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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 was originally made open source and was available on the internet. Sadly, that code had not been maintained and was several years out of date.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: 5, Interesting) by quadrox on Thursday February 12 2015, @09:34AM
I would be happy to pay more than $20 for a subscription - but currently I think there is no real way to do so.
It would be great to be able to have several pre-set subscription amounts, or to let the user choose any amount over the minimum.
Alternatively, a donate button would be great.
I do not wish to buy any of the swag - I don't need it, and some part of the money would not go to SoylentNews. Therefore the swag option is NOT an alternative to the above.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Thursday February 12 2015, @12:32PM
<unofficial answer>We're set to be looking over alternate revenue streams sometime this month. Look for an announcement of new ways to give us all your money as soon as we can work some out. I know this the same way everyone in IRC knows this and hold no special sway over funding matters, hence unofficial.</unofficial answer>
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Open4D on Thursday February 12 2015, @02:57PM
I agree with quadrox. I would propose a price of $4 or $5 per month. NCommander (who I hope is keeping well) set the price as $20 per year after he got the impression that the consensus was that his previous proposals were too expensive. Back To The Drawing Board: Rethinking Subscription + Explaing Expenses [soylentnews.org] But I don't remember seeing more than 1 or 2 people saying it was too expensive.
That same article also explains why there's no donate button. There was a legal problem with just accepting pure donations. I suppose that's why so many organizations just end up selling mugs and t-shirts instead.
There was a bit of a discussion about it in response to comment 60426 [soylentnews.org]. What could be allowed instead of donations?
I agree that swag is a poor alternative to donation. I hate the 'throwaway society'. I can't see myself ever ordering a mug / t-shirt / etc. that I don't really need.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Thursday February 12 2015, @03:11PM
Yeah, there's been some discussion of this recently on IRC and will be again in the next week or two sometime. Feel free to drop in and argue in realtime. Just look for matt_, mrcoolbp, and juggs on at the same time as they seem to have the most to say about it right now. It's not a formally scheduled thing though, so if you want you can wait for a thinned down list of proposals to hit the front page as a story as a request for comment.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by urza9814 on Thursday February 12 2015, @05:01PM
Yup, pretty sure I was one arguing against annual subscriptions at the time too. Somehow forgot all that and was hoping it'd be a pay what you want thing when I went to actually subscribe recently. I mean first of all, I never renew annual subscriptions. I've got a few monthly ones that have been going for years. I'm 24 now, and I've kept my monthly ACLU donations going since I was 16! I don't think I've ever once renewed an annual subscription though. Because it's a not automatic and because the cost is always higher.
I'd gladly put in $5/month for Soylent. I'd consider even $10/month. I can easily fit that into my regular monthly budget. Fitting an extra $60 all in one month would be annoying; fitting an extra $120, just for something like Soylent, is not at all possible.
The swag is cool and all, but frankly...I looked through the list and there's nothing I see myself actually using. I just don't need any more T-shirts or mugs. I'm a kinda frugal guy when it comes to spending on myself though, I can't think of much you could sell that I *would* be interested in. Maybe if someone comes up with a seriously epic design, then I might be into some swag, but otherwise it feels like a waste.
I think pay-what-you-want subscriptions (and maybe even merch, with a lower bound) would be the ideal solution, although I'm not sure about how much effort that would be to set up. Perhaps to simplify things they could do just a $1 monthly subscription in unlimited quantity? So if I want to do $5/month, I just do 5 concurrent recurring $1/month subscriptions. That might end up being even *more* complicated though, I dunno, I've never really worked with payment processing...
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 12 2015, @04:30PM
My plan (when I'm not broke) is to give gift subscriptions to users that make good contributions, but haven't subscribed yet. This may even guilt-trip them into doing the same to others.
(Score: 3, Informative) by mrcoolbp on Friday February 13 2015, @12:52AM
You can buy a subscription for as many years as you'd like, a few people bough 5 years worth (thanks guys!!).
(Score:1^½, Radical)