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SoylentNews is people

posted by mrcoolbp on Wednesday April 09 2014, @07:57PM   Printer-friendly
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:

  1. The first round will go out asking for name submissions
  2. Submissions will remain open for 7 days
  3. The community will vote to yield 5 names
  4. Staff will vote and produce 5 names
  5. A final vote on all 10 names will be held
  6. At this point, the staff will have a second full vote on the same ten items the community voted on
  7. The result of this vote, and the community vote, including its runoff, will then be published
  8. 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!

 
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  • (Score: 2) by RobotMonster on Sunday April 20 2014, @03:44PM

    by RobotMonster (130) on Sunday April 20 2014, @03:44PM (#33616) Journal

    Damn. It's looking like my please-vote email got eaten somewhere along the way :-(
    I received the call-for-submissions email just fine, didn't even have to go digging through the spam.
    It's possible it went into the spam folder and I missed it when emptying the trash, but if that's what happened its gone now :-(
    Is there any way I can get mine resent?

    Starting Score:    1  point
    Karma-Bonus Modifier   +1  

    Total Score:   2  
  • (Score: 2) by RobotMonster on Sunday April 20 2014, @03:59PM

    by RobotMonster (130) on Sunday April 20 2014, @03:59PM (#33623) Journal

    Yep, I did miss them in amongst the tonne of spam. Rescued them via TimeMachine, woo!

    Here's the SpamAssassin points breakdown:

    Content analysis details: (5.2 points, 5.0 required)

    1.4 RCVD_IN_BRBL_LASTEXT RBL: RCVD_IN_BRBL_LASTEXT
                                                          [173.255.194.21 listed in bb.barracudacentral.org]
    3.0 BAYES_95 BODY: Bayes spam probability is 95 to 99%
                                                          [score: 0.9744]
    0.8 RDNS_NONE Delivered to internal network by a host with no rDNS

    • (Score: 2) by AudioGuy on Sunday April 20 2014, @07:15PM

      by AudioGuy (24) on Sunday April 20 2014, @07:15PM (#33682) Journal

      Glad you were able to find the email.

      There is a reason I suggest people just whitelist us. :-)

      '3.0 BAYES_95 BODY: Bayes spam probability is 95 to 99%'

      We are sending emails that have a list of almost 100 domains, and -that- looks REMARKABLY similar to link farm spam. Hopefully any other votes will not have this particular problem.

      '1.4 RCVD_IN_BRBL_LASTEXT RBL: RCVD_IN_BRBL_LASTEXT
      [173.255.194.21 listed in bb.barracudacentral.org]'

      Barracuda lists no reason for the block, unlike most legitimate block lists, and no, we are NOT going to pay them $20 to get off their list. Note that SpamAssassin rightly gives this a rather low point count.

      '0.8 RDNS_NONE Delivered to internal network by a host with no rDNS'

      I believe this is referring to another machine than one of ours, perhaps your mail host.

      This email is sent by boron.soylentnews.org. It seems to have a proper reverse:

      # dig boron.soylentnews.org ;; ANSWER SECTION:
      boron.soylentnews.org. 300 IN A 173.255.194.21

      # dig -x 173.255.194.21 ;; ANSWER SECTION:
      21.194.255.173.in-addr.arpa. 85435 IN PTR boron.soylentnews.org.

      You should be able to tell which machine by looking at the headers of the email.

      • (Score: 2) by RobotMonster on Monday April 21 2014, @06:40AM

        by RobotMonster (130) on Monday April 21 2014, @06:40AM (#33870) Journal

        Thanks for the analysis.
        I've whitelisted soylent, increased the SpamAssassin threshold, and I'm trying out SpamHammer.
        Spam is such a blight.
        I can't believe enough people respond for the spammers to retain interest...