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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 c0lo on Monday March 24 2014, @06:14AM
Mmmhhh... maybe it's just an effect of "karma points inflation"?
I mean, if I can't post and moderate and I choose to moderate for 10 points, suddenly I can't comment in at least about 3-4 articles. So:
I don't know, I have no visibility over the "karma economy", but I noticed lately I tend to let some of my "moderation rounds" just go to waste just to be able to post some comments.
What about the following experiment: tweak the SN karma module to limit max karma awarded for posting comments at 5, decrease the chances for "karma awards by comments" and award more points for story submission.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 4, Insightful) by linsane on Monday March 24 2014, @08:21AM
Concur - the moderation balance thing could do with a review. Also as there are so few trolls to down-mod, points are only required (at the moment) for constructive modding
(Score: 5, Insightful) by zocalo on Monday March 24 2014, @12:30PM
UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
(Score: 3, Informative) by weeds on Monday March 24 2014, @01:06PM
Also concur. I seem to be flush with mod points and then there is the conflict as to whether I should use my mod points or make comments. Also as a responsible member of the community, I try to post when I think my comment might add to the discussion. (keeps me out of plenty :)
As mentioned above, I don't know how the mod point algorithm works, but I do know that changes have been made to it for SoylentNews owing to size. I would suggest dishing mod points out not only based on the quality and number of comments, but the number of accepted submissions as well. Or maybe "bonus" mod points for submissions. And another thing... I know this has been discussed and may even be on the list, but there is no feedback for submissions. A rejected submission can be a powerful demotivator. "someone beat you to it and it's in the queue", "or, it will be out later" is a lot easier to take than "rejected". For general knowledge, story postings are not necessarily posted as soon as they come in, but may be scheduled out to keep a more constant flow of articles for everyone around the world (and the night owls.) Finally, we should publicize the IRC more. It's hard to build a community on the occasional story post. IRC (http://chat.sylnt.us/)provides for dialog (that's really social) and that's where I found out I was beaten to the punch on my post.
Get money out of politics! [mayday.us]
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Monday March 24 2014, @01:30PM
I'm surely not the SN dweller with the highest number of submissions, but I still have more than 10 approved on their own and 3 "merged" with others'.
Now, this is the context for the actual message of this commemt: my first submission on SN was rejected; luckily, I read the submission guidelines [soylentnews.org] shortly after and I'm yet to have another rejected (not that I expect that will never happen).
BTW: my direct experience seems to indicate there is a karma award for an accepted submission - can't say how much though, I topped my karma about 3 weeks ago and I'd need to troll to go back a little and be able to determine how much for a successful submission. Or... maybe... better ask the editors?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 1) by pjbgravely on Monday March 24 2014, @04:02PM
(Score: 2, Interesting) by bart9h on Monday March 24 2014, @02:20PM
I think comments and moderation should be excluded only from the same thread, not the same story.
Please explain why I'm wrong.
(Score: 1) by kbahey on Monday March 24 2014, @04:44PM
I fully agree.
Moderation points are given too frequently, and there are too many of them, and they expire too soon.
Change the mod points to 5 instead of 10, make them last one day or two days instead of the few hours now, and grant them to the same person every few days, not every day.
2bits.com, Inc: Drupal, WordPress, and LAMP performance tuning [2bits.com].