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from the I-thought-the-name-was-bacconmuffinnews dept.
After several early attempts, we have settled on a process for deciding on the final name for this site currently known as SoylentNews.org. You'll need to log in and go to: userprefs/homepage and check the box marked "Willing to Vote" if you'd like to participate (do this now, the submission round will go out soon). The vote will occur using an email-based solution loosely based on the Debian/Condercet method that we cooked up. Note: checking this box will indicate that we are scraping your email address from the database for participation (this is completely opt-in). If you wish not to participate, just make sure this box is unchecked (this is the default).
We are opening the floor to name suggestions. If you have suggested a name earlier, you'll need to re-submit it through this email voting system. Though we prefer available domains, if you have pre-purchased a domain (eg: to prevent squatters), by submitting the name you are stating that you are the owner of the domain(s) and will give it without strings attached to this project if it were to be chosen.
The criteria for an acceptable name:
- Unique and free of obvious trademarks
- Ideally be a bit technological/geeky and signal the site is "news"
- Domain should be available in all permutations: .com/.net/.org
- Easy to pronounce
- Easy to type
- Easy to 'market' or has a "hook" (imagine a mug with the name, a logo, slogans, plays on words, etc.)
- Passes the girlfriend / wife / significant other / random person at work - test
This is how it will work:
- The first round will go out asking for name submissions
- Submissions will remain open for 7 days
- The community will vote to yield 5 names
- Staff will vote and produce 5 names
- A final vote on all 10 names will be held
- At this point, the staff will have a second full vote on the same ten items the community voted on
- The result of this vote, and the community vote, including its runoff, will then be published
- The staff vote is the final decision. We have to live with this. But the community will have a powerful influence on the final staff vote.
If you're interested:
NCommander adds: So its finally here, and I wanted to apologize for the long delay before this actually happened. To the editoral team, please bump this to the top of the index for the next 24 hours so everyone gets a chance to see it (click 'fastforward' then save to autoupdate the timestamp). I promise a Featured Story option is coming in the next major update so we don't have to deal with this!
(Score: 5, Interesting) by kevinl on Wednesday April 09 2014, @10:27AM
I don't care what the final name is, but please don't plan to officially support a "share on" button. Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, StumbleUpon, Slashdot, Digg, etc. all have those buttons all over the net, and it frankly creeps me the fuck out now. Even though this is technically a social news site, can we avoid the rest of the garbage that comes with that ecosystem?
(Score: 3, Funny) by WizardFusion on Wednesday April 09 2014, @02:33PM
I agree, I block all of these on all the sites I visit. If I wanted to be sociable, I would go outside.
(Score: 2) by skullz on Wednesday April 09 2014, @02:45PM
Above++
All I need is for FB && Google to start reading my SN crap and every page I visit is going to be plastered with crispy, succulent, salty bacon ads.
Mmmmmm, bacon...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 09 2014, @02:52PM
I can sympathize that we don't want the clutter of "share on" buttons.
But I don't think we should necessarily rule out 'social media' altogether. Once there's a permanent name and things are fairly stable, we might want to start actively trying to recruit new users. Some of the kind of users we would want do use social media.
For example, I bet a large protion of Brian Krebs [twitter.com]'s 57800 Twitter followers would be quite at home here. Example 2: Linus Torvalds uses Google Plus [google.com].
So I would actually suggest that "share on" buttons should ideally be an optional feature that can be enabled in the user settings.
(Score: 2) by captain normal on Wednesday April 09 2014, @05:05PM
Recruit? I'm more of the thinking that if you build it, they will find it and come.
Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not to his own facts"- --Daniel Patrick Moynihan--
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Wednesday April 09 2014, @05:05PM
No one we want here uses Facebook.
(Score: 2) by egcagrac0 on Wednesday April 09 2014, @05:21PM
Not true. I will, however, stipulate that no one we want here uses "Share this on Facebook!" buttons.
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Wednesday April 09 2014, @05:28PM
Fair enough. I have to admit I do use Facebook, but only when my (non-techie) wife sends me something there. I never actually post anything there, and don't really have any friends there.
(Score: 2) by hatta on Wednesday April 09 2014, @09:56PM
If you weren't married, you might find Facebook a little more useful.
(Score: 2) by hatta on Wednesday April 09 2014, @07:30PM
Facebook is a tool. We want people here who are experts at the use of any tool.
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Wednesday April 09 2014, @08:02PM
You want MySpace experts? Or AOL experts?
No thanks.
(Score: 2) by hatta on Wednesday April 09 2014, @09:49PM
Yes. If some hacker has found a practical use for those sites, I want to hear about it. The apparent uselessness of those sites would make that story all the more interesting.
(Score: 1) by q.kontinuum on Thursday April 10 2014, @12:04AM
Speak for yourself only ;-) I have a Facebook account and use it once in a while. (From a separate user account on my Fedora machine, explicitly set up for only this purpose - the account, not the whole computer.)
nevertheless I'd prefer to have no google analytics, Facebook ike, Twitter or whatever 3rd party crap as well.
Registered IRC nick on chat.soylentnews.org: qkontinuum
(Score: 1) by VitalMoss on Wednesday April 09 2014, @02:55PM
I don't know, why not? I mean, until facebook finally keels over and dies (Someone, get on making a decent social site please), it's how I communicate with a lot of my friends and family.
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Wednesday April 09 2014, @05:20PM
There already is a better social networking "site"; it's called "Diaspora". The only kind of social networking anyone should be using is decentralized, so some shitty company like Facebook can't mine the data or pervert it some other way.
(Score: 1) by VitalMoss on Thursday April 10 2014, @03:42PM
It's not really a site, first off, on top of that most contacts are still on facebook or google+.
It's only good to have an alternative if people use it.
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Thursday April 10 2014, @04:27PM
Yep, the old chicken-and-egg problem.
But if people are going to continue to use Facebook (and G+), they really have no right to complain about Facebook's anti-privacy practices or any other practices. If you want to take control of what you share with others, and with whom, you need to use decentralized social networking.
(Score: 4, Informative) by WildWombat on Wednesday April 09 2014, @07:10PM
Just an FYI but AdBlock Plus has a setting that hides all these buttons. I'd actually forgotten about them until you mentioned them.
Cheers,
--WW
(Score: 1) by dpp on Wednesday April 09 2014, @07:20PM
Really glad you made this point. Happy to know I'm not the only one creeped-out by this phenomenon.
Besides "sharing", posting has become next to impossible nowadays, unless you "submit" to FB/Google+/Twitter/etc.
Firstly, I feel like those sites are "watching" everyone everywhere. "All your data belong to us".
Secondly, it disgusts me that when I come across an article somewhere and read a comment that I'd like to respond to - it's impossible as I'd be forced to create a Facebook/Google+/etc account.
As a worse-case scenario, where anonymous posting isn't allowed, I wouldn't mind as much if I had to create an account for a given site to post to it, however with the "Top 3/4" social-media sites forcing me join their club as the only means of publicly conversing on the WWW just seems very wrong and "closed".
It's like we've gone backwards - "now you can enter public discourse on the web, as long as you have an AOL or MSN account!"