SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
It has been a while since I've written a site summary, and I've been meaning to do so for a while now. So, I'm just going to get started and hope that will motivate my getting it done.
As always, if this kind of story is not of interest to you, another story will be along before long.
Otherwise, read on below the fold for what's been happening.
- Daylight Saving Time
- Things are Difficult for Everyone
- Digging out of my System Crash
- System Outages
- Staffing
- Story Cadence
- Statistics
- Fundraising
- Site Updates/Enhancements
Daylight Saving Time:
If you live in the USA, there's a very good chance that Daylight Saving Time ended over the weekend for you and you were supposed to set your clocks back. Consider this a friendly Public Service Announcement just in case you forgot. Please be aware that, historically, people tend to struggle with the time shift for a week or so.
Things are Difficult for Everyone:
Times are tough for many people right now. COVID-19 and lockdowns. Businesses closed or under limited attendance and hours. Many schools are closed, under restricted attendance, or a hybrid combination of online and in-person attendance. Parents are trying to juggle work-from-home, often while trying to watch over their kids.
Please be mindful that people you meet — on-line or in-person — may be struggling, just like you. Please take a moment to reflect on where they are coming from and not lash out at people, just as you might wish for others to be patient with you. Maybe even call up a friend and ask how the are doing. We can all do something to help make it a little easier on those we meet.
Also, Election day is Tuesday, November 3 in the US. You may have heard about the Presidential election, but there are a host of other races, as well. To cap things off, election results in many cases may not be known for several days after election day. I found this provided a nice summary.
Digging out of my System Crash:
I blew up my windows install and decided to use that as an incentive to switch over to Linux — Ubuntu Mate, still in progress. For those who want more details:
So, I tried to restore a file from a duplicate of my C: drive a couple weeks ago. I had an SSD which had an older, bit-for-bit copy of C: my drive. I mounted it in in an external USB enclosure, but Windows did not recognize the drive. So, I hibernated and awakened the laptop. Nope, still did not recognize there was a drive attached. Grrr. How about a hard restart? Nope, no joy. In fact, less than joy. Now I had a message from Windows that my copy was potentially invalid and that I needed to reauthorize it! A couple other tries at rebooting resulted in a BSOD. (I later realized my boot order was CD/DVD, external USB, then internal disk. Ooops!
I'd been meaning to move over to Linux for a long time, but had held off due to the 1,000+ batch and AWK scripts and some other programs I'd written over the years. Rather than trying to resurrect my Windows install, I decided to bite the bullet and force myself to make the switch. I am conversant with userland tools like grep, sed, gawk, du, df, diff, and the like. But, installing and configuring packages like email (Thunderbird), HexChat, ssh (replacing PuTTY), browser (Firefox after using Pale Moon) has been slow going.
It's still a work-in-progress, but I've made a lot of headway. Huge thanks to "The Mighty Buzzard", "janrinok", "Fnord666", "chromas", "Azuma Hazuki", "Runaway1956", and others who have been exceedingly patient with me as they've tried to help me get things working again! This is what got me into programming all those years ago: the selfless willingness to help others "learn the ropes". I can't thank you all enough!
System Outages:
Did I mention things were difficult for everyone? Only a few days after my system went sideways and now currently booted from an external Live Edition of Ubuntu, SoylentNews had a system outage. I had happened to wake very early and noticed the site was down with a 500 error. Was able to get onto IRC (Internet Relay Chat) through my browser. Discovered others were already aware. I offered a couple suggestions, but had no luck. I sent a text to "The Might Buzzard" (aka "TMB" and "Buzz") and settled in to wait for him to wake. Fortunately, TMB was able to quickly identify and rectify the (database) problem. In short order we were back up and running again. Thanks Buzz!
So, the next morning I woke up early (again), checked the site, and found we were down (again). This time it was because our certificate had expired. (Since I was without email at this time, I missed the reminders send out by Let's Encrypt.) Thanks go to TMB (again!) for making quick work of getting certs re-issued and deployed!
Staffing:
As you may have surmised, we are a bit short staffed. I do what I can to help on the systems side of things, but my skills are very limited in that realm. I'm better at writing tests, Templates, and Perl (in decreasing order of knowledge/expertise). Just over two years ago, "janrinok" stepped down and I took over the role of Editor-in-Chief (EiC). I count it a privilege to serve the community and do my best to: try and keep the stories coming, act as a liason for site issues, and offer guidance where needed to the other editors.
Please join me in thanking "Fnord666", our Alternate Editor-in-chief (AEiC), for his able efforts in getting stories out. Nearly half of the stories you see on SoylentNews are thanks to his efforts. Thanks Fnord666! Thanks, too, to "chromas" who occasionally pushes out stories (and often seconds stories before they make it to the main page). Not to stay entirely away, "janrinok" can often be seen seconding stories and occasionally pushing out a story or two. He's also an able mentor as I try and fill his shoes as EiC. Behind the scenes I've seen "takyon", "CoolHand", "Mrpg", and others occasionally pop in and lend a hand. (We had a surprise visit from mrpg on IRC on Saturday!) Thanks to ALL of you!
Opportunity:
Ever wonder how this site runs? What happens behind the scenes? We can always use a helping hand. If you are interested, please reply to this story and/or send an email to admin (at) soylentnews (dot) org and/or pop onto IRC and let someone know. Every little bit helps! When I started off, I had never used IRC before, never edited a story, and was unfamiliar with our code base. Though nobody has ever been paid even one cent for their work here, I consider the things I've learned to be priceless. Especially the friendships I've made along the way. Highly recommended!
One thing that would be a HUGE help is having the community submit stories. Yes, we have bots that are a big help, but that means each story takes a bunch of work to get the gist of the material, extract a subset, look up any journal references, check links, and so on. OTOH, when I see a sub from "takyon" it's usually just a quick skim, schedule a time slot, and then on to the next one. See the difference? We only have so much spare time. It may not sound like much, but the time required for each story adds up! Just take a look at the number of stories pushed out so far. Yes, "fnord666" is fast approaching 5,800 stories! [and martyb is rapidly approaching 9500 stories, but he is too modest to say so --JR] Thanks and Congratulations!
Story Cadence:
We strive to keep a continuous stream of stories queued up for the community. We average just under a dozen stories a day on weekdays and about 10 or so on weekends (UTC). From the preceding section, you may have surmised we have a thin "bench" on the editorial staff and could use some help.
Quite simply, this rate of stories is not maintainable at current staffing and activity. "Fnord666" and I have been pushing out 4-6 stories a day for the past few months. Unless we get some additional help, we will need to cut back on the number of stories posted each day.
I took a look around and noticed that The Register (aka El Reg) stopped posting stories on the weekend last May. Ars Technica posts primarily during the day (USA hours). On weekends, Ars Technica cuts back to 3-4 stories per day, frequently reposts from other sources (primarily WIRED and Financial Times). Those publications pay their writers. We are unpaid volunteers.
I am not claiming we are on the same level as those publications, but I am finding it hard to justify our putting out 10 stories per day on weekends when they publish far fewer (or none at all). In short, I see no option but to cut back on our weekday cadence by a story or two per day, and cut back *significantly* on weekends. Unless we get some more help, that is. SoylentNews is People. We need your help — please volunteer!
Statistics:
- Folding@Home just recently passed 2^31 points! Yes, well over 2 billion points! Way to go team SoylentNews!
- We have reached about 1,072,000 comments.
- Story submissions have now exceeded 45,130.
- Posted stories are now past: 33,823
Fundraising:
I am pleased to report we have a good start on fundraising for the second half of this calendar year. So far, we have collected approximately $1094.14 towards our goal of $3,500.00 (~31.3%). Thanks to everyone who has Subscribed!
Site Updates/Enhancements:
Barring any critical needs, site updates are restricted to minor template changes until "TMB" can finish his house remodeling work. There is a chunk of code he wrote waiting on my getting to test it, but see earlier and my system snafus. (Will 2020 ever end?)
(Score: 2) by RS3 on Monday November 02 2020, @03:40PM (40 children)
Don't hold back, tell us how you feel! Big grin and all. Ribbing aside, it just shows how overwhelmed the admins / editors are.
I came here a bit later than you and "the originals", but only because I simply had not heard of SN until whenever it was I heard of it. And I came here full of "bright-eyed bushy-tailed" enthusiasm and optimism, and of course assumptions, and I've learnt many lessons. Sometimes in life I learn what not to do, even though I haven't learned the inner workings of a process, or what one should do. Case in point: last story I submitted, and I've submitted very few, was rejected because it smelt of advertising or some such. I dunno, it seemed interesting and informative and useful, thought I'd share it with this crowd. No problem, I've got better things to do anyway. Maybe someday I'll understand the culture and philosophy here. Or maybe not. This place is certainly interesting, informative, insightful, and often entertaining. :)
On a different note, kudos to y'all Down Under for having NO new COVID-19 cases yesterday (at least that's what I read in the news...)
(Score: 3, Interesting) by c0lo on Monday November 02 2020, @03:47PM (30 children)
And yet they persist in digging themselves a bigger hole.
Fine with me, I'll send the things I find interesting in the attention of the IRC bot.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by takyon on Monday November 02 2020, @04:23PM (8 children)
https://soylentnews.org/submit.pl?op=viewsub&subid=45180&title=Scientists+Have+Found+an+Asteroid+Worth+a+Cheeky+%2410%2C000+Quadrillion [soylentnews.org]
Woooow, that is a lot of money. UBI for everybody!
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Monday November 02 2020, @04:30PM (7 children)
Nah, just lots of iron and nickel for everybody.
The Aboriginals here would certainly appreciate not having their sacred sites blown up together with 40k+ of history [abc.net.au] just because the Chinese still buy iron ore.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Monday November 02 2020, @05:23PM (4 children)
Yeah, I been kinda following those stories, albeit not real closely. Sometimes, Oz looks as evil as the 'Murican hegemony.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 02 2020, @06:09PM (3 children)
That would be because Australia is part of the American hegemony. Do you think those US military bases are for show?
(Score: 1, Troll) by Runaway1956 on Monday November 02 2020, @06:16PM
Not exactly, as I see it. The Crown owns far more in Oz than all American interests combined.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by c0lo on Monday November 02 2020, @06:17PM
Primarily, because they help the local economy. On American taxpayers' expense.
Otherwise, the greed of American or British or Australian corporations don't show much of a difference.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 03 2020, @01:03AM
I think they're there to delay China's eventual annexation of Oceania.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Monday November 02 2020, @08:21PM
NASA Asteroid Mission -- Metals "Worth" Ten Thousand Quadrillion Dollars [soylentnews.org] (2017)
Asteroid Psyche Is The Most Metal Of Space Rocks, but not Worth $10,000,000,000,000,000,000 [youtube.com]
Gizmodo couldn't help but put a terrible headline on minor 16 Psyche news.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 04 2020, @12:16PM
Not for much longer. With China blocking coal imports the whole trade agreement may go out the window. Which has an up side. The agreement allowed Chinese buyers to purchase property in Australia. Why not just give the country away?
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7725675/How-China-owns-Australia-buying-infrastructure-land-water.html [dailymail.co.uk]
(Score: 3, Interesting) by RS3 on Monday November 02 2020, @04:30PM (20 children)
I'm with you in spirit, but I also observe what these things devolve into (...Ari and several others ...) and you're far above that dung pit.
(Actually Ari's brilliant too, he's just a bit too willing to "get into it" with the editors / admins here. His complaints are often legit in a much bigger environment, but here it's a few really good people pouring their hearts, souls, and precious and irreplaceable time into this thing we mostly love.)
And just to clarify- my lack of submissions is absolutely not passive-aggressive- my time is critical lately and I just don't want to waste my time nor the editors until someday that I "get" the concept of what's acceptable and what isn't.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by c0lo on Monday November 02 2020, @05:06PM (19 children)
I just had a chat on the IRC on the topic. Essentially, what is acceptable and what isn't is at "the feeling of guts" of the editors and vary with their available time (e.g. a submission that I made weeks ago was excavated from unknown depths were it was lost).
It may also vary with the editors "mood" - e.g. martyb admits that too many stories about Covid wear him down (I saw the same reaction on an company-internal chat, where a lot of us moved to another channel to protect those finding the Covid reality too depressing for them, so I can't blame martyb)
For your (and everyone else's) convenience, here's what I got (typos included, other topics snipped. If you want it in full, see the IRC log [sylnt.us])
A bit more on the topic, a possible solution
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by RS3 on Monday November 02 2020, @06:19PM (1 child)
Thank you so much for that. I've barely ever logged in to irc. Very long time Internet user, and fast typist, but never quite "got" the point of irc and other similar "chats". Tried a few social media / dating site chatrooms years ago and found it very chaotic (for me). In person I can interact with many people at once, but for some reason not in irc... Anyway, I know I'm missing out on an important part of SN, but it just doesn't work well for me. Summer's coming for you- enjoy it! Winter cold wind for me today... ugh... gotta move south... Thanks again and cheers!
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Monday November 02 2020, @06:30PM
No worries, mate.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 5, Insightful) by janrinok on Monday November 02 2020, @07:50PM
This is just my personal view. I am not speaking on behalf of any other editor.
We often point out that everybody here is a volunteer and nobody has ever taken a single cent for their efforts. The site was created to publish STEM topics because that is what we wanted to publish. The topic list for the site was extended, about 16 months after go-live, to include Politics, but only where there was a direct and clear political relationship with STEM. It was not included to encourage general discussion of politics nor to have insults and abuse thrown from one faction at another. When we asked for volunteers to edit the political topic we got the usual response - silence!. Everybody wanted to discuss it but nobody in the community wanted to volunteer to do the work to put those stories on the front page. The overwhelming majority of off-topic political input revolves around US politics. I'm a Brit living in France. I am not interested in US politics. The last few months have only served to reinforce that view. I come here to escape from politics.
I will gladly process any number of STEM stories (within the now limited time resources available to me) but I am not volunteering to edit stories that I know nothing about and, more importantly, in which I have not the slightest interest. Yes, we all serve the community but we are not paid servants. I will gladly give my time for something that I want to do [I have processed over 5000 stories for the front page] but if you want me to edit stories that are outside the topics in which I am interested well, I can either quote you my daily rate or you can wait until I change my interests. Or you can volunteer to help out.
We do vary the subject matter to cover the topics that are in the list (hardware, software, techonomics, ask soylent, business etc), and we often stretch the definition of STEM to include borderline cases, but if you want this site to cover an even broader spectrum then somebody will have to step up to the plate and assume responsibility for it. However, that doesn't mean that you will have free rein - there are strict rules on how we process stories, what we can accept as a reasonable sources, and the requirement for more than 1 editor to release a story. This is not something that we have made up on the spur of the moment. There are written documents which have been approved by the SN board regarding how we do our job to prevent us falling foul of any legal issues or the site going the same way as many others and restricting who can say what, or insisting on community members having an identity which can be validated. Every editor is trained in, and is expected to follow, the rules.
We realise that some in our community DO want to discuss politics and you have the means to do so. It is called your journal and we take no legal responsibility for the views that you express there. Personally, I can see no reason to change this situation.
We are all proud of what we have created and while we know it could be better, there are insufficient resources to implement those changes for at least the near future.
(Score: 1, Troll) by janrinok on Tuesday November 03 2020, @09:17AM (8 children)
You seem to imply that this submission moderation has not been discussed before - it has on at least 2 occasions and possibly more often than that.
In my view that is the potential flaw in the system - you are building in the mechanism that will enable some in the community to control the voices of others; submission moderation allows the community to suppress certain topics or to target specific submitters. I can easily imagine those with a particular political leaning wanting to avoid, say, discussions on environmentally friendly and sustainable energy generation, or others who might want to curtail the actions of the military industrial complex - despite it providing a huge number of jobs. Would you anticipate the editors having to process the submissions with the highest approval rating without any other consideration? What about those that do not comply with the site's agreed (and approved) interests?
Submission moderation also encourages topic spread i.e. submissions that are not on-topic but are of interest to some could be sock-puppeted to high levels to give the appearance that they are of more general interest. I can only imagine how the off-topic politics stories (Alt-Right, Antifa, rioting etc) will fare in such an environment. There is nothing wrong with discussing politics where it impinges on our core topics but if the desire is to discuss politics more generally then why not create a new site - SoylentPolitics for example? The software is freely available from our github repo and the manpower can be sought from those who want such a site without adversely affecting what we already have. I have offered numerous times to help train those needing it to manage the basic and antiquated software to process submission material through the the front page.
We have small but significant groups within our community who have areas of particular interest. These include robotics, hardware, education, scientific research, etc. We do publish stories from time-to-time that are of interests to these groups. But if submission selection is based simply on a score system are you proposing that we should ignore such interest groups? How should we best serve those groups? Furthermore, some submissions, for example regarding TV programs, or details of computer conferences, are only available in a very limited area and are entirely unknown elsewhere. How would you suggest that the voting is managed so that no part of our current community is disadvantaged. Our submission guidelines clearly state our aim is to be of interest to a world-wide, English language speaking, community.
We do what we do for the love of the site and the topics that we get to read. I believe that the editors of other discussion sites (slashdot, reddit, etc) are paid - they probably don't care what topics they are pushing out because they are recompensed for their efforts regardless. To provide that level of control over the site then we will need far more editors with a much more diverse spread of both expertise and interests than we currently have.
We need to find solutions to these, and other, problems before we rush off to change the software and change the entire way that we operate. It is an endeavour worth attempting, but I am not optimistic that we will see that level of support and/or necessary effort on the part of the community. How many will step up to help those developing and testing the software, or to help manage the submission-to-publication process?
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Tuesday November 03 2020, @12:52PM (5 children)
On the contrary, I said that each time I raised it, you shut it down or postponed it to the next 100th blue moon.
And that I still think it is a good solution:
- to involve soylenters in the decision "what we'll be discussing about/commenting on" *and*
- for addressing the shortage of editorial time to vet the submissions.
1. excesses don't happen with comment modding, do they? Why can't the soylenters be trusted beyond that? Are we some idiot children that need to be helicopter-grandfathered?
2. there's is no need to be an XOR between soylenters voting on submission and editors pushing stories independently of the sub-mod rating. Take the score into consideration and, occasionally, discard it if you think "that's fishy", but collect and take the score into consideration first.
You call it "drift", I call it "diversity". Why is that a bad thing™?
Do you have concrete cases or only fears?
Why do you think the soylentnews community needs the careful herd-management of the editors, or else.... What disaster would happen otherwise?
Further, may I repeat the note of "why do you think it's XOR between user submission modding and editorial control"? I think they can coexist.
Can you quote the place where I said or proposed "selection is based simply on a score system"?
Let me say it again: why does it need to be XOR between one and the other?
There, I have said it thrice: What I tell you three times is true [wikiquote.org]
How do you know your editorial views matches the interest of a world-wide, English speaking community?
I can't remember to ever been at least a poll to ask the community what their interest is?
Was it? If it was, can you please link it?
Even more, wouldn't it be better to repeat it after some years? 'Cause, you know, the last UID increases and even older UID-es shift their interests over time.
This sounds like my proposal for "users can vote on submissions" is done for some nefarious purposes in my hidden agenda.
I'm sure you don't intend to say so or even imply it, but it does carry this as sorta an undercurrent.
How about creating a Poll on
----
Finally:
Then, fucken, engage the soylenters in finding solutions without imposing "This is how we're doing it and will do it forever and ever" restriction. We tried that one for zillions of years already, what makes you think doing it the same is gonna lead to different outcomes?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by janrinok on Tuesday November 03 2020, @04:13PM (4 children)
You started the conversation! Ask Soylent! I'm replying to you and the comment that you wrote [soylentnews.org].
You have got to be joking aren't you?. We spend time watching for mod-bombs, moderation abuse etc. People get banned for a short period when it occurs. I cannot believe that you have never seen their comments. Some of our users post something outrageous as an AC and then log on with their username to moderate it up. I'd call that an excess with regards to comment modding, wouldn't you?.
Because we haven't got the manpower or expertise to edit stories on every conceivable topic - even if I wanted to get involved with such things. We haven't even got enough manpower to manage the current topic list. That is the reason that martyb raised the issue of more volunteers in his original piece. More topics means we need more people knowledgable about, and interested in, those topics - so we will ask for more volunteers. The alternative is that we keep the topics as they are now because the editors we have ARE knowledgable and interested in those topics - and they are in the main the same topics that we created this site to cover. Yet we still need more volunteers. You may have also noticed that we also rarely cover baking recipes, car repairs, portrait painting and dog shows. We are not interested in those topics either. Some people are - and they are free to create a site to meet their needs. They can have our software for free, too!
The community doesn't need any management - they can publish whatever they want now. You have heard of journals. I know, because you use yours. However, somebody has to manage the publication of stories from submission to the front page.
No I cannot, because you have not stated what it is you want. You haven't even said which problem it will solve. So until you come up with a system for an unidentified problem that will work why don't you explain what your vision is for the solution? If the story moderation need not be followed by the editors what do we achieve? If the community has the ability to delete submissions that they think are worthless, what is to prevent them for silencing those who want to express an opinion with which they disagree? If they haven't got that power what will be different when I look at the submissions queue? How will we know when the community has reached its final opinion on the worth of a submission? What is the final aim for the significant changes to software, testing and the current processing that you are seeking? What perceived problem will it solve? We editors will still have to read every submission - to check for duplicates going back 6 years or to provide links to earlier reporting! You might not want to do that but we have to, in an admittedly crude fashion. We still have to check every link. We still have to delete those promoting a political platform, pornography or whatever else to ensure that they comply with our rules. We still have to schedule stories so that we vary the output in terms of both topic and submitters. Each story still has to be viewed by ALL of the currently active editors because although it might not interest one editor, it might be something that another will relish working with. We still have to send rejection explanations to those who make submissions using a recorded username. There are numerous tasks that we must do for each story - which of them will your system 'fix'?
Because we base our output on submissions made by the community. They are very closely involved.
I don't think that at all - I am grateful for this discussion and any that result from it. But, as yet, I don't know how your proposal is intended to make the editors' task any easier. I can, however, see how it might make things more difficult and allow undue influence on what people might consider submitting if they are faced with a yet another hurdle that has to be overcome before a submission is even considered for the front page. We are not short of submissions - we are short of editors who are able and willing to do the work. Better submissions - especially those that meet the Submission Guidelines - would be more than welcome and would ease our task, but we need to recruit more people to all aspects of the team (sysops, dev, QA and editors) before the current incumbents are no longer around to train the new volunteers.
Polls here are designed to be light-hearted and many do not even look at them. I know that several SN board members have pretty strong views on this issue and will want to have their say on any proposed changes. You need to have a good sound proposal that solves a current problem if you want this to go anywhere but unless you raise it it will not even be discussed at the appropriate levels to get the changes implemented.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Tuesday November 03 2020, @04:29PM (1 child)
You wanted some definition of a problem. Here's one [soylentnews.org].
You can deal on your own or you can involve S/N community. Your choice.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 3, Insightful) by janrinok on Tuesday November 03 2020, @06:47PM
The effort is in processing the submission into something suitable for publishing. The submission you linked to does NOT comply with the Submission Guidelines: it is biased and links to material that is very much political electioneering. It is very unlikely to reach the front page - but Runaway knows that. He gets his influence by people who read the submissions rather than waiting to see what appears on the site. Aristarchus frequently does the same. The submission queue does NOT represent the views of this site or anyone involved in the editing process. A submission might represent the views of the submitter - but even that cannot be assumed to be the case.
You cannot see all the information on the submission page that we can see but each editor gets a chance to view the submission to see if he/she can rewrite to comply with our requirements. We do not leave it to a single editor - that would introduce bias. Some have already made their decision. We all have our say. But I doubt anybody has got time to waste on this submission when we are fighting to keep the flow of stories going.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Tuesday November 03 2020, @04:40PM (1 child)
From the entire conversation so far all I got is "your idea is not an idea, we'll be doing what we've done until now (blood spiting included). For lotsa reasons".
How about, for a change, you share with us some ideas somehow different from "as we were until now"?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by janrinok on Tuesday November 03 2020, @06:53PM
I've told you to raise it as an 'Ask Soylent'. You do not represent the community.
How about you stop grandstanding and volunteer to help?
Finally - you haven't told us what your idea is, how it will help solve the manpower problem, and why you think it is better than what we have now. You appear not to be reading our replies to your earlier comments. [soylentnews.org] Over to you.....
(Score: -1, Troll) by aristarchus on Tuesday November 03 2020, @07:39PM (1 child)
Yes, it would be very dangerous if the average Soylentil could do that, rather then the editors who do it now. Just saying.
(Score: 2) by janrinok on Friday November 06 2020, @09:06AM
Oh good - because it is the editor's job to select stories from the submission queue that follow the submissions guidelines and are suitable for publication, that do not contain bias (like most of your do), that are neutral (which very few of yours are), and then to rewrite them where necessary to meet the layout rules of this site.
Follow the guidelines and even your stories get selected, or hadn't you noticed that?
(Score: 2) by martyb on Tuesday November 03 2020, @03:30PM (6 children)
I would appreciate, in the future, quoting things in context. Prior to what was quoted above, and having already engaged in good faith, I clearly stated [sylnt.us]:
All times are UTC. Also, please note I was replying to an earlier comment by cosurgi [sylnt.us], to which c0lo replied. I would suggest picking up the conversaton from there.
I was really pressed for time, and yet I delayed my leaving to genuinely engage. As the discussion continued, I realized it was taking much longer than I anticipated. Now, I was getting extremely pressed for time.
What was left out in my haste is there are editor guidelines that underlay all our decisions. These were written in the early days of SoylentNews (and need some updating), but all editors agree to subscribe to the principles and we do keep each other in check. On occasion, I've had stories reviewed (2nd edit by another editor — something we try to do on every story going to the main page): errors in quotations, questionable sources, and a number of other things. Yes, I've even had some stories that, upon review, were questioned if they should be run. Any editor has a "veto" right. Sure, they have to explain their reasoning, but I have never seen any acrimony -- we are all trying to do our best for the community.
Also, when submitting a story [soylentnews.org], there is a clear link to Submissions Guidelines [soylentnews.org].
NB: When looking at the story submission queue, the very first thing I look for are NON-bot submissions.
The closer a story seems to be "Release Ready", the better its chances. Though, as pointed out in the sub guidelines, "Be neutral and factual in both Subject and Summary." IOW no pushing of personal agendas.
I'll leave it at that for now. I need to head out to vote and then have an appointment to attend.
Wit is intellect, dancing.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Tuesday November 03 2020, @04:44PM (5 children)
I don't get it, what critical context I let out?
In my mind, I tried to show what problem I thought I see and something that seemed to me a possible solution.
No blame or finger pointing or something on that line.
So how the "Bytram was late" extra bit would have changed or rounded the meaning?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by martyb on Sunday November 08 2020, @03:56PM (4 children)
Thank you for the reply. I wish no blame or finger pointing, either. Just please imagine you were late for something and someone asked you a seemingly simple question. And then another. And then another. How complete would your responses be? Increasingly short and specific -- with less background and supporting information -- right? That was the case for me. and I explained that already. I appreciate your longstanding interest in the site.
Separately, there is a long-standing list of change requests pending until TMB has more spare time. Those need coding and testing. Having a means to "vote" on story submissions *sounds* good. It was actually part of the code we inherited from Slashdot. Please remember, SoylentNews' launch was a herculean effort on the part of many different people. Just getting the site up and running for more that a few hours was a major accomplishment. Would you like to know how that happened? NCommander (NC) went in and removed huge chunks of code that were broken and that were not necessary to get a basic, functioning discussion site up and running. I was following along in chat as NC alternative cursed and at hacked away huge chunks of code. (Not terribly cleanly, either. Just enough to get past the current crashing bug.) The biggest mess was the Firehose which provided a means of "voting" on story submissions.
Just like there are more people who read stories than comment, more who comment than moderate, and more who moderate than submit stories... there still far fewer who would "moderate" the stories. I witnessed that in action on Slashdot. The Firehose became a means to foster groupthink, one level abstracted from the comment discussion. Rather than push an agenda in the comments, some people attempted to drive site content (and their agenda) by up/down voting along their personal interests.
So, most of the old code is missing from our current code base. The code that still remains is terribly out-of-date -- and would NOT work with the subsequent changes made to get the site to run. We lack the staff and free time to implement it. There are high-priority changes that are pending development. Code changes need to be tested before rollout. (Do you remember when TMB and PJ rolled out faster comment processing so that loading a story would take less time to render and present the comments? I was only about half-way through my testing when I came home from work and discovered it had been rolled out and went live. What followed was an intense month of bug discovery and fixing just to get things stable again.)
All of the code that supports this site is open source on GitHub [github.com]. Feel free to take a look, code up the changes and tests, and submit them. I'll caution in advance that there is a whole lot more to this site than what is made visible to the community. I am *still* finding capabilities and tuning parameters (there are about 700 site vars that can be adjusted, just for starters.)
In short, the code does not write itself. It would need extensive testing. There's much more than appears at first glance. If implemented, it would enable people to push personal agendas.
Wit is intellect, dancing.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Sunday November 08 2020, @05:36PM (3 children)
Yes, mate, I got it. But my comment didn't fault or cast a blame on you for it, even more the problem that I thought I was seeing didn't hinge you your shorter-by-the-time answers.
Got it, thanks. My beef with janrinok position is not that the voting on submissions it's gonna take long time to implement, but that he presents it as a bad idea™ (or at least discards its value).
This we won't know how it works in S/N conditions until we try. I mean, look, unlike the green site, soylenters get double the mod points, irrespective of their karma. Works well enough in S/N case.
Aren't we throwing the baby with the bathwater? It's not like this is an immutable law of nature, every time one implement submission modding it will end in being so abused it becomes toxic.
Note how I'm avoiding "Firehose" and use "subs modding"? That's because I don't want Slashdot firehose, I want a functionality by which the soylents can provide feedback on their interest in the most natural way possible. What the system will do with that feedback is up for discussions - I image we're mature enough to find ways we can use it without mutilating the S/N.
Agreed.
Disagree, it will do whatever we decide it will do within the bounds of acceptable risks.
But shutting down the discussion about what/how would we like to behave is a guarantee it's not gonna be implemented ever, even if solutions for writing and testing that code are eventually found sooner or later. E.g. suppose that I'd put some money to hire someone to implement the extensions from scratch - what am I to give to they guys as functional specification?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by martyb on Friday November 13 2020, @01:44AM (2 children)
Thank-you for your thoughtful reply. I appreciate the *dialog* and the time you took in considering and writing your reply. My delay in response is due to my giving it commensurate consideration.
I think we are in general agreement except that you seem to have higher hopes for a successful implementation than I do. Different perspectives, different conclusions, maybe?
One thing I would like to mention is that adding anything to the system necessarily affects it. In this you are at a disadvantage -- having not seen the pages and pages of screens, knobs, variables, and code that are exposed through the admin UI... and some of which is non-working (see outstanding bugs mentioned earlier). Which leads to the challenge in writing a functional specification. :/
Which leaves us at a bit of an impasse. If you are sincere about this, I can bring up giving you some limited permissions on the system. That will give some visibility into what is under the covers. Are you interested?
NOTE: At the least, to have an idea of what is involved, that would be receiving editor-level privileges and becoming a member of staff. I am obliged to mention that any untoward behavior is grounds for immediate and complete revocation of any any all permissions on SoylentNews. With [great] power comes [great] responsibility. We're talking about the legacy of everyone who has come before and given freely of their time, knowledge, and energy to build this site. I say that with no anticipation of any harmful thoughts or actions -- only to make it abundantly clear where things stand -- all staff are held to the same high standards and expectations.
I can make no promises at this point, but if you are interested in pursuing this further, I am willing to work with you.
In preparation, here are some (likely dated) docs that you might want to take a look at:
Thank-you for your interest in improving the site. How would you like to proceed?
Wit is intellect, dancing.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Friday November 13 2020, @02:01AM (1 child)
I am interesed, but it doesn't help much due to my commitments. Have the parents with me and trying to get them a more permanent visa and I'm still about 7 years to end the mortgage.
Howevs, I'm quite serious about contributing with some money against having someone looking into it - can't support a full time pay, it wouldn't be capped to tens of $ either.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by martyb on Tuesday November 17 2020, @09:03PM
Please accept my best wishes to you on the home situation!
I've not forgotten about this -- am still mulling over how best to proceed.
As for funding, I very much appreciate the gesture.
Wit is intellect, dancing.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Runaway1956 on Monday November 02 2020, @05:21PM (7 children)
Don't bother, don't try. On it's face, SN is about nerdy stuff that nerds think is cool, or even passingly interesting. If/when you scavenge something from the interwebz that you thought was interesting - drop it into the queue. Never apologize, never explain.
I dropped one recently in which the US govt seems to claim that UFOs are interdimensional beings. Sounds stupid to me - but - hey, I offered it on the off chance that someone would like to discuss how stupid it is.
It either gets published, or it doesn't - I have nothing invested in what amounts to a story on the paranormal.
You don't have to conform to any person's idea of a culture. ;^)
(Score: 4, Insightful) by RS3 on Monday November 02 2020, @06:15PM (4 children)
Thanks for the wisdom. Well, maybe it's a flaw, maybe's it's just me, but I try to adapt, somewhat, to my surroundings. When in Rome, ... That said, I do have my limits.
And, I wasn't referring to the editors, submissions, etc., as much as the general culture of the various and sundry members. ACs seem to average out, and are mostly interesting. No time nor desire to dredge it up, and I've learned a lot since then, but some months ago I likened SN to a "biker bar" at times- the personal attacks, horrific language, etc. Sadly often from intelligent people who I find interesting, insightful, and informative. You get attacked a ton, and yet you hold your ground, so I want you to know you're a huge inspiration to me. So I haven't "left in a huff" as many have, and frankly no huffs here- just some disappointment in that I'd love to participate in spirited but mostly polite interaction - that we so often have here. :) So I take the mostly good with a few bads, stay out of the political discussions, and again, I'm learning, and thank you for being an inspiration.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Reziac on Tuesday November 03 2020, @02:52AM (3 children)
After a while you learn who has to include invective in everything they say, and ignore it like you would the BS in a biker bar. This might be one of the last places where we can be thoroughly at odds, yet afterward go share a beer. Got a few holding grudges, but it's not our norm.
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by RS3 on Tuesday November 03 2020, @04:45AM (2 children)
Oh yes, I learned quickly. It's the flying beer mug that's kinda hard to ignore. There are a few occasional surprise attacks from people who are otherwise generally civil. If I cared much I'd keep a list or mark them as "enemy" but I'm just not that invested, and it seems unnecessary in what has the potential to be a pretty interesting place, could even be "think tank". What I struggle with is my own false correlation that intelligent people don't stoop to invective / ad hominem. But, I also know that strong verbal ability is not everything. You get an unfair share of attacks, and you've directly and indirectly encouraged and inspired me. I often don't say what I'd like to say, but truth is I'm pretty open-minded about controversial topics. I figure if people have such strong opinions, there's got to be some validity, at least in their world / environment. It's all about learning. And, maybe this place is therapeutic for some people. But, maybe it incites others. I dunno... too many real-world issues for me to deal with these days.
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 03 2020, @05:27AM (1 child)
> What I struggle with is my own false correlation that intelligent people don't stoop to invective / ad hominem.
Nice cheapshot asshole.
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Wednesday November 04 2020, @12:23AM
Case in point.
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 2) by deimtee on Tuesday November 03 2020, @02:21AM (1 child)
That sounds more interesting than an political rant sub, but I don't see it in the submissions list. Got a link?
If you cough while drinking cheap red wine it really cleans out your sinuses.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Tuesday November 03 2020, @04:06AM
https://soylentnews.org/submit.pl?op=viewsub&subid=45107¬e=&title=Human-like+aliens+may+have+come+from+another+dimension [soylentnews.org]
It's still there - but there are a LOT of subs in the queue right now. ;^)
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Tuesday November 03 2020, @05:16AM
You can share 'rejects' on your Journal. Which might get anything from seen by no one to pages and pages of comments. But you can reasonably link it in a regular comment if something related comes up. (Far as I can tell journal comments never close.) And Fans will see it, if they have that notification turned on.
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.