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SoylentNews
from the prevention-goes-a-long-way dept.
So, every once in awhile, if things have been quiet, I like to pop a post seeing what the general feelings of the community are towards the site, seeing what we could do better, etc. I think its been a few months since the last time I posted in Meta, so I think this is a good time to get a pulse on the community, and provide a venue to get any feedback (good or bad).
On the staff side, I know things have been relatively quiet over the summer due to most of us being busy with life and such, which is why we haven't made a major site upgrade since the original rehash upgrade at the end of May. For myself, I've been working at a new job, and dealing with a fair bit of non-Soylent related things to the point that I really only have the time or energy to post, and occasional check in, and I'd like to thank the rest of the staff, and mrcoolbp in particular for holding down the fort for me.
Anyway, in contrast to my usual posts, I'm going to cut this off here, and will be looking forward to your comments below.
73 from NCommander
(Score: 4, Interesting) by cmn32480 on Wednesday November 18 2015, @01:36AM
The site runs officially on UTC, but you will see the times in whatever time zone your account has set, I believe.
The pending story queue allows for a few things to happen:
1) Another editor can look over the story, check the links again, and make improvements if necessary. This happens pretty much daily.
2) It allows submitters to see what has already been accepted into the queue, thus preventing what will likely be a declined submission.
3) It allows the editors to pre-program the articles that are going to display.
The last point is the only one that I feel is not pretty self explanatory. Keep in mind that we are volunteers. All of us. The editors, the devs, the sysadmins, the board, and all the rest of the cogs that mesh (pretty harmoniously as a general rule) to make SoylentNews work. Everyone of us takes time away from our jobs, families and personal lives to keep things running. I can say (speaking only for myself) that I don't mind. I rather enjoy it, and see it as more a labor of love than anything else.
But, because we are all volunteers, there is no guarantee that there are editors on duty around the clock. We try our best, but it just isn't possible. Don't let the Authors page [soylentnews.org] fool you, there are not very many active editors, but we are always looking for volunteers! [soylentnews.org]. So the way it goes is that we will front load the story queue in our spare time. Some times we can only push one or two stories. Sometimes we see Herculean efforts that get entire days posted and ready to go out. On a Thursday not too long ago, one editor pushed out the entire weekend worth of stories. This allows us to have lives. Wives, kids, jobs, taking care of loved ones, paying the mortgage to keep a roof over our heads and food in our stomachs.
Sorry for the long answer to a short question.
In other news, the staff agrees on giving you feedback for declined submissions. It has already been written, and is sitting on Github waiting for the next site update, as far as I know.
We hear you when you gripe about the story selection, or something that I screwed up as an editor. It lightens my heart when any member of the community constructively critiques what we do. It means you care. And that is a place I want to continue being a part of.
"It's a dog eat dog world, and I'm wearing Milkbone underwear" - Norm Peterson