SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
So, what is SoylentNews? This is your chance to tell us!
I am announcing the first ever SoylentNews online video contest. The rules are pretty simple.
- Upload an original video (no more than about 60 seconds, please) to the site of your choice (but please tell us where it is up loaded and ensure it tracks views) that answers the question, "What is Soylent News?" Your video should ideally contain the phrase, "Soylent News is ..." but this is not strictly required. Let us know what site you upload to.
- Tag your video SoylentNews.
- Watch as the hits roll in.
- ????
- Profit!
Too easy, right? We will count the views on 31 March 2014, at 11:59 UTC. The winner is the individual video that has the most views.
You do not actually have to appear in the video! Make a cartoon, do CGI, do a voiceover of a movie, whatever. Be creative and explore your artistic vision! (Yes, you have one. It may be underutilized at times but it is there).
We have not yet determined the prize for the winner, but it will be jaw-droppingly awe-inspiring (it's a key-chain I found on the sidewalk somewhere). No, it'll be something good. At a minimum we'll feature your video on the site here and interview you for the "making of" your entry. But probably more (it's a keychain).
On behalf of the entire staff and volunteers, we continue to be amazed at the response we've gotten from the community so far. We will continue to provide ways that you can interact with us and help define us. I hope you enjoy this contest. If you have any other suggestions for how we can better meet your needs, feel free to let us know in IRC, the Forums, or the Wiki. Thanks for reading!
~Mattie_p
p.s. keychain!
p.p.s updated based on feedback
(Score: 1) by enharmonix on Tuesday February 25 2014, @10:27PM
That is your target demographic though (not the trolls, their targets). I don't like those posts at all and don't think they're helpful, but admittedly, I found out about this site from them. If you want to attract that crowd (which is, admit it, exactly who you're after), the best way is to post stories they don't have and can't duplicate without plagiarizing you. You can't just have editors. You need reporters too. You know, interviews, articles instead of just summaries, journalism, that sort of thing. If you have enough actual content (more than just links), other sites can cite you instead of just linking to the same source as you and bypassing you altogether.
I checked out soylent news because it was mentioned on /. but I signed up because you have different stories (and you appear to be serious). Short of buying advertising from them, you want some way to get them (not YouTube) to link to you. Basically, you want soylent news to be the bastard child of Ars (journalism) and /. (discussion... and source code). However, that means you wouldn't be a slashdot replacement anymore. You'd be something else entirely.
(Score: 5, Informative) by mattie_p on Tuesday February 25 2014, @11:18PM
No, our target demographic isn't slashdot users. It is nerds of all colors, genders, stripes, and shapes. Yes, we forked from slashdot. However, why should we limit ourselves to ex-slashdotters? Can't we aim higher and do better? We, the staff, feel that the community should be made up of whoever chooses to associate with us. That includes younger people who are nerds, but possibly in different ways then you or I are. We are exploring how to use twitter and other social media platforms, because, like it or not, nerds use those! We are exploring using non-textual media, because some nerds like to receive information that way! I personally don't like watching video on my computer, but I'm not going to turn a nerd away because they do.
We do have very vague plans for actual journalism, but we cannot implement everything immediately. I'd ask you to check back on that in a while.
We are serious. We have a vision for being a serious site, but no sense of what the community wants, or if they buy into that vision. If this whole video thing flops, that is perfectly OK by me. Part of what I wanted for this was to get the word out. Check out our current "getting the word out [soylentnews.org]," and let me know if you have any better ideas. You do? Great! Let us know! Why didn't you say something already?
Oh, nothing better than bash dice? Then you know what you can do and where you can go. Because, again, I'd rather do something positive for ourselves than continue to harangue a site that we've all known and loved for some time that has been steered in the wrong direction. Even if we make steps in the wrong direction (and this whole video idea may have been wrong - too soon to tell) we're willing to have the dialogue, instead of making pronouncements from up on high. The very fact that I am willing to respond personally should indicate we're doing something different, something better. We want to do better, and I hope that counts for something.
Last thing. We're not a replacement for anyone or any site. We are our own site. To use your own words, we are something else entirely. And it is time we stopped thinking about comparisons to the dead past, and started thinking of the living future. SoylentNews is the future of nerd news and nerd journalism. We want to have the dialogue on where that future takes us.
Thanks for reading and for posting such a thoughtful response. ~mattie_p
(Score: 2) by kebes on Wednesday February 26 2014, @12:52AM
I believe the video contest is potentially fun, but likely to not pan out. (I'm happy to be proven wrong.) My opinion is that SN should be targeting the nerdiest and most technically-minded segments; those are the people who will contribute to the awesome discussions that we want (and that so far we've been generating). I believe one of the characteristics of nerds of this type (whether young or old), is that they process information quickly, and they abhor roadblocks to their attempts to process that information. (Everyone hates slow-loading pages and pop-up ads, but we seem to especially hate them...) Text is much faster to read/understand, as well as generate. So, in this sense a video contest might turn off some users.
In fact, since we're trying to curate a community of people who fanatically enjoy fast-paced text-based discussions, it would seem that text-based 'events' could work. For instance, getting interesting people to do a Q&A story, but also arrange for the person to 'show up in the comments' during a prescribed time period to actually interact with the community. (Similar to a reddit AMA, I suppose.) The 'guests' for these things don't have to be super-stars in the tech community: I would love to be able to pick the brain (no-holds-barred, no question too stupid) of experts in datacenter design, databases, photography, etc. Picking a specific time-of-day for when some stories are released might also help focus the community and increase the comment-count on those stories.
Relatedly, one of the things I'm a bit worried with SN is that the discussions are not always reaching 'critical mass'. On Slashdot, the readership was large enough such that discussions would get 'fully formed' within a couple hours. Commenting after that was often pointless, as moderators and other users would rarely go back and look at old stories. SN has a smaller community (for now!), so it takes longer for a discussion to really 'build up'... but within a short time stories are pushed off the page and so those older discussions die. People don't seem to be going back to re-read and participate in the older posts (I'm guilty of this, too). I'm not sure what the solution is. Fewer posts-per-day would solve this problem but create another (not enough variety/content). Perhaps we could have mechanisms wherein an older post that was still getting actively commented-on gets re-promoted to the front page? Or perhaps reorganize the sidebar to more clearly and cleanly show the "still active" discussions from the last few days?
These ideas are vague and ill-formed. I'm just throwing them out there in the hopes of generating discussion...
(Score: 3, Insightful) by kebes on Wednesday February 26 2014, @01:11AM
And, a way to encourage these questions would be to explicitly up-moderate them, giving people karma for posing good/interesting questions. Alternatively, we could just update the moderation guidelines to say "Look out for good questions!"
(Score: 1) by Daniel Dvorkin on Wednesday February 26 2014, @01:49AM
Either of these might be a good idea, particularly if they could be controlled by a user setting: say the sidebar by default, with "bumping" recently-commented-on old stories as an option. A lot of people seem to dislike old stories being brought to the fore, but you know, it works for Usenet ...
Pipedot [pipedot.org]:Soylent [soylentnews.org]::BSD:Linux
(Score: 1) by Maow on Wednesday February 26 2014, @03:55AM
You've given me a couple of my own (so far) ill-formed thoughts.
"Video of your science experiment" could be cool use of video.
Also, on /. I always made a point of mostly only reading somewhat older stories due to the conversation being more complete by that time.
My mod points probably weren't as effective as if I dove in to new stories, but I got more out of it. And helped promote the stragglers' comments.
(Score: 2) by Popeidol on Wednesday February 26 2014, @04:12AM
A quick patch for the 'critical mass' problem could be a Recent Comments page. At the moment if I want to see any fresh content in a discussion I have to open up a bunch of articles and sort by newest first. A list of recent comments would make that easier, and help people find interesting things going on in older articles (and as a bonus, it's a quick way to find comments that could use moderating).
It wouldn't scale well as the site increases, but might help keep conversations going at the moment.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Reziac on Wednesday February 26 2014, @04:30AM
If you really want SN to "be its own site" -- don't try to force it with silly marketing techniques that are, bluntly, the equivalent of handing out AOL disks to everyone who can be convinced to carry one off, and are likely to have the same result: a flood of "Oooh, shiny!" posters who only last long enough to frustrate the rest of us into leaving.
Remember, please -- that Other Site[TM] grew entirely via word-of-mouth. Give SN time, and remember it takes a couple years for a community to grow into being.
Trying to forcefeed it numbers comprised of anyone who can be conned into showing up makes me think the motivation is immediate profit rather than long-term viability.
I myself came here from a link in a Slashdot sig, because after 15 years there I consider it a trusted source. No way in hell would I have come here from a YouTube link.
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 1) by enharmonix on Wednesday February 26 2014, @03:56PM
Very good to hear, actually. But I didn't mean you want /. users, I meant /. users are nerds and you want nerds, like you say. But you're right, /. is only a subset of nerds. I like the sound of nerds of all stripes. Some nerdy subjects off the top of my head that aren't on /. are music (not entertainment news, but things like music theory, software, etc... geeky stuff), anime, video games... I already like the site. I haven't abandoned /. but soylent news is already alongside them in my RSS feed.
(Score: 1) by Reziac on Friday February 28 2014, @03:21AM
Addendum: I got mod points today -- I like having the moderate button WITH the comment instead of just at the bottom of the page. Excellent; I shall mod up some fine comments.
Small bug: the "Moderate" thing doesn't go away once I've modded that comment.
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.