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Well, it's been a bit of time since the last time I posted, and well, I had to think a fair bit on the comments I received. It's become very clear that while I'm still willing to at least help in technical matters, the effort to reforge SN is much higher than I expected. In addition, given the, shall we say, lukewarm response I got to my posts and journal entries, well, I'm clearly not the right person for the job.
I think at this point, it's time to figure out who is going to lead SN going forward. After my de facto stepping down in 2020, the site has, for want of a better word, been a bit listless. At the moment, no one on staff really has the cycles to take that position on. A few people have expressed interest in the position, and I've talked with Matt, who is co-owner of the site about this. By and large, whoever fills the seat will have to figure out what, if anything, needs to change in regards to moderation policy, content, and more.
If you're interested in potentially fulfilling the role, drop me an email at michael -at- casadevall.pro, with the subject of "SN Project Leader", and include the following:
- Who you are
- What you want to do with the site
- How you intend to do it
- Why do you want to get involved
I'll leave this call for candidates open until December 14th, at which point Matt and I will go through, and figure out our short list, I'll talk to editors, and solicit more comments from the community. I'm hoping to announce a successor in early January, and formalize the transition sometime in February, which will be the site's 9th anniversary.
(Score: 3, Informative) by JoeMerchant on Monday December 05 2022, @03:21PM (2 children)
> "self-appointed moderator" who was a bit of a jerk, but easily ignored.
Don't underestimate the ability of a jerk-leader to severely degrade the quality of the community. He has the power to ban users, remove posts, decide what gets stickied, etc.
> There are adverts (that deceptively start with the appearance of a post) stuck in after every 2 or 3 posts.
I really only see those on /r/all and other very high volume subreddits, and while they do look deceptively like a post, they are also pretty easy to mentally filter - most of them have much better thought out and lengthy subject lines than the average post. Price of free hosting, IMO.
> The screen is cluttered with bright colored (and useless) things
The subreddit CSS is under the control of the moderators. It is all too easy to customize it as you describe, so that happens a lot (the MySpace effect, essentially.) It can also stay relatively plain.
> there are popups
Maybe it's the age of my account there, I have never - ever - seen a popup on reddit, anywhere. Or, maybe I have popup blocking turned on in Chrome and it just works 100% there. Either way... And, I do get popups on that same instance of Chrome where they are necessary for my work sites to function. Whatever it is, I haven't touched popup blocking configuration in years...
> the chance of any post being seen after a couple of days is almost nil
The subreddit I have been running for about 10 years now is, admittedly, lower volume than SoylentNews, but... my subreddit's front page has the 25 "top" submissions which span the past 9 days at the moment. Even in the default "hot" sorting, the posts are mostly in chronological order - they range around 10 to 150 upvotes, typically. When I want to find something in /r/Gnome or similar, I'll use Google search, it works pretty well to find specific content.
> no continuing discussion ever happens.
It is rare, I have followed up on reddit posts I found through Google that were 2-3 years old and the posters were shocked to hear from me. So, while it's possible, the "community" at large doesn't generally do it. If that's the kind of thing you want to do, I'll say that it's at least possible in reddit, whereas it's literally impossible in facebook.
> SN VT100 mode (green text on black) forever!! (yes, I have contributed to SN over the years).
I _think_ that's something we might lose on reddit: the ability to customize the CSS on a per-user basis. My Soylent CSS is set to blue, I get quite the shock when it comes up brown. Tried GREEN on black for a while, but it just didn't feel good to me. Maybe a CSS & cookies guru could work out a way for the users to select from a set of CSS styles...
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Tuesday December 06 2022, @06:40PM (1 child)
I use a Stylish/Stylus prefab called "Soylent News Night Mode Red" -- makes this place absolutely gorgeous.
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday December 06 2022, @08:26PM
Blue theme looks a lot like outlook mail...
🌻🌻 [google.com]