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mattie_p paraphrases Barrabas, who uttered these words (mostly):
To everyone who contributed to the initial roll out, thank you! It was an amazing effort, and we couldn't have done it without you.
I've set down some notes, with an overview of where I see the project heading in the next few weeks. As always, we can stop and discuss if the community feels we should be moving in a different direction.
We have had a wildly successful launch, and can now proceed at a slightly more leisurely pace, at least for the team that handles code development. I have always intended to do development the right way; with a strong foundation of tools and with leaders to oversee and coordinate the effort between individuals and other groups. As a result, this upcoming week I've told our system administrator team to take a break. They can certainly do minor bug fixes at a leisurely pace if they feel bored, but I want a team that is relaxed and refreshed.
Speaking of a team, we actually have at least five of them. There is a systems team, which are primarily concerned with systems and server issues. There is a development team, consisting of people who contribute code to the site. There is a content team, consisting of our editors, artists, and administrators of our wiki, forum, and IRC channels. A fourth group is style, representing those who help determine how the site is presented. Finally, we have our business team, which includes marketing, legal, finances, and other such issues.
This has been an exciting time. I understand there has been some concern about decisions made during first roll out. I promised that we would operate by community consensus, and I will abide by that. Look for opportunities to contribute to the future direction of SoylentNews over the upcoming days and weeks.
(To read the full story in his words, simply go to Barrabas's Journal Entry. (internal hyperlink))
(Score: 3, Interesting) by dmc on Wednesday February 19 2014, @07:31AM
One important issue that the recently (re?)'launched' Technocrat.net site highlighted for me was the issue of copyright assignments. I was disappointed when Bruce Perens' site told me that contributor content (comments, stories) would require copyright assignment 'to avoid legal complications'(or something like that). I noted in my first comment there that I was a bit disturbed by that given slashdot's history of putting 'comments owned by the poster' on the bottom of all pages. After returning here and bothering to look, I noticed there is no such notice here yet, nor does there appear to be an FAQ or about page answering the question. While certainly I am happy to sit back and be amazed at the awesome site SN has deployed within a couple weeks of the rumblings of a slashcott, I think that issue should probably get some priority. Perhaps even worth a story to see people debate what these theoretical 'legal complications' are in a nice moderated and threaded format :)
(Score: 5, Informative) by mattie_p on Wednesday February 19 2014, @07:37AM
Did you happen to read the fine print that is immediately above your post [imgur.com]?
(Score: 1) by dmc on Wednesday February 19 2014, @07:39AM
Doh! :) What I get for being conditioned to look at the bottom of the page. Thanks!
(Score: 1) by tdk on Wednesday February 19 2014, @11:28AM
Saying "the comments are owned by the poster" is a bit vague. Do we give permission for soylentnews to publish our posts just on the current site? On any site owned by SN? To sell them to others? By default you own the copyright to anything you write anyway, so this is a legally empty statement (IANAL).
I think they should follow StackOverflow's [stackoverflow.com] example. They licence all user posts under CC [creativecommons.org], and I'm sure there are people scraping it. So if the owners ever broke the site some way, a replacement would pop up quickly. The fact that this can happen means StackOverflow is unlikely to pull a slashdot beta.
Take back your internet [squte.com]
(Score: 1) by dmc on Wednesday February 19 2014, @08:23PM
"Do we give permission for soylentnews to publish our posts just on the current site? On any site owned by SN? To sell them to others? By default you own the copyright to anything you write anyway, so this is a legally empty statement (IANAL)."
I think the legal intention of the statement is to suggest to viewers that if they object to a particular comment, they should take their objections to their local authorities rather than the site administrators. I.e. if for instance a comment was a specific credible death threat, slashdot/dice/soylentnews wants to hear a request for takedown from the police, not just some individual. Which seems to me like the right way to go about things.
In general, I think when people voluntarily submit/publish comments to a public website, they are clearly giving permission to the website owner to pretty much do whatever with it, as well as the public. In the U.S. we have 'fair use' doctrine. I'm pretty sure if someone goes into the town square and starts blathering on about philosophy, it is fair use to quote them (with proper attribution, not plagiarism) as much as you like. This seems roughly equivalent to me.
Though your comment does make me wonder if there isn't a better way this could have been handled with slashdot- i.e. I'm giving you permission to use this comment on this representation of the site only, not on some arbitrary ugly new beta site you come up with 20 years later. Sort of the same issue with some attractive woman posing naked for a site titled as "beautifulangels" then seeing the same picture on the site's new beta title "eviluglybitches" 20 years later. The key point to remember is - don't post/publish public comments if you aren't comfortable with them being in the public domain. Ehh, life is complicated. Don't cast pearls among swine as they say. Never Say Anything as those others say. Life Is Rough as I say.