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All of the trend lines on this site are positive except one: story submissions. After an initial surge, they have been gradually declining despite users and page views climbing. Tonight the submission queue ran dry. Janrinok and I could go scrounging, as we sometimes do, but this needs to be addressed.
We have around four thousand registered users, and who knows how may AC's reading along. We can do better.
I challenge each of you to submit stories on a regular basis, at whatever frequency you find comfortable. Really, if even half of us submitted a story once a week, we would have more than we could ever use. Once a day, once a week, once a month, whatever you can handle, send it in.
Bookmark this link: http://soylentnews.org/submit.pl - use it. Give us so many stories that we can select the cream of the crop and stun you with how amazing our community is. Make it happen.
I'm going to leave this story on top for a while, and see what is waiting for us when I get to work in the morning. Wow me, please.
This is our news site. There are others like it, but this one is ours. Its success is in your hands.
[UPDATE: We have received, in less than 12 hours, more submissions than we had the whole rest of the weekend. THANK YOU SO MUCH, and please, keep them coming. Even one story a month matters. Let the party re-commence. :) ]
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Xenex on Monday March 24 2014, @05:36AM
But if you ever reject my submissions, I'll just stop submitting!
I jest, but constant rejection stopped me submitting stories on Slashdot a decade ago. Some simple feedback - even just a few words - for rejected submissions would be a fantastic guide and help improve quality of future submissions.
I am from the future.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Open4D on Monday March 24 2014, @06:19AM
I know the feeling of constant rejection from another aspect of my life :)
But seriously, I do agree a submission feedback process would be a nice-to-have, but we should bear in mind it would place at least some extra burden on the editors. "How do I word this feedback politely
And once there was feedback, some people would then want a 'right of reply' to the feedback. A slippery slope? Actually, I broadly reject slippery slope type arguments, but the point is this move wouldn't bring us as much closer to perfection as we might hope. Maybe it's better just to go with a 'firehose' type system? The discussion at the story frequency poll [soylentnews.org] covered that kind of thing too.
(Score: 2) by lhsi on Monday March 24 2014, @09:27AM
I think instead of having something typed in, just a selection of common rejection types to choose from would be better.
(Score: 2) by Open4D on Sunday March 30 2014, @06:19PM
Agreed. As long as it's optional for the editor, it can't do any/much harm. (And for all I know the editors might want it mandatory.)
I note that currently the submission page [soylentnews.org] has this wording:
Maybe there'd need to be something similar talking about the rejection reasons.
Anyway, FWIW, this is now an issue on GIT: https://github.com/SoylentNews/slashcode/issues/1
(Score: 4, Interesting) by janrinok on Monday March 24 2014, @10:08AM
I understand your views on feedback regarding submissions - in fact, you'll find that we all share them. But that poses a few problems. Firstly, the current software isn't geared up to provide such feedback and, having recognised this, we have a task in hand to modify the software to make it do what we all want. The priority however, is to ensure that the site is stable and secure. We recently became aware of a potential security vulnerability in the site and, to protect both the site and your user data, we have put a lot of effort into fixing this problem. The bright guys who keep this site up and running are working very hard to do just that. When we are on top of it we can start looking at implementing the changes that we have already identified.
Secondly, if you feel that the editors' job is a fairly laid-back affair with a low workload I need to dispel that myth. Because of the lack of stories - I have to divide my 6 hours of work on the site each day into editing, submitting stories myself to make up the shortfall, and trying to provide feedback where I have managed to identify an alternative means of communication. If you can catch me on #editorial then I will be happy to explain why I have had to refuse a story. Most submitters do not tell us how to contact them (there is a field for this on the submissions page) and all I can do is hope that they appear on IRC asking for a reason.
Thirdly, many stories are rejected for reasons outside the submitter's control i.e. it's not your fault! As an example, if we get 2 stories at the same time on the same topic we can merge them together but if the second arrives after the first has been queued for release it can cause major problems. Too late can often be a matter of only an hour or so. Submitting prompt submissions on breaking news is a good way of increasing your chances of your story being released. If your own area of interest is not one normally discussed on this site but still meets the requirements of being of interest to technically minded individuals or particularly thought provoking then provide a story on it. You may find that there is more interest in that topic than you initially imagined there would be. But don't take it personally if your story doesn't make it. Quite a few of mine haven't either!
Fourthly, please do follow LaminatorX's suggestion above: read the submission guidelines [soylentnews.org]. You can see the ideal layout from the stories that we have already released. With that combination you significantly increase you chances of success.