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By now, you have had the chance to read the updates of both NCommander and Barrabas. Nonetheless, you may still be wondering quite a few things about the site and its staff. Here is your chance to ask us anything. These questions can be general in nature, in which case the staff will select a spokesperson to answer it, or it may be specific to an individual. If the question is for an individual, please ensure you identify that person specifically enough.
We will select the best questions from the thread and provide answers to the community. These questions may not be the highest rated, although we will probably use those first.
In keeping with tradition, ask as many as you'd like, but please, one question per post.
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Interview: Ask SoylentNews Staff Anything
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Remember Darwin; building a better mousetrap merely results in smarter mice.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by mhajicek on Wednesday February 19 2014, @05:28PM
True, but running a site requires a certain amount of money.
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
(Score: 0) by crutchy on Wednesday February 19 2014, @08:46PM
i wonder if debian would be willing to host soylent news, if it adopts similar foss principles (which it seems to be), or maybe one of the other foss hosts
don't necessarily need to use their domain (could use a freebie from freedns.afraid.org if they become really desperate) but the foss community should be fairly supportive of a not-for-profit discussion forum for geeks, and organizations like the linux and apache foundations no doubt have some fairly wealthy backers.
(Score: 1) by edIII on Wednesday February 19 2014, @11:42PM
It would be nice to be able to donate at some point too.
There was also an article about Tidbit. I'm very interested to know just what the viability of cryptocurrency mining using client-side architectures would be.
If the mining could generate enough revenue from the user base to replace advertising, that may be all we need to keep the site alive and functional without external financial support.
I'm not opposed to that, or running a native app to donate processing cycles to SoylentNews.
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
(Score: 1) by mcgrew on Wednesday February 19 2014, @09:07PM
Well, my site is only fifteen bucks per year, but soylent needs a bit more than I do. But I, too, wonder what will happen if they can't get cash. I hope they're getting advertisers, at least enough to break even.
In my case, the money for my site comes from the books, which are the only reason it exists. But like I said, my needs are very, very minimal.
mcgrewbooks.com mcgrew.info nooze.org
(Score: 3, Interesting) by frojack on Wednesday February 19 2014, @10:36PM
What about Memberships?
Would each user consume more than $5/year of bandwidth and server space?
Sometimes I think when you pay for something you are less likely to crap all over it by starting flame wars etc.
Even maintaining the site will take someone's time and money. Otherwise the first good paying job that comes along snuffs out the interest in maintaining SN.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 1) by mcgrew on Thursday February 20 2014, @08:29PM
Maybe subscriberships, like at slashdot, but I wouldn't want soylent to be paywalled. We're not going to grow our community with a paywall.
And as far as "when you pay for something you are less likely to crap all over it by starting flame wars etc", well, there are other, non-monetary ways to invest in it... like contributing good stories, good comments, modding trolls and morons down (which is how you stop trolls and visible flamewars), putting stuff here for free you're selling elsewhere (see my sig and journal)
We were all pretty invested in slashdot or there would not have been such a backlash against Beta, everyone would have simply disappeared, shaking our fists in vain at Dice. I had the same feeling when K5's community deteriorated, and that's what I did -- I disappeared.
mcgrewbooks.com mcgrew.info nooze.org
(Score: 1) by frojack on Thursday February 20 2014, @09:01PM
When writing that recommendation, I wasn't thinking about paywalls so much as the Wikipedia way of raising funds (begging banners), that could be turned off by tossing a few bucks via paypal or something like that.
Also, (Mentioned in other posts in this thread)...
Keeping "For Profit" an option as an founders want to maintain, does not seem inconsistent with seeking donations. There are many ways to seek income.
Note:
I almost suggested No ACs, or no way for AC posts to be modded above zero. I understand the anonymity angle, but i'm not sure its worth the disruption ACs cause. But then the thread was about funding, and ACs didn't seem on topic.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Friday February 21 2014, @03:30AM
I think those are good ideas. As to ACs, even though 99% of them are trolls, morons, or trollish morons, sometimes folks do make insightful comments anonymously that deserve +5s. As long as the moderators do their jobs you shouldn't have to see many.
mcgrewbooks.com mcgrew.info nooze.org
(Score: 2) by frojack on Friday February 21 2014, @05:11AM
Maybe a "Right to Post AC" is one of those "Achievements" the server can hand out.
(I know, I know, the job of getting slashcode running at all is big enough that
adding fluff at the beginning is a step too far).
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Friday February 21 2014, @03:44PM
I don't know, I haven't seen any need or had any want to post AC here. I've posted AC at /. a few times when I was on a terminal I didn't want to log in on. Once you have karma, why would you want to post with a starting score of 0 when you could post at 1? No point writing if nobody's reading.
mcgrewbooks.com mcgrew.info nooze.org