SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
As you are all aware, we are in the middle of the dog days of summer. We get it, people are busy with work, family, and a plethora of other things. Some of our (volunteer) staff need a break too, so we are looking for a few good people, be they man, woman, child, animal, mineral or vegetable, to join our ranks and help spread the workload.
There are a number of ways to help out:
- Join us on our webchat IRC or, if you are new to IRC (I was only a year ago), check here for some tips on getting connected.
- Email mrcoolbp (or if you are sick of that guy any other staff member like janrinok will do; "nickname@soylentnews.org" works for any of us)
- Read the wiki page on "Getting Involved"
One thing that this site needs more than anything else to thrive is submissions.
We greatly appreciate all of our submitters. The submission queue is the lifeblood of SoylentNews, when it is empty, there is nothing to read, learn from, and argue about.
Takyon, Hugh Pickens, Phoenix666, and Arthur T. Knackerbracket come immediately to mind as people that we see submissions from a lot, and they present great submissions. However, consider that just one article a week from 25% of our registered users would give us more material than we can use, and yield a far greater variety of viewpoints, opinions, and stories. When you find something interesting, submit a story. Take a quick peek at our Submission Guidelines for some insight into best practices.
"But what do I submit?". Check out the RSSbot logs. Scroll down to 'today' and check out the links. This bot simply posts stories from various relevant sources in real-time by scraping RSS feeds (you can refresh the page and get more up-to-date stories).
A well crafted summary is preferred, but not an absolute necessity. Your summary doesn't have to be elaborate. It could be a copy/paste of the first paragraph or two from the article, but please, be sure to give us the link where you are getting the material.
I can only speak for myself, but I find the time spent working on SoylentNews and hanging around on IRC generally pretty relaxing. It is fun for me, and I appreciate that the community is an interesting place with people from many places, industries, and walks of life. It is a place where I come to learn, and read things I would otherwise never see.
Thanks to you all for helping build a great community, and we hope to see many new faces over the coming months.
--cmn32480
(Score: 5, Interesting) by mendax on Monday August 10 2015, @10:20AM
This pleading sounds like one of those annoying American public television or radio begathons. However, I will contribute my two cents.
Let's face it, I'm prickly sometimes. That's what happens when some bastard ruins your childhood, you learn to deal with the pain in unhealthy ways, get mired in depression and the symptoms of PTSD, and you only start to deal with it more than 40 years after the diddling (I'd use a stronger word here but this is a family web site). I don't like it but it's a fact of life for me. This prickliness keeps me from contributing as I might like. Here's why.
I would be more than happy to contribute vastly more stuff. However, some stuff I contribute gets rejected and I have no idea why. I would have submitted a half-dozen articles this week except I didn't want to bother. I have a pretty good idea of what Soylentils want to read as I am also a refugee from that other unmentionable web site (and have a fairly low user ID there), but I'm hesitant to take the time and effort to put together a decent submission if it's just going to be rejected. I want to know why it was rejected, damn it, so I can learn from it!
I've griped about this before. As I recall, one of the arguments against notification is that it was tried and it created negative feedback from contributors. Okay. That's a fair enough assessment. So, what kind of computer programmers are the people who maintain this web site? Why not add an option that allows people who want feedback to opt in (or out depending upon the default setting)?
It's really quite a simple choice: Life, Death, or Los Angeles.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by lentilla on Monday August 10 2015, @11:01AM
My own rate of submissions is found to be lacking.
However, some stuff I contribute gets rejected and I have no idea why.
As said, The Buck Must Stop Here. The gatekeepers must explain why such are not published (even in simple terms: "not considered to be of interest" is acceptable, even if that eventually discredits a particular gatekeeper). Assign a number in a quality queue if that's needed - however good faith submissions must be treated with respect or it will eventuate that no good article will ever be submitted.
I thus commit to submitting some articles in the near future. May I be met with welcoming arms, transparency and maybe even interest.
(Score: 3, Informative) by mrcoolbp on Monday August 10 2015, @03:43PM
We get this a lot, but for context in this situation please read this comment [soylentnews.org]. Over 91% (over 95% when you exclude dupes) of his submissions have been accepted, which is better than some of our own editors' acceptance rates!
(Score:1^½, Radical)
(Score: 2) by mendax on Monday August 10 2015, @05:57PM
Yes, which goes to prove one of my points: I know what people like here. There have been occasions where I've posted a dupe. Mea culpa for not being more careful. But I've posted what I thought were some very interesting things and I know would be interesting to others here that have gotten rejected for mysterious reasons. One which particularly galled me was a submission of a NY Times op-ed describing how dignity is becoming recognized as a constitutional principle [nytimes.com]. The submission has since dropped into the bit bucket as it was made over a year ago. However, it is highly relevant to the civil libertarian and human rights crowd here, a significant number of readers, and has direct applications to technology and how it is used today, particularly the snooping the government has been doing. Privacy and dignity go hand in hand. But it was rejected and I have no idea why.
It's really quite a simple choice: Life, Death, or Los Angeles.
(Score: 2) by janrinok on Monday August 10 2015, @07:44PM
Speculating - because I do not know the story - there are several reasons why such a submission might not make it, and not all of them are to do with the quality of the submission itself.
We aim to provide a balance and spread between topics and submitters. When we can, we do not put successive posts by the same submitter together - something that has become extremely difficult, and sometimes impossible to do, over the last few months as the number of submitters has fallen sharply. We also like to cover as many topics in a day as possible.
But, more likely, is that if we had covered a libertarian issue on a given day, and a story on a similar topic but with no strong link to science or technology came along, we would in the early days reject the later story. We had 30-40 per day to choose from and we were trying to provide the variety and quality that the site deserves. Today, that is far less likely to happen. The quality of submissions in some cases has fallen, meaning each story takes more work before it is ready for the front page, and we receive fewer submissions, meaning that we cannot afford to reject stories quite so easily. Again, this means that more editorial effort is required to provide the 15-20 stories a day that we aim for (to cover the majority of our community in the US and Europe). In fact, the informal target has always been about 1 story per hour around the clock. An editor from Aus/NZ would also be a great help to the team.
A higher proportion of submissions nowadays are political (which we will always try to avoid - there are plenty of other outlets for that sort of news) or are not factual reports but contain someone's personal slant or views, information that should be in the comments not in the story submission. Unless we can clean those stories up they will be rejected. If we publish fewer stories we lose community members, they are not going to come here for a handful of stories each day when other sites are covering more in both quantity and sometimes quality. We try to select stories that will provoke thought and, hopefully, discussion. Topics that would have had an active discussion 12 months ago now provoke only a handful of comments. What has changed? Is it the community who are becoming less interested in science and technology but more interested in social issues or injustice, is it the editors who are simply not producing the quality of output to catch the community's collective imagination, or is it that some of those who were here in the early days have now gone elsewhere to find their news and that we now have a very different community? As they say, answers on a postcard to janrinok@....., or post your views here.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Runaway1956 on Monday August 10 2015, @11:10AM
" That's what happens when some bastard ruins your childhood,"
You gotta let it go, dude. If there is an afterlife, then the bastard will get his there. If there is no afterlife - then what does it matter? You can only sustain yourself on hatred for so long. You let it go, or the hatred consumes you.
"Let's face it, I'm prickly sometimes."
No one gives a fuck. Intelligent people see what you write, they pick and choose to find what they can use, and the ignore all the rest. The less intelligent? Who has time to waste on them?
"I would be more than happy to contribute vastly more stuff. However, some stuff I contribute gets rejected"
So what? See above. Some of your shit is good. Some of your shit is shit. So what? Submit it anyway.
And, stop whining. You're embarrassing both of us. Some of my shit has been rejected. The editors prefer not to handle stuff that is to political, preferring more technical stuff. Ehhh - that's cool. Submit. The stuff hangs around for hours or days in the submission queue anyway - anyone who wants to click on it can do so. If no one clicks, it means no one was interested. Pick another audience to submit those articles to. Soylent isn't the only site around, and I suspect that you probably belong to one or more other discussion groups. I know I am.
Abortion is the number one killed of children in the United States.
(Score: 2) by fliptop on Monday August 10 2015, @11:10AM
You have a valid point, no one wants to waste time putting together a submission if it's going to be rejected.
I took a look at the stories you've submitted that were accepted, and you seem to have about the same volume as me, once a week or so on average. Usually I find a story or two to submit when I log in and see the queue is low. However, the difference between us is only one of my story submissions was rejected (IIRC), and it was the 1st one I submitted when the site was brand new.
So for you it might help to know why your rejected stories weren't acceptable. Did you submit when the queue was full and there were a lot of other stories to choose from? Was your summary politically charged, or did it have more opinion than fact? A small tweak to your stories or format may be all that's needed.
To be oneself, and unafraid whether right or wrong, is more admirable than the easy cowardice of surrender to conformity
(Score: 4, Informative) by The Mighty Buzzard on Monday August 10 2015, @02:10PM
That is one of the few things that'll get a story rejected in my experience. Report, don't proselytize; that's what the comments section is for. That and being a dupe, which is what mine usually get the chop for.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by inertnet on Monday August 10 2015, @11:18AM
I'll never be a top submitter, but that's exactly why I hardly ever bother to submit anything at all. At the unmentionable site a submission of mine that pointed to the original source wasn't used, while another person's submission was used that went to a clickbait site. And because there's no explanation at all, my reaction automatically becomes: "why bother". That and the idea that someone else will probably submit a story anyhow.
(Score: 5, Funny) by wonkey_monkey on Monday August 10 2015, @11:23AM
At the unmentionable site
Slashdot Slashdot Slashdot Slashdot Slashdot.
See? Nothing bad will hap$6asdu%jyhvreargghh/velociraptors!
systemd is Roko's Basilisk
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Monday August 10 2015, @05:56PM
The monkey gets velociraptors - all I got was this jungle rot. Soylent sure throws a m̶o̶n̶k̶e̶y̶ ̶ wrench into that whole karma thing.
Abortion is the number one killed of children in the United States.
(Score: 2) by Whoever on Monday August 10 2015, @03:05PM
If you think that is bad, wait until someone copy/pastes the text that you wrote in a submission and that person's submission is accepted while yours is rejected (happened to me at "the other site")
(Score: 2) by janrinok on Monday August 10 2015, @07:47PM
(Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 10 2015, @11:37AM
Now mendax, show us on the web browser where that other site touched you.
(Score: 2) by mendax on Monday August 10 2015, @05:25PM
Well, hmmm.... no browser ever diddled me.... but my ass sphincter gets as tight as Ebeneezer Scrooge when I go to a web site and it plays god damned video ads automatically. I don't mind ads all that much, but I hate ads that play that you can't shut off. The unmentionable site slashed and diced any lingering goodwill I had toward it after that shit started happening. Having said that, the New York Times web site does that as well, or used to until I disabled Flash. However, that venerable newspaper can be forgiven. Its content is worth a dozen unmentionables.
It's really quite a simple choice: Life, Death, or Los Angeles.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 11 2015, @02:38AM
...go to a web site and it plays god damned video ads automatically.
My very simpleminded fix for Flash movie-ads is simple. I have an older version of Flash that has been timed out by Firefox -- the only flash videos that play are ones that I allow.
Now, cue all the dire warnings about threats that can attack my Windows system through an old version of Flash...
(Score: 5, Insightful) by CoolHand on Monday August 10 2015, @11:39AM
I feel like this also. As an editor, I feel it would be of great value to be able to have a two-way street with submitters on their submissions. It would be extremely valuable to communicate why an article is rejected (if the submitter is open to that), what we are looking for, etc.. I (and others) have brought this up before. Methods of implementing this have been discussed, but for now, it is what it is... Our devs only have so much time..
Anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job-Douglas Adams
(Score: 3, Interesting) by VLM on Monday August 10 2015, @12:24PM
Well, technically you don't have to dev in a whole new automated system, although that would be cool. It would be almost as useful as an overall process to toss up a story once a month about non-winning stories and its comment time based on some kind of monthly mysql ugly select statement. Essentially all submissions would get accepted and posted, its just some of them show up immediately(ish) on the front page with the submitters name in lights as they always have, and somewhat inferior submissions show up late in the comments of a monthly giant anonymized post of all the stories that didn't make it that month.
"Welcome to the monthly submissions that didn't make it discussion post:
(insert submitted headlines here)"
I suppose there would be drama about spam and semi-spam. Is a press release from Intel a real story because "we" are probably going to be buying and using the chips in the press release sooner or later, or is it spam not worthy of inclusion even in the monthly list much less getting posted? Even more dramatic, if the story of the new chips is technologically interesting I'd give it a pass, but if its just marketing BS and not interesting then I'd ditch it, but what if its not well known that there is a technology angle?
I suppose if there was a really interesting story that got spiked for whatever reason, it would get found and discussed in the monthly as a form of feedback. Or maybe the stories that don't make it really are junk after all and nobody will comment. I guess there's one way to find out...
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 10 2015, @12:29PM
t would be extremely valuable to communicate why an article is rejected (if the submitter is open to that), what we are looking for, etc.. I (and others) have brought this up before. Methods of implementing this have been discussed,
Email?
(Score: 4, Informative) by janrinok on Monday August 10 2015, @01:48PM
We tried that, and the response was NOT good. People complained that we were contacting them when they hadn't agreed to be contacted, or claiming that we were sending 'spam'. We could end up with our servers being placed on some blacklist or other and thus not being viewable by a significant proportion of our community. And of course it is of no use when an AC makes a submission.
I have on several occasions since taken a gamble and contacted a few submitters when I felt it was particularly justified and the response in these cases has always been positive. But, on balance, it was decided that it was not the route that we should be following.
If anyone wants to contact me on IRC and ask specific questions on their submission, I will do my best to answer and help them. I am on most days between 1500-2100 European time on the #editorial channel. If I am not there, just ask your question anyway and I will see it in the logs next time I log on. If you give me permission, I will look up your email address and will try to reply to you that way too.
(Score: 2) by ledow on Monday August 10 2015, @03:06PM
Is it just me that thinks that having to chase someone down on IRC to get feedback is unlikely to ever result in someone doing so?
The last thing I touched that did IRC was Opera and I haven't updated that in several years since they stripped all that kind of outdated technology out from it.
How about just changing the subject line to "Subject - REJECTED due to....." and then leaving it in the queue for another week. Those who were interested can fix it, or look it up. Those who don't care can see it's been rejected and skip over it.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by mrcoolbp on Monday August 10 2015, @03:20PM
Interesting idea, but we cannot edit the story until we actually 'post' it into the story queue. Really what we need is user-user messaging for the purpose of feedback from within slash itself, which has proven to be a large task for the dev team, though it is a relatively high priority on our list. Maybe I'll pester them about it.
(Score:1^½, Radical)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 10 2015, @03:28PM
What about making a "Rejected Stories" nexus? Then you could "post" the rejected stories there, with a comment on why it was rejected. You'd have to disable posting (other than by the editors) in that nexus.
As far as I understand, the nexus system is already implemented, right? So all that would have to implemented (if it isn't already possible) is the ability to restrict those who can post in that nexus to the editors.
(Score: 2) by mrcoolbp on Monday August 10 2015, @03:40PM
The nexus system still has some quirks. The way it works now, those stories would still show up on the main page. This is an intended behavior so that the main page shows everything. Of course people can filter out other nexuses in their preferences (like not showing stuff from the META nexus), but in the above idea you really want those stories hidden by default. I'm not saying the idea isn't good, but under the current implementation I don't think it would be ideal.
(Score:1^½, Radical)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 10 2015, @04:06PM
Well, if someone decides he wants to see rejected stories on his personalized version of the main page, it doesn't hurt, does it? You just would have to set as default that this Nexus is not shown at the main page (so users who didn't change that setting, as well as not logged-in users, will not get it on the front page).
(Score: 2) by mrcoolbp on Monday August 10 2015, @04:57PM
I don't think that's possible (not showing on main page by default, user has to 'un-show' from mainpage manually) under the current implementation.
(Score:1^½, Radical)
(Score: 2) by NCommander on Monday August 10 2015, @05:18PM
It is, but non-default nexuses are really out of the way. You'd have to know it existed to get there.
Still always moving
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Monday August 10 2015, @06:05PM
Well, some static text along the lines of
on an appropriate place should suffice, no?
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 2) by mrcoolbp on Tuesday August 11 2015, @09:57AM
Would throw off the acceptance tools we have now though (all stories would show as accepted)
(Score:1^½, Radical)
(Score: 2) by janrinok on Monday August 10 2015, @03:24PM
(Score: 2) by zafiro17 on Monday August 10 2015, @08:45PM
If you submit something to the queue at Pipedot.org and it gets rejected, you are given a reason by the editor (and the editor is required to put something down before rejecting it). I think that's a reasonable system. See for yourself: http://pipedot.org/pipe/history [pipedot.org]
The problem with community sites is that everyone is eager to be part of the reading/commenting community while writing and publishing articles is damned hard work. Tragedy of the commons. I'd volunteer myself if I had more time; I consider paying that yearly dues my contribution instead. Best I can do, at the moment! I was writing and publishing articles frequently at Pipedot for the better part of a year, and eventually burned out - just coming back after a many-month break. Finding good articles, writing them up and submitting them requires diligence and skill; not everyone has it or is willing to spend their time contributing that amount of effort.
I'll see if I can start submitting some stuff here, just to help out. Community sites don't last when the community is all hoping to be a free rider! (That said, there are other ways to contribute. If you're posting quality, interesting or insightful comments, you too are contributing to making this site the kind of place people will want to come and participate in). Good luck, Soylent!
Dad always thought laughter was the best medicine, which I guess is why several of us died of tuberculosis - Jack Handey
(Score: 3, Insightful) by mrcoolbp on Wednesday August 12 2015, @05:12AM
Thanks zafiro, it would be great to have your submissions/editing/etc. around these parts, but don't forget about pipedot, we have great respect for Bryan and what he has done for this community.
(Score:1^½, Radical)
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 10 2015, @02:50PM
Possible vehicle:
"Declined submissions" ("declined" sounds less harsh than "rejected")
- 1-2 sentence explanation for each rejection
- from the last 15-30 days or so; older submissions are dropped
- does not include spam or obvious troll submissions, e.g nonsense words
- does not include duplicate submissions to the same story, provided that the alternative submitter was acknowledged by name
- You need to log in to see this feature (SN's dirty laundry)
(Score: 5, Insightful) by martyb on Monday August 10 2015, @12:28PM
I'm pressed for time, so I apologize in advance if I've been terse or blunt.
I looked back over your submission history (at the bottom of your user info page: https://soylentnews.org/~mendax/) [soylentnews.org] and saw that 52 out of 57 of your stories were accepted. That is better than 91% accepted — well done! It appears that two of the submissions were dupes of other stories. (1 [soylentnews.org] and 2 [soylentnews.org].) Excluding those two, over 95% of your submissions were accepted. That's near the very top of the accepted percentage range based on my experience. (Case in point; my own submission history [soylentnews.org] reveals that not all of my submissions get accepted, either. And I am an editor on the site!) Rather than dwell on the few that were not accepted, I try and focus on the submissions that *were* accepted.
The story acceptance process is basically that an editor logs in, checks the submissions queue, and uses their best judgement to select a story to edit for the site. Accepted stories are removed from the submissions queue. Do realize this is a purely volunteer activity and is performed in our spare time. For example, I was reviewing the submission queue at 10:30PM last night (Sunday) because the story queue was running dry and I needed to see if there were any submissions that I could promote. I found a story but I've received enough feedback from the community that I recognized the it would not be acceptable it as-is. I followed the links, obtained additional info from those, included those in the story, edited it together, and finally promoted it to the main page. That required the better part of an hour on my part. I say this only to give a glimpse into some of what goes into the story editing process. If you would like more details on that process, see the Editing Process [soylentnews.org] on our Wiki which explains the entire process of how a submission makes its way to the story queue. Please also check out the submissions guidelines [soylentnews.org] if you have not done so recently.
Do be aware that he day of the week, time of day, and prior editor's efforts can dramatically affect the story submission queue size and hence the likelihood that your submission will be selected.
Yes, it would be nice if there were a UI element we could select for feedback. There was discussion of this a while ago and it bears revisiting. Do realize the site developers are also volunteers, so this needs to be balanced against other demands on their time. We have recently had some stability issues with the site and that has taken up much of their time of late.
To summarize, please don't let a few submissions that were not accepted hold you back; it happens. Your submissions are generally ones that I can accept with minimal effort, so I encourage you to please keep those submissions coming.
Wit is intellect, dancing.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 10 2015, @01:18PM
I registered for an account here shortly after the site first started, I submitted three stories, all of them were rejected. Two days later two of the stories I posted made the front page but from other submitters, and with shoddy summaries.
I have refused to submit stories since then. I worked hard on those submissions and they were rejected for no good reason, only for someone else to later get the glory. Since then I don't even bother logging in anymore.
You want submissions, then give feedback when they are rejected. End of story.
(Score: 2) by janrinok on Monday August 10 2015, @01:56PM
I cannot comment as I cannot trace your submissions based on a username of AC.
However, I will ask you a simple question, and it is not intended to be insulting, or necessarily relevant to your own submissions. If we receive multiple submissions on a specific topic, and one is far better written than the others, which would you expect the editor to choose? Usually, if this occurs we will acknowledge all submitters but if the queue is low and I have to choose between finding stories and making my own submissions to increase the size of the queue, or re-editing a processed story to give each submitter a mention, you can probably guess what I would choose to do to keep the site active.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 10 2015, @02:07PM
Good points as usual, Janrinok.
I have a simple request though - change your sig. It sounds like a spouse throwing up his/her hands during a fight. Not something that encourages direct communication.
- different AC
(Score: 2) by janrinok on Monday August 10 2015, @02:17PM
lol - I hadn't seen it that way! Anyway, on IRC we all know that everything that goes wrong is Bytram's fault - and we don't let him forget it.
But I like to think that I am very approachable and will do my best to help anyone with genuine queries - please do not be put off by my sig.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 10 2015, @02:49PM
As was mentioned in the parent post, the replacement stories were two days later with shoddy summaries. They were not the better stories.
(Score: 2) by mrcoolbp on Monday August 10 2015, @03:23PM
"Shortly after the site started" was a crazy time for us. If things did not go swimmingly then you'll have to excuse us. We were scrambling just to keep the site from going down, dealing with tons of bugs, we only had a few editors still learning the ropes, etc. Please do give us another chance.
(Score:1^½, Radical)
(Score: 2) by janrinok on Monday August 10 2015, @03:33PM
'Shoddy' is a matter of personal judgement. I know that I have felt the same when my stories have been rejected and yet someone else's story was published. As we have often said - rejection happens, it is not personal.
There are other occasions when this can happen. If we receive a submission saying that such-and-such and event will take place tomorrow, we sometimes wait for the event to take place so that we can provide the full story. For example, A certain comet is approaching perihelion in the next few days - while that is worth knowing in advance (and we have published that story) the next news item on this topic will be when we start to see the results. Without seeing the rejected submissions, I cannot offer any more constructive comments. I'm sorry that AC feels offended but I cannot take it any further without a lot more information.
(Score: 2) by hubie on Monday August 10 2015, @02:38PM
I think the first story I submitted when the site was pretty young was rejected. It was a technical topic that wasn't (as far as I knew) posted anywhere else.
Some of the other people who've posted mentioned that their posts were rejected not long after the site started. Perhaps the editors were different then and they had different ideas of what was appropriate.
(Score: 2) by cmn32480 on Monday August 10 2015, @03:16PM
There have been a significant number of editors since the site went live.
On the editorial side, we are able to see who is in a story, and the list got so long (20 names +/-) at the bottom of the page that it was actually coded into the Rehash update to make the list dynamic.
The current editors are not the same group that were here when the site started in early 2014, and we are looking for a few people to help as the number of active editors has dwindled to about 5 or 6.
"It's a dog eat dog world, and I'm wearing Milkbone underwear" - Norm Peterson
(Score: 3, Informative) by LaminatorX on Monday August 10 2015, @08:47PM
I think I am the only editor who has been on the team since launch. Janrinok is the lone survivor of the second batch. A couple of other staffers like MrCoolBP pitch in when they can.
(Score: 5, Informative) by janrinok on Monday August 10 2015, @01:33PM
We are currently looking at alternative ways at providing feed back. The one that I prefer is simply a another page showing rejected submissions with a comment alongside explaining why they were rejected. Each rejected submission along with its comments from the editors will remain on the page for a period of time, say 3 days, and then simply be removed. It seems to my (non-site-programmer) perspective the easiest to implement. It doesn't require much more than another web page - and we serve plenty of those each day. The downsides are that it is essentially one-way communication, but that is better than we have a present. It is also open to the gaze of the whole community, and that alone might discourage some from making a submission for fear of 'public' rejection.
As for the most common reasons for rejection, I will say the following from my own personal viewpoint.
These are my personal views, I suspect other editors share most of them but will be able to add more suggestions as this discussion develops. The summer/holiday period is always a difficult one. Colleges and universities are empty. People are taking their holidays/vacations. Many are out making the most of some free time and spending time with families and friends. But, as I am sure you all realise, without the submissions we haven't got a site, or at least we haven't got a site that is any different from others on the 'net.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by inertnet on Monday August 10 2015, @01:51PM
The downsides are that it is essentially one-way communication
That would be good enough for me. Besides, you don't want to create a discussion platform where you have to keep spending your time explaining back and forth why decisions about submissions were made. That could chase moderators away.
(Score: 2) by inertnet on Monday August 10 2015, @02:54PM
moderators
Oops, I meant editors.
(Score: 2) by mrcoolbp on Monday August 10 2015, @03:25PM
Yes, I have seen this happen.
(Score:1^½, Radical)
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 10 2015, @02:09PM
What if the editors just had a shared user account called "Rejected_Submissions" and posted them to its Journal page?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 10 2015, @02:59PM
That sounds like a very good plan, with the exception of the 3 day limit. That's IMHO too short.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Monday August 10 2015, @04:41PM
I understand the reluctance to submit for fear of wasted effort. That's partly why I do it the way I do, namely copy and paste representative paragraphs from the story in question with a brief quip or question as a conversation starter. It takes about 4-5 minutes, so if it's rejected it's no big deal. Sometimes the story isn't punchy and it's hard to summarize in less than 5 paragraphs; so the summary can be imperfect. It's mostly not a big deal.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 3, Informative) by mendax on Monday August 10 2015, @05:16PM
God, I created a monster! This is what happens when one is still awake a 3 in the morning.
It's really quite a simple choice: Life, Death, or Los Angeles.