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:
This is how it will work:
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: 1, Troll) by mrcoolbp on Wednesday April 09 2014, @03:19PM
Oh fiddlesticks, clearly you've found us out. The delay in holding the vote was entirely artificial and had nothing to do with trying to come up with a good plan, researching reliable online voting systems due to our mission never to hand over any user info to 3rd parties, coding and testing a solution, and then implementing it; instead, it was all a big ploy to "stack the deck" cementing us with a name there is clear distaste for so we can alienate as many as possible. /sarcasm
The "should be available in all permutations .com / .net / org" might be easy to satisfy if the name is actually unique. That being said, I don't think it's a deal breaker. Think of it as an ideal case, please. Use your best judgement. Also just to clarify you are not required to "reserve" a domain, just check if it's available for registration (please no for-sale-by-owner).
(Score:1^½, Radical)
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 09 2014, @06:28PM
The effect is the exactly the same -- witness all the people above encouraging you to keep the name because everyone is so used to it. It's a foregone conclusion that this is the permanent site name. And that stinks. (In part because the name is bad and in part because we're now going through the pretense and wasted effort of a "vote".)
(Score: 2) by mrcoolbp on Thursday April 10 2014, @03:56AM
There is sentiment to keep the name, and sentiment that it's "bad." You can't expect to please everyone. We apologize for the delay in getting the vote going, believe me, it took a lot of hard work. We didn't want to rush out a solution, we wanted to do this right. Unfortunately, that meant it took longer, but we are still going through with it.
(Score:1^½, Radical)