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, Interesting) by Phoenix666 on Wednesday October 14 2015, @10:12PM
That is a really good question. But as a veteran of many grassroots efforts, I'd say it's a success because I learn something new every day. I like, on a visceral level, very little of what SN users say. Many of the users I actively despise. But I keep listening, and they say things despite my antipathy that I learn a lot from. I don't get that anywhere else.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 14 2015, @11:57PM
You took the words right out of my mouth.
It's great saying "Citation needed" and getting a valid response with useful links.
I read A LOT of stuff in a day's span and still find topics here that I missed, often with interesting takes|expansions on that.
-- gewg_
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Thursday October 15 2015, @03:23PM
I want to correct that, for the record. I overstated it. I actively despise some of the users. That is, a handful. I do so because they are racists or anti-Semites, the real kind, which I can't abide. But, wait a day, and they say something reasonable and informative on some other topic and I again am reminded that no human being is a cartoon-cutout, a 2D caricature you can dismiss.
Washington DC delenda est.