SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
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: 2) by AudioGuy on Monday June 02 2014, @08:44PM
The list (above) of proposed names was sent out to all registered voters and the late additions.
Voted in the Scoring round: 241 + 10 = 251 (241 registered plus ten of the late additions)
Emails that had to be hand decoded: 1 (non-standard quoted-printable encoding)
Emails that had to be hand counted (people added later): 10
People voting more than once:
Second vote unchanged at all : 2
(no change to vote, probably forgot they had voted)
Order alone : 5
(Order change suggests they misunderstood directions)
Order plus other changes : 3
(indeterminate due to changes in what was voted for)
--
Total: 10
Raw Results with point totals shown:
TOTAL NAME
(total pts)
(0)
1228 soylentnews.com
789 devnull.com
379 sudonews.com
346 grepnews.com
208 apt-get-news.com
(2950) (points used for first 5)
- top 5 above (this could change if some are unavailable) -
204 newsgrep.com
198 port119.net
198 geekcard.com
188 dailybacon.net
174 forkdot.org
164 techmatter.com
159 ionews.com
150 li694-22.com
147 newslash.org
145 salientnews.net
132 legitworksite.com
126 newsdotorg.org
116 bangdot.org
116 dotbang.org
110 baconnews.com
97 altdiscuss.com
93 alphadot.com
89 thegarlic.com
89 nerdcraft.com
87 forkbeta.com
86 nerdpost.com
86 nerdcard.net
85 fuckbeta.com
80 dupenews.com
80 hashsalt.org
77 reslashed.com
77 ls-lnews.com
76 pulsedot.net
79 firingsquid.com
70 eigentime.com
67 bayesianews.com
66 lostdash.com
64 newsping.com
55 lowlevelnews.com
52 newsignal.com
50 crosslog.com
44 salientnoise.com
41 itarium.com
40 uuengeek.com
39 beardrhetoric.com
39 silentmews.com
38 yottatech.com
37 nerddiscourse.com
36 newsisyou.com
36 boardkey.com
35 nerdnewsnet.com
33 freedivide.com
32 fetanews.com
29 omnidiscuss.com
26 makemesmart.com
25 minddivide.com
22 saltdot.org
22 newschattr.com
21 noncorpnews.com
21 gitgot.com
21 absorbingnews.com
20 squintfeed.com
19 sigmanexus.com
19 pipebeard.com
18 futurians.com
17 noncorporate.com
16 salthash.com
15 nerdgloss.com
14 sigmavortex.com
14 yottatalk.com
14 chattrnews.com
13 grepcutnews.com
12 iorevolution.net
12 deltachroma.com
11 shpxurnq.com
9 achetee.com
9 gammavortex.com
9 epsilonnexus.com
9 dotsalt.org
8 stealthnews.com
8 newstat.com
8 nntpping.com
7 primedelta.com
6 nunexus.com
6 linevertex.com
6 hecknews.com
6 freedefy.com
6 newuucp.com
5 iotanexus.com
4 newsconfig.com
-
(7839) (Total Points Used)
The points are shown to illustrate how difficult it is to predict anything from the initial ranking phase. It may look like Soylent was a sure win from this, but in fact, if you look at the points, those used for names OTHER than soylent far outnumber the soylent votes. Since only a few names will make it into the final vote all those points will need to go somewhere...
Now at this point we had to make a few decisions about the rules, some anticipated, some not.
The anticipated one was that all the names would be checked and we would try to get possession of them in .com, .net, and org. Any we could not, would be removed from consideration.
However, as it turned out, almost ALL the top choices would have been eliminated by this requirement. So we decided to relax that a bit to just the domains we ACTUALLY felt we needed, which were .org and .net. .com was less important, it is not like we were going to open a retail store...
Then there were some problems that were not anticipated.
The first one was that if we had to drop a name (and we did), the next name in line was newsgrep.com, which was nearly identical to grepnews.com - in fact they were deliberately submitted to be so, as an example. So a new rule was created: if two names are nearly identical, they get combined into one item, and if that item wins, a runoff is held between them.
The next problem was that two of those names had potentially serious copyright problems. Soylent we expected, but with apt-get-news in the running, that was pretty closely associated with Debian/Ubuntu, and in particular, it could cause a problem with NCommander in his work situation which could be VERY awkward. (Think about it: your company makes a product called the XP100plus, and one of your employees starts a site called 'xp1000plus.com' that has NOTHING to do with your company or product...).
At any moment, two of those names could be knocked out of the running, leaving us with a rather limited list for our runoff, consisting of
sudonews.com
grepnews.com
newsgrep.com
(if it happened after the list went out)
Sort of a limited choice...
So the next new rule was created: If a name has a copyright problem, another name will be added to the list as a backup in case that name gets knocked off the list later.
So, with the new rules in mind, the runoff list from the community vote turned out to be:
soylentnews.com
sudonews.com
grepnews.com (or newsgrep)
apt-get-news.com
dailybacon.net
forkdot.org
techmatter.com
Now we needed to add the results of the staff top five to this, and delete any duplicates, to make up the final list that both staff and community would be voting on in the final round.
So the staff vote was next...