SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
As someone who pays an inordinate amount of time pondering things, I noticed some recent milestones for SoylentNews and thought these might be of interest to the rest of the community. In round numbers we have:
- 20 Months since SoylentNews went live (on February 14th, 2014.)
- 20 Current staffers who keep things running.
-
200150 Subscribers.[*] - 5,900 Registered users.
- 8,400 Stories posted.
- 10,000 Stories submitted.
- 250,000 Comments posted (almost -- who will get it?)
- 166,770,000 page hits on the site (yes, 1/6 of a Billion!)
What started as a protest activity (The Slashcott) burgeoned into action in the form of taking a several-years-old, non-maintained code base and, through the alchemy of dedication and sleep deprivation, came to be known as SoylentNews. There were numerous site crashes and outages, but things gradually stabilized. We were incorporated (completed on July 4th, aptly enough). Other niceties started to make their way onto the site: moderation changes, User Interface (UI) enhancements, Unicode support, apache and mod-perl upgrades, and countless other behind-the-scenes tweaks and tunings to get things to where they are now.
Besides the main site, I would be remiss if I did not mention that we also have our own Wiki and an active Internet Relay Chat (IRC) community.
Most importantly, it is our community that drives us! Thank you for all the story submissions, for all the comments on those stories, and for your feedback on site improvement ideas.
[*] The original value of 200 for the number of subscribers was an estimate; the correct number was 150. Updated this story for posterity.
To those who have started or extended their subscription please accept our genuine and sincere thanks — we could NOT do it without you! -Ed.
(Score: 3, Informative) by martyb on Thursday October 15 2015, @03:07PM
I submitted the original story and have since discovered there was an error in the number of subscribers that I reported.
At the time I wrote this, I was unable to get an actual count of the number of subscribers. I had access to very limited data which showed 350 subscription activities had been performed. I made a reasoned guess from that as to the number of currently subscribed users. I hoped to get an accurate count with which to update the story but was unable to do so before the story hit the main page.
I have since been able to run an actual query against the database. By this time, several of our registered users had already renewed their subscription [soylentnews.org] and after making an allowance for that discovered we have approximately 150 current subscribers.
To those of you have started or renewed your subscription, thank you!
P.S. The site funding progress bar has as its goal the ,em>bare minimum we foresee as being needed to 'keep the lights on' — there is no allowance for contingency. Any additional support beyond that is greatly appreciated and you can be assured it will be put to good use!
Wit is intellect, dancing.
(Score: 2) by martyb on Thursday October 15 2015, @03:10PM
And of course, in true SoylentNews fashion, I failed to properly proofread my comment! =)
Wit is intellect, dancing.
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Thursday October 15 2015, @03:55PM
But congrats on making the 250000th comment. You get no prize, but it was timed perfectly.
(Score: 2) by martyb on Saturday October 17 2015, @12:48AM
Thanks! Had a little bit of luck on that one. =)
Wit is intellect, dancing.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by The Mighty Buzzard on Thursday October 15 2015, @06:01PM
This whole post was a plot to get 250k for yourself, admit it.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.