally we need to give it more time.
On the other hand a small, high quality forum is better than a large, low quality.