SoylentNews

Where We Go From Here

posted by mattie_p on Wednesday February 19 2014, @07:23AM   
from the man-behind-the-curtain dept.

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))

• Re:Simple stuff (Score: 2, Interesting) by TheRaven on Wednesday February 19 2014, @10:15AM

  by TheRaven (270) on Wednesday February 19 2014, @10:15AM (#2308) Journal

  Agreed. The text here is huge and the styling for quotes is horrible. The style for lists is better than the other place (as in, they actually look like lists), but ordered lists are indented more than unordered lists. My requests would be:

  • Make text a bit bigger
  • Make <quote> an alias for <blockquote> (as it is in the other place)
  • Bring back the enforced preview before submit. It took a little while to get used to it, but it's saved me from posting crazy formatting several times (especially since we're forced to write HTML markup by hand)
  • Fix the messaging system notification-of-reply so that it doesn't require quite so many clicks to get to the message of yours with new replies (the other place is better, but still needs too many clicks, here it's a chore going through replies).
  • Add D2-style asynchronous loading of comments and replies! Having to reply in a new tab to avoid losing the thread of the discussion is a pain.

  The last two directly relate to how easy it is to participate in discussions, rather than just make fire-and-forget posts, and that's something that a site like this depends on for success. Oh, and if we're allowed a pony too, I'd like to be able to enter comments in Markdown or similar.

  --
  sudo mod me up

  Parent

  Starting Score:	1		point
  Moderation		+1
  Interesting=1, Total=1
  Extra 'Interesting' Modifier		0
  Total Score:		2