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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 AudioGuy on Monday June 02 2014, @10:31PM

    by AudioGuy (24) on Monday June 02 2014, @10:31PM (#50437) Journal

    This is where the staff votes upon the exact same list as the community did (the combined list).

    10 staff voted.

    - All Rankings -
    44 grepnews or newsgrep
    40 soylentnews
    28 techmatter
    25 sudonews
    24 salientnews or salientnoise
    18 crosslog
    6 dailybacon
    6 forkdot
    5 apt-get-news

    - First choices only-
    27 soylentnews
    27 grepnews or newsgrep
    9 techmatter
    9 salientnews or salientnoise
    9 sudonews

    - First and Second choices only -
    35 grepnews or newsgrep
    27 soylentnews
    17 salientnews or salientnoise
    17 sudonews
    9 techmatter
    8 crosslog

    This is very close. So close, in fact it made a lot of people on staff very uncomfortable with going with such a narrow staff win, against the wishes of the community which had both a much larger voter base and a much more clear choice for its favorite.

    A decision was made in irc to have one more staff vote, this time on just one single issue. A new poll was started, with these choices:

    [] We should use the community vote results.
    [] I disagree

    The results were:

    63 We should use the community vote results.
    9 I disagree.

    So there you have it. Pretty much a landslide.

    The new name is...drum roll...

    soylentsnews.org

    With the following next in line (in order) for backups, if that name should become unusable due to copyright conflicts:

    grepnews or newsgrep
    sudonews
    techmatter
    apt-get-news
    salientnews or salientnoise
    forkdot
    dailybacon
    crosslog

    Starting Score:    1  point
    Karma-Bonus Modifier   +1  

    Total Score:   2  
  • (Score: 2) by AudioGuy on Monday June 02 2014, @10:36PM

    by AudioGuy (24) on Monday June 02 2014, @10:36PM (#50439) Journal

    And wouldn't you know it, after all that, I made a typo in the last, final, name that mattered.

    Let's make that name: soylentnews.org. :-)

  • (Score: 2) by CoolHand on Friday June 06 2014, @05:41PM

    by CoolHand (438) on Friday June 06 2014, @05:41PM (#52321) Journal

    It probably would have been wise to have had a run-off vote between soylentnews, and newsgrep (or grepnews), so that way all the anti-soylent news people would be splitting votes across all those choices. I mean the votes for everything other than soylentnews way outnumbered soylentnews. It should have been required that the winner achieved a true majority, and since that wasn't the case, reduce the number of choices until one does (or just go for two right away).
    I say this as someone who, in fact, did vote for soylentnews as the name. It just doesn't seem fair though, that it was picked with less than majority..

    --
    Anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job-Douglas Adams
    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 06 2014, @06:29PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 06 2014, @06:29PM (#52339)

      I think there's something in the US water that makes people incapable of doing a two-candidate run-off. :)