SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
Exactly one year ago SoylentNews published its very first story: Welcome to SoylentNews!
And what a year it's been!
It all started with a posting at slashdot where an editor claimed they had "listened to their audience" about complaints about the new Beta version of the site that was being rolled out. Many noted that any changes were cosmetic — that it was the community that made that site what it was. And, in inimical nerd fashion, a "SlashCott" was scheduled from February 10-17 wherein the participants pledged to not visit /. for one whole week.
Others took a more active role. The source code for /. was originally made open source and was available on the internet. Sadly, that code had not been maintained and was several years out of date. Some intrepid souls labored long and hard to locate servers, coordinate activities, and get the code knocked into shape. The goal was to create an alternative site that was free from the manipulations of a corporate overlord.
That first story signified a major accomplishment, but the site was still unstable and many features were incomplete, non-functional, or just plain ugly. Many more days of implementation, debugging, and testing were to follow culminating with SN going live to the world on February 17, 2014: Welcome to the World of Tomorrow... Today!.
Much has happened since that nascent story first graced the 'net. There have been changes in our all-volunteer staff. We had votes for the name of the site. We implemented UTF-8 support so stories and comments can include any valid character. We incorporated as a Public Benefit Corporation — on USA's Independence Day no less! We have an on-line store where you can buy SoylentNews Swag. You can subscribe and help support our site.
By the numbers: Over 5000 accounts have been registered and nearly 5000 stories have been posted to the site. Each story is read from 500-2000 times by logged-in users, and approximately 10 times as many Anonymous Cowards. More importantly, nearly 150,000 comments have been posted by you, our community.
Today, we have a small but dedicated group of volunteers who keep the site running. They keep the OS up-to-date on our servers, maintain our Wiki, e-mail, and IRC channels. They add features and fix bugs in the SN code base. Others edit and publish stories to appear on the site. We have a Board of Directors who take care of the legal sides of things. A treasurer who follows the finances. And there are still others who help in a non-technical, but just as necessary capacity in keeping the site humming along.
So, hats off to all who have helped build this site to what it is today!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 12 2015, @08:03AM
Just mocking you, no hard feelings, right?
(Score: 3, Informative) by pTamok on Thursday February 12 2015, @09:22AM
There is an option in an account's preferences to not display the subscription star. Some people may be choosing not to display their subscription status.
This means you cannot assume that lack of a star means that somebody has not subscribed.
In my view, this is a good thing.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by c0lo on Thursday February 12 2015, @09:34AM
Yeah, maybe... I chose to let mine displayed because it's a "statement by example": the moment I'll see that counter showing 100%, then I'll hide it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 3, Insightful) by q.kontinuum on Thursday February 12 2015, @04:58PM
I won't. I think it is still is a good thing to set an example, even after 100% is reached. The more money comes in, the more possibilities to work on new features. IIRC there were some discussions to provide some disk space to share some pictures or similar things, and I still would like an option to get a diaspora account hosted on this server and tied to my account here. But this probably won't happen as long as the operating costs are hardly covered.
Registered IRC nick on chat.soylentnews.org: qkontinuum
(Score: 3, Informative) by The Mighty Buzzard on Thursday February 12 2015, @05:10PM
One of the perks of being small and lacking much in the way of bureaucracy: Custom requests can be handled on a case by case basis. Hit admin@soylentnews.org up with whatever idea you have and we should be able to get back to you soon-ish with an idea of if/when/how much.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 13 2015, @01:01AM
I block images (and pretty much anything that isn't readable text).
Does anyone read the site via Lynx or other text-only app?
-- gewg_