SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
As someone who pays an inordinate amount of time pondering things, I noticed some recent milestones for SoylentNews and thought these might be of interest to the rest of the community. In round numbers we have:
- 20 Months since SoylentNews went live (on February 14th, 2014.)
- 20 Current staffers who keep things running.
-
200150 Subscribers.[*] - 5,900 Registered users.
- 8,400 Stories posted.
- 10,000 Stories submitted.
- 250,000 Comments posted (almost -- who will get it?)
- 166,770,000 page hits on the site (yes, 1/6 of a Billion!)
What started as a protest activity (The Slashcott) burgeoned into action in the form of taking a several-years-old, non-maintained code base and, through the alchemy of dedication and sleep deprivation, came to be known as SoylentNews. There were numerous site crashes and outages, but things gradually stabilized. We were incorporated (completed on July 4th, aptly enough). Other niceties started to make their way onto the site: moderation changes, User Interface (UI) enhancements, Unicode support, apache and mod-perl upgrades, and countless other behind-the-scenes tweaks and tunings to get things to where they are now.
Besides the main site, I would be remiss if I did not mention that we also have our own Wiki and an active Internet Relay Chat (IRC) community.
Most importantly, it is our community that drives us! Thank you for all the story submissions, for all the comments on those stories, and for your feedback on site improvement ideas.
[*] The original value of 200 for the number of subscribers was an estimate; the correct number was 150. Updated this story for posterity.
To those who have started or extended their subscription please accept our genuine and sincere thanks — we could NOT do it without you! -Ed.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by RedBear on Wednesday October 14 2015, @05:39PM
We need to find some way to remind readers every day that this site probably won't last long unless more people subscribe. It's $20/year for Pete's sake. That's like four mornings worth of your favorite overpriced coffee beverage. I'm certain that there are at least 500 of you regular contributors who could afford that quite easily and should have subscribed months ago, and you know it. I should see stars next to damn near every recognizable name here.
The local public radio station does a fund drive twice a year. The hosts of each show compete with the other shows to see who can reach their funding goals first. Without those fund drives a lot of listeners would forget that the local radio station is funded largely by community members and donations from local businesses. I would not be opposed to some sort of fund drive every quarter or something where every other article posted that day is an update on progress toward meeting the subscriber/funding goals. Something certainly needs to be done. 200 * 20 = $4,000. If the entire staff weren't volunteers this site would already be kaputski.
Disturbingly I just checked and realized my own subscription expired a month ago. I don't recall seeing any email or on-site notification about that or I would have renewed already. That's another problem that needs to be addressed. I'm not sure why I didn't set it up as recurring, unless that wasn't possible at the time.
¯\_ʕ◔.◔ʔ_/¯ LOL. I dunno. I'm just a bear.
... Peace out. Got bear stuff to do. 彡ʕ⌐■.■ʔ
(Score: 1) by Bobs on Wednesday October 14 2015, @05:48PM
One idea that occurs to me is putting a little icon next to the IDs of posts by subscribers.
Some benefits:
Might also want to provide an auto bump of +1 to posts by subscribers.
Seems like an easy way to encourage subscriptions.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by RedBear on Wednesday October 14 2015, @06:32PM
Subscribers get the gold star next to their UID, unless they disable it in their preferences. But it isn't nearly enough to clue new users into the fact that the site needs subscribers to survive. I'm guessing it's too easy to not notice the total lack of ads on the site.
As a subscriber I do not want extra points just because I've paid. I believe that sort of thing has been discussed and rejected repeatedly, for good reasons. We don't want our own local version of Citizens United.
Isn't this site owned by some sort of non-profit organization now? SoylentNews needs to do something similar to what Wikipedia does every year and put up a huge, impossible-to-miss banner asking for subscribers. Subtle things like gold stars and a little subscribe link are just not cutting it. Reporting the total number of subscribers vs. the number of registered users has certainly triggered quite a bit of concerned feedback here today. Perhaps that statistic should be a more regular part of what gets displayed on the site.
¯\_ʕ◔.◔ʔ_/¯ LOL. I dunno. I'm just a bear.
... Peace out. Got bear stuff to do. 彡ʕ⌐■.■ʔ
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Marand on Wednesday October 14 2015, @06:40PM
I agree with the wikipedia-style banner idea. I know there is already a funding goal box on the sidebar of the main page that sort of does that job, but its problem is that someone like me will practically never see it because I visit stories directly from the RSS freed.
(Score: 3, Informative) by NCommander on Wednesday October 14 2015, @06:58PM
We are a public benefit corporation which is classified as a for-profit business. We sell subscriptions and don't accept donations. Starting a NFP is on our to-do list but the legal costs are too high at this time.
Still always moving
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 14 2015, @08:39PM
I can purchase a subscription with Paypal, which I refuse to use on ideological grounds, or bitcoin, which I have never used and no matter how much I love soylent I wont start toying with a new currency just to subscribe.
Hell give me an address to send a money order to.
I would buy a subscription but apparently they don't want my money.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by bryan on Wednesday October 14 2015, @09:32PM
Interesting comments and story submissions are a far greater contribution than more hosting money (that only Linode sees anyway).
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Wednesday October 14 2015, @11:38PM
Hopefully I'll get us hooked up with the Stripe API by next year and have us able to process any CC without touching PayPal.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by ticho on Thursday October 15 2015, @07:12AM
That would be great, and I would definitely sub then. I'm having the same view towards paypal and bitcoin as the grandparent.
(Score: 2) by NCommander on Saturday October 17 2015, @06:04PM
None of us really like PayPal, but with the default subscription code we started with, it was the only method available out of the box (and as we found out, annoyingly incomplete). BitCoin was added after a talk with our CPA as it was highly indicated as a desirable feature, and then it kinda fell by the wayside. TMB is a hero for pushing through exceedingly boring and painful work on getting it all working.
Still always moving