SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
I can no longer sustain the level of activity needed to run SoylentNews, and so I have resigned as leader.
In the end, I was literally begging people to step back and let the site "just run" for a few days while I caught up... alas, to no effect. Issues must be resolved "right here and right now" continuously throughout my day with no end in sight.
NCommander has taken over as project lead - he has access to everything from the registrar down. I understand he has a different vision for the project, which will soon be revealed.
I'm sorry to leave like this, but there's really nothing for it. I'm going back to my AI studies, which happen at a more leisurely pace.
John Barrabas
(And yes, this was an amicable transfer of power. There's no hard feelings on my side.)
[Ed. Note: this is a word for word article based on Barrabas's journal entry.]
(Score: 5, Interesting) by NCommander on Thursday March 06 2014, @04:10AM
Novels can be written about getting slashcode up and running. We've had some contact with one of the original slashcode guys and got an apology about it :-).
In all honestly, Slashcode is *good* at what it does, and the damn thing scales to absurd levels. If we used most other CMS systems, the hardware we're running on would have already soyled itself in ten different ways. Its a pretty damn compelling argument on *not* replacing it.
The problem is that the other site ran on a private branch of slashcode, and the public repo was in miserable shape when we got it. For the most part, what we have now works well, but stuff that was added towards the end of the slashcode public code is in bad shape. I did a writeup about it a few weeks ago on where we stand. We've got a couple more CSS/look-and-feel fixes coming, but we're at roughly 95% of stock functionality working.
Still always moving
(Score: 2) by captain normal on Thursday March 06 2014, @05:49AM
I think what you guys have done in such a short time is awesome. I can also understand how the many hours of work and attention put in by John have led to burn-out. I do hope after he recovers from the madness that sleep deprivation causes, he will find a bit of time to stay with us and join the conversion from time to time.
I have nothing but the deepest respect not only for John (mattie p), but all the lead team.
Let us all take it easy on NCommander and the crew from now on. We have years to fix small bugs and add improvements. This site is up and running and already I don't miss whatever that old site was/is. We are finding nerdy stuff to post and carrying on (to me) a much more intelligent and fun conversion than I have seen in a long time.
John, Thank you. Thank you.
When life isn't going right, go left.
(Score: 1) by captain normal on Thursday March 06 2014, @06:44AM
This is a correction. Don't know why I mixed up mattie p for Barrabas (Must be over consumption of IPA), But if there is any offence, please accept my sincere apology.
When life isn't going right, go left.
(Score: 3, Informative) by mattie_p on Thursday March 06 2014, @04:07PM
Its cool. Mattie_p (that's me) is still involved and I will continue to do so.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by bill_mcgonigle on Thursday March 06 2014, @02:52PM
I'd encourage you guys to formally fork and put all the code up on github or similar. If it needs documentation, that can be done, but if you've implemented code fixes to obviate the need for baroque documentation, all the better.
One of the things that let the other site go off in bad ways was how hard it was to get a competitor going on slashcode (I tried a few years ago and gave up after two evenings of little progress). It looks like you guys have finally cracked that nut, so let's not lose the knowledge. None of can say where SN will be in five years, but we have learned some structural lessons about how to keep a community news site from being taken over and destroyed. Or the converse, really.
The biggest beneficiaries wouldn't be SN competitors, of course, but niche sites (I'm thinking of the old SlashFood, etc.) and a large community contributing code is the best an open source project can hope for.
(Score: 1) by Reziac on Friday March 07 2014, @02:07AM
I imagine the public version of slashcode was much the same as /. was some 10 or 12 years ago... and ya know what? it didn't drive anyone away. People bitched and moaned but they were still there.
Myself, I *like* how SN looks and feels right now. I like the candy-red bars, and the way the text looks, and even with colors turned off, I wouldn't mistake SN for any other site. Everything works well enough for all practical purposes, and it works without JS or CSS and any shit browser. In fact, I think you've managed to fix something that had been lost... once again slashcode works perfectly in a browser as old as Netscape 3 (1997). I just checked.
So no worries, man. The bugs I've seen so far have been really trivial, with no effect on functionality.
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.