SoylentNews

Again, sorry this took so long. Thanks so much for your patience.

0. Current state of Slashdot
by an Anonymous Coward

"What is your opinion about the path Slashdot has taken lately?"

With regards to story selection, I actually think it's gotten better in the past year or so. I've started reading it again from time to time. A long time went by when I didn't check the site at all and lurked Ars and HackerNews instead. Is it as great as it once was? No, but more stories seem to be things I find interesting again.

1. Future of collaborative moderated conversation
by j-stroy

"What insights or thoughts do you have on 'next level' ideas in this area and what kinds of tech/developments/usage would that require/inspire?"

The moderation system wasn't something I was very involved with during my time at Slashdot, so I haven't really thought about this in a long time. I wish I had some great insight to offer, but I don't.

2. Poll Option
by VLM

"You like being a poll option on /. polls? Want to be a poll option on SN polls?"

by tynin

"What's the story behind you being a default if often humorous poll option at /.?"

Chris DiBona just started it one day when he was in charge of making the polls. I don't know if the first few were well received or not, but he kept it up regardless. After he left Slashdot, Tim Lord took over polls and kept up the tradition. I would say I don't care either way, but that's not entirely true. Sometimes I read whatever option has me in it and giggle a little, so I guess I like it. Mostly because the options are things I've never done in real life, so I like to imagine there's this other me out there who does all kinds of crazy stuff. Sort of like The Most Interesting Man in the World, but instead, the Nerdiest Dude in the World. He's sitting there in his smoking jacket and looks at the camera while he types "make" on his wearable computer and says, "Keep compiling, my friends."

If SoylentNews wishes to include me in their polls, go right ahead, I don't charge royalties.

3. Slashvertisements
by VLM

"Honestly, how many articles were slashvertisements, assuming you know the truth. I think there was a schedule for a couple months on Tuesday afternoons to post e-ink promotional articles complete with astro-turfed responses. Same as above, assuming you know the truth, did we really land on the moon and who killed JFK?"

I can't speak for every editor, but I know that I personally didn't post any ads disguised as stories, and to my knowledge, no one else did either. That might have changed since I moved on, but I haven't seen or know of any evidence to the contrary. We were often accused of playing favorites with certain submitters, but I know that in my case, it was usually due to laziness or a lack of other good submissions at the time. Submitters that appear a lot, appear a lot because their submissions are well-written and require little to no editing, and sometimes things that might normally be considered out of the scope of the site would get posted, just because they were written up halfway decently. I worked a lot of night shifts when the submission bin was low on content, and I was always glad to see submissions come in from people like Hugh Pickens and prostoalex, because it was one less story I had to find for the night.

I'm pretty sure that we actually did land on the moon, but I haven't been there myself to verify it. However, I have no clue who really killed JFK.

4. Groupie Story
by VLM

"Give us your best slashdot groupie story that the statute of limitations has run out on by now. If you still can't tell, then make one up."

AND/OR

"Tell a hell of a good story, preferably true, about the olden days, aside from the request for groupie stories, that you haven't told or at least isn't common knowledge that has something to do with /. Funny, interesting, insightful, gossipy hell how bout one of each."

I got a lot of hugs on the con circuit, but as for anything crazy like snorting coke off a groupie's back, that never happened, because I'm just too boring in real life. I do remember one story from shortly after we were first acquired, though.

This was back immediately after the sale to Andover.Net. For the first time there was real money backing us. The site wasn't actually making any money, but that didn't matter, because we were on The Internet, and stuff on the internet was automatically sought after because it was on The Internet. Andover had brought over Robin Miller, so that for once we would have an editor with actual experience on site, and we had our first round of paid editors on the site. One of those was Emmett Plant. It was decided to have an onsite meeting, so we could meet Robin and Emmett in person at our office, which at the time was still located in a duplex. Those of us who worked in the office every day all lived in adjacent units, so our commutes were pretty short.

Even though we were newly acquired, we still weren't used to having a company backing us, so the whole ordeal was done on the cheap. I went and picked up Emmett from the airport myself, and instead of putting him in a hotel, he crashed on my sofa at night. To be fair, it was a really comfortable couch for sleeping on. I had laid on it myself before I bought it, and it was one of the main selling points of an otherwise pretty ordinary looking sofa.

While we would find a lot of ways to burn through IPO money in the years to come, for that meeting our big dinner out was at an Applebee's and we cooked our own lunch on a grill in front of the garage. In the middle of the week, Emmett managed to catch the flu and was pretty miserable. I tried my best to make him comfortable, but I was a single guy living in a sparsely furnished duplex, so I felt pretty bad for him. It seemed like he was doomed to spend most of the week sitting on my couch and watching TV next to a box of tissues.

However, when I came downstairs the next morning, Emmett was there, and totally over his flu. He had slept all night and gotten over the worst of it with the quickness. He attributed his speedy recovery to my sofa, and thereafter it was known as "The Magic Healing Couch." When we would meet up again at conventions or in the Andover office, after we'd introduce ourselves to other people, he'd mention, "well, CowboyNeal does own a Magic Healing Couch" and it was a fun in-joke that went on for a while.

Eventually the couch got old and the legs fell off it and I had to get rid of it, but I like to think it's healing whatever landfill it ended up in.

5. Scoring Systems
by Wootery

"What are your thoughts on the various scoring systems used by sites like Slashdot, SoylentNews, and reddit, and the tradeoffs between them? Related: the ways these sites can be structured (for instance, some subreddits reliably generate good discussion). Slashdot and SoylentNews both allow ACs, and both see endless streams of crap from ACs, along with the occasional worthwhile comment. reddit forbids ACs, but make account-creation extremely easy. Is there a way to 'win' here? I presume there is not. Do you support Slashdot's policy of forbidding both moderating and commenting in a given thread? [SoylentNews allows both currently]

(Sorry if this seems a bit contrived or scattered, but I figure you're in a good position to comment on this general sort of thing.)"

The main problem I see with most if not all moderation systems is that over time it tends to develop a hive-mind sort of mentality, where if you go against the majority opinion, even if it's for a good reason, you're seen as a troll and moderated down. Of course I don't have a solution for distinguishing that from actual trolling, therein lies the problem. I think that subreddits usually suffer from this less because they might be hidden under the surface a bit, so the people that find them had to put in a little effort to get there.

I support Slashdot's policy, only because I've seen the logs of it being abused, but I don't think that it's necessarily the best practice everywhere, it's just what worked better for Slashdot.

6. Device of Choice
by tibman

"When sitting at a desk, what is your device of choice and what OS is on it?"

Depends on what I'm doing. I use PCs still, but I run Debian when I want to get work done, and Windows 7 when I want to play games. Linux gaming has come a long way, but if it gets much better it's going to kill my productivity.

7. Your words of advice and caution
by infodragon

"Slashdot was an amazing site when it first started and had quite a long life. Given your experiences with that success what words of advice and caution would you give to the SolyentNews community? Also thanks for all the hard work you put into Slashdot! The early days were evident it was a labor of love and many shared in that journey!"

I haven't spent a lot of time on SoylentNews, but from what I've seen, you've got a nice little community going already, which is no easy task. So, kudos for that. I only have two pieces of conflicting advice:

1. Listen to your users. Users are the lifeblood of any site, and if they're not happy, they will make sure you know about it. 2. Don't listen to your users. They don't really know what they want, and they won't tell you what they like when you give it to them.

They go hand in hand because there is often a vocal minority that expresses their extreme displeasure at some facet of your site. Some will see it as a personal affront that The Thing They Care About isn't being immediately addressed. The hard part is discerning who to listen to and when. Sometimes, despite your best research, and your best intuition, you'll still make the wrong call. Transparency certainly helps here, but not as much as you'll wish it did.

Best wishes for your future, SoylentNews.

8. All over again
by paulej72

"If you had to do it all over again, what, if any, changes would you make to /. to make it better?"

Unfortunately, "better" is a subjective term. I always enjoyed Slashdot's original content the most, but it's not what brings in the most page-views either. Other people would rather only discuss news, etc. More online events would have been good as well. We stopped doing regular IRC forums, but they were always fun. A Slashdot Quake or Team Fortress server might have been fun to try, or a Slashdot guild in WoW or some other MMO. None of those things bring in revenue directly though, so while fun and possibly building a sense of community, no one upstairs at the company will ever appreciate them. Oh yeah, and even though I wasn't involved with it in any fashion, I would still give away a Slashdot-themed car, just not a PT Cruiser. My mom drives a PT Cruiser, so I know they're not cool.

9. Systemd?
by Marneus68

"Yay or nay and detail why!"

by cafebabe

"I think that should be: SysV init, systemd or CowboyNeal?"

I know this is unpopular, but I don't mind systemd. I've been using it for a while now and it's worked well for me. YMMV though, and I do think it's too bad that most distros force their init choice on you, rather than letting you choose. Choice is why most people get into using Unix/Linux/BSD anyway. There's so much to choose from.

10. Hi CowboyNeal,
by VIPERsssss

"Only one question; vi or emacs?"

vi, specifically vim.

11. Gaming Thoughts

by Robotron

"Back when your site was up I noticed you clocked in a lot of hours gaming on Steam, particularly with MMOs like LOTR Online. Given that this genre is apparently a favourite of yours, what are your thoughts about the oft-repeated accusations that MMOGs have, in recent years, become excessively dumbed-down, formulaic, or otherwise stale?"

I really need to make an effort to get my site back up, so firstly, thanks for the heads up. I don't have as much time as I used to, to play MMOs anymore, but they were definitely a love of mine for a long time.

I don't think the genre has gone entirely stale, but I do think that most developers are afraid to stray very far from the WoW formula at this point, because of what a runaway success it was. However at the same time, that formula is over ten years old now, so without some changes, it can't help but feel a little stale.

In terms of dumbing-down, I think most of the big MMOs have tried to lower the skill floor, so that new or casual players can jump in easier. I used to put 30-40 hours a week into an MMO easy, but without players like me around anymore, they need to do something to attract more players. In a perfect game, that's still okay, so long as the skill ceiling is still somewhere reasonable, but the definition of what is reasonable is rather subjective. Does it mean that the game should require 100 hours of play for someone to become skilled at it? Or should it be easier so that when you group up with other players, the chances of the group being able to complete content is increased? The answer is subjective and really depends on the goals of the developers. I'm sure if I still played WoW or LotRO for 30-40 hours a week I'd have very strong opinions about where the bar should be set.

12. Ancient Times
by hemocyanin

"If you look back to 2001, and compare how the life of slashdot actually is compared to what you had dreamed, did it come close?"

Definitely. The later years involved a lot of trying things that didn't always work out, but that was always done on top of a news discussion site, which was always the central goal.

13. Could you Create Slashdot Today?
by Appalbarry

"The Internet that we see today is dramatically different from what existed when Slashdot was launched in 1997. The corporatization and commercialization of so much on the 'net has changed it from the free and easy, wild west place that some of us remember, and we're now at a point where pretty much everyone, from all walks of life, is on the 'net in some fashion, instead of just the nerds, geeks, and techheads that were hanging out back then.

The culture of the 'net defined early projects like Slashdot, and the kind of people who were early users led directly to the still brilliant Slashdot moderation system, and to every attempt at commenting and moderation that followed. Arguably almost all post-Usenet conversation on the 'net is influenced by what Slashdot created. Do you think that Slashdot could be created today? And is it fair to also look at the site as an important historical artifact?"

I don't think we could create Slashdot today, at least not with the momentum we had over 15 years ago now. We benefited from the fact that a lot of early internet users shared our interests. These days when more people are online, people looking for news articles of a technical nature are a smaller piece of the pie, and a site that automatically limits itself to a niche audience is a much tougher sell. A lot of the other news sites that were around back then are gone now, and only a few still remain. I think it's fair to look at the site as a historical artifact, because a lot of days I wake up and I feel like one.

14. UTF-8
by TheMightyBuzzard

"I'm the one who put most of the work in on getting SoylentNews playing nicely with UTF-8 characters, so I got to see that most of the code and external modules (HTML::TreeBuilder aside) were already UTF-8 friendly. In fact a large part of what I had to do was to strip out things that intentionally made UTF-8 characters not work. Why did you guys never get Slashdot on the UTF-8 bandwagon? Philosophical decision or were the perl versions you had to work with at the time just not up to snuff?"

UTF-8 just wasn't really ever a priority. That may have been due to the version of Perl we were using at the time, but I think it was mostly due to apathy, and other projects having more importance. It took us years to even make a site that served up HTML that would pass a validator, just because it wasn't a priority. I don't think there was ever an internal mandate that we hated UTF-8, but at the same time we didn't see a burning need to support it either.

Avoiding Community Fragmentation

Every time the topic of expanding SoylentNews comes up, there's a fear that we may fragment what is already a very small community. While I understand where these concerns are coming from, I'm not sure that fear is justified. My thought here is that if you're reading SoylentNews for the articles and community, being able to stay on SN to read more niche topics would keep you here. For example, I'm a fairly avid Dwarf Fortress fan, but I can't discuss the game here; as such, I either post on /r/dwarffortress or on Bay12 about it. A Dwarf Fortress community on SoylentNews would allow me to discuss one of my favorite games here instead.

The intent is to keep the main page of SoylentNews as it is right now; a source of general news and information; the editors will remain in control of what is (or isn't) posting to SN front page. I don't want to move to a reddit (or firehose) style voting system for articles since I feel that would: lower the quality of content here, cause unpopular information to get buried, and wreck what IMHO has been a rather good system thus far. Individual nexuses may decide to use different criteria for their information, but said content would be limited to that nexus. Or in other words, this would be a purely additive change, not a revolutionary one.

Community Governance

Another thing we've promised since near the start is involving the community on major decisions and policies that this site would take. As such, it's been a relatively informal system with an article going up, feedback collected, and then acted on. I feel that if we're going to expand the site, a more formal framework of governance needs to be established — acting as a checks-and-balances system for the entire site. The fact of the matter is the original Slashcott, or reddit's current self-destruction process could have been averted had the community had a proper say in governance and other actions. For example, Wikimedia, the Ubuntu Project, Debian, and the Apache Foundation all have an elected set of users that act as community advocates.

Having community governance in effect is supposed to act as a circuit breaker — to prevent the staff from acting against the wishes of the community. We have a proven track record of being forefront in both listening to and acting on community concerns, but the entire system is dependent on the goodwill of the staff. People change as time goes on and it's possible that if we're here in ten years, none of the current staff and developers will still be here. Lest us forget that the green site was a haven for many of us until Dice took over. For SoylentNews to survive indefinitely, we need to have a system in place to make sure that the goodwill of the staff isn't the only thing keeping us from going into the abyss.

The problem is: where we do we define this line? Too much debate would cause everything on SN to grind to a halt; too little would prevent governance from being effective.

Furthermore, I'm concerned that a traditional-style community council would be ineffective. I struggle to remember any case where such a system really acted as true force of power in any organization I've been involved in. As such, I would like to think that we may want to mimic national conventions system from Article V of the US Constitution. Specifically, if X number of users (where X is a large percentage of the community), or nexus admins (acting as representatives of their community) across the site form and sign a petition, we could set up a convention to allow the community to overrule the staff and reform the site as necessary. Such a system would give the staff a relatively free hand in day-to-day operations, while acting as an effective circuit breaker to allow the collective force of the community to come to bear if it's ever necessary. This system can be directly incorporated into the bylaws, giving it legal power to enforce its demands, and not some wishy-washy system that can be ignored. I'd like to hear suggestions and feedback from the community on how best to proceed on establishing a system that allows the community to have significant power if it ever should need it.

Monetization and Revenue Sharing

I know this is going to be a touchy subject, so I want to clarify that nothing is set in stone. The simple fact of the matter though is that SoylentNews PBC requires money. As of right now, we can cover our server hosting costs with revenue coming in from subscriptions. This is a very good place to be, but I'd like to do better. I've made no secret that I'd love to get to the point that, long term, SN can do independent journalism, or at least have part or full time staff dedicated to improving the site. In the shorter term, I'd like to have the resources to form a parent not-for-profit to oversee the site, and the mission objectives as laid out by the manifesto, and even perhaps pursue 501(c)(3) status.

For those who don't remember, when I discussed incorporation originally, we hit a major snag that SN follows such an unusual business model, combined with the fact that most not-for-profit corporations deal with things like parks or fire departments. While it is certainly possible to form a not-for-profit that covers SN, it would require a lawyer to determine the specifics, in addition with the usual costs of forming a business. With that in mind, SoylentNews PBC (our legal overlord), simply doesn't have the resources to do that. Forming the non-profit and making sure checks-and-balances are directly incorporated into the bye-laws would make sure the site would never be at risk of a buyout, regardless of who is leading the site, and a cornerstone in fulfilling our promise to the community.

Furthermore, there's the moral aspect to consider. It's a simple fact that without the community, we wouldn't be here, or as successful as we have been. As such, if we end up monetizing community nexuses, at least part of those funds should go to those who volunteer their time and effort here, both the staff and the overseers of a nexus.

I've got a couple of ideas that I'd like to bounce off the community to see what the general feelings are. This is broken into two parts: monetization ideas, and revenue sharing.

Monetization Ideas

Require Payment To Create A Nexus

This was the most obvious idea I had when I started drafting this novel. Pay a bit, and create your own community. I'm not really a huge fan of this idea, because it means that someone has to pay to create a place to discuss things, and my gut is telling me that this would go against our mission statements, even if on paper it seems completely reasonable to me. There is perhaps a middle ground that we could limit nexus creation to subscribers. Overall, I'm very much on the fence for this idea though.

Offer A Premium Tier

As a second option, we could allow nexuses to get additional functionality, such as the ability to fully re-theme their section of the site, have nexuses-within-nexuses, provide subscriber features to all users within a nexus, or provide general file and image hosting. I'm largely open to ideas on both what we could offer, and how much it could cost.

Other Ideas

Beyond these two, I've also considered the possibility of allowing community nexuses to run their own advertising, or selling hosted independent rehash instances for a turnkey website. I'm not sure either of these are good ideas (though hosted instances may be useful as a side business), which is why I didn't write about them in length. I'm of course always open to good ideas from the community on the subject

Revenue Sharing

I've said it before, and I will say it again, but this site is nothing without its community. If we're successful in increasing our revenue, then part of that money should be given back to that community, either in the form of free subscriptions or nexus upgrades, or as cold hard cash. Any of the editors here can tell you that building a community of any sort is a massive job and very time consuming. The admins of community nexuses will have to face the same challenges and time commitments that the editorial team current does. As of right now, subscriptions cover our hosting and legal costs, but not much more. If I could, I would give every person who has volunteered their time and effort a paycheck, but that's simply not feasible. What we can do, however, is set a small portion of incoming revenue aside for re-investment.

Once community nexuses are live, subscribers (or those re-upping a subscription) will be able to set a nexuses that gets part of those funds (the default will be the nexuses the user is currently browsing), and the option to "leave a tip" so to speak. Most of that money will go into the general fund to pay for the site or to build a legal war chest, but the tip will be set aside, and placed in a fund for that community. That fund can be used by admins of a given nexus to give their users free subscriptions, buy the premium tier, or other site related functions. We can also create the possibility of "cashing out" so to speak, though that will require discussions with our CPA and lawyer. I realize that this is unlikely to ever generate a significant amount of money, but it may allow for a local gathering with free beer or something. Specifics (and legalities) have to be hashed out, but I would love to hear the communities thoughts on this.

In Closing

Its been a wild 1.5 years, and this site has grown far beyond my initial expectations. While I can't say what the future holds, I want to make sure we have the ability to cement our future in a more permanent fashion, and not fall victim to the same pitfalls that destroyed (or are destroying) sites like Slashdot, digg, or reddit. Its possible this is all a bad idea, and I'm depending on everyone to get your feedback and to readjust things.

On one final note, a few users keep asking us about warrant canaries. I've never done one of these before, but I'm hoping that this will help assure those who are concerned that we've been warranted or something:

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

SoylentNews PBC has never received any requests for law enforcement, or
has diverged any user information as required by a court of law or similar.

Headlines of July 5th as of writing:

The Climate One Year On: Exit Carbon Tax, Enter Brown Coal

Contact Temporarily Lost With New Horizons

NVIDIA Shows a Realistic HairWorks 1.1 Demo with 500K Fluttering Hairs

President/CEO
Michael "NCommander" Casadevall

Signed with:

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uid                  Michael Casadevall <mcasadevall@kubuntu.org>
uid                  Michael Casadevall <mcasadevall@soylentnews.org>

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