I will put this to you, the community, in a very straight, simple (hopefully understandable) way.
The editorial staff is a small, hardworking group. There are currently about 5 of us that are actively pushing stories out on a regular basis, and we need help.
We humbly come to you, the community, to solicit for a volunteer or two. We will provide all the necessary training, at a cost of just 3 easy payments of $999.99US, or entirely free if you apply before 1 Apr 2099.
For that pittance, you can expect to learn:
In all seriousness, we all are busy and have lives. So do you, and we get that, but for this community to continue to thrive, we need a little fresh blood on the editorial staff. Some of us have been at this since the site went live almost 3 years ago (janrinok and martyb have posted over 3000 articles EACH). To put it in perspective, the site has only run about 14,500. Some of us came on almost a year later, but like any organization, there has been attrition, and we need to replenish.
We are starting to see some of the tell-tale signs of burnout, and to avoid that, we need your help.
If you are interested, please feel free to reach out in the comments below, via email ([nick] at soylentnews dot org), or hit us on IRC. If we aren't there (we all LOOK like we are logged in all the time due to the bouncer, but we may not actually be there), /join #editorial and leave a message — we will get back to you.
Remember, it isn't all doom and gloom! Working on staff, you will be on a team with a fantastic group of REALLY smart (myself excluded) people. I can honestly say I have made some really good friends from this experience, and I've even gotten to meet one of the guys in meat space. It is something that I am truly glad I took advantage of when the opportunity came around.
Thanks for listening, and with a little luck, we will see one or two of you pretty soon.
Live Long and Prosper,
-cmn32480
[TMB Note: Seriously. You really don't want me having to pick stories.]
[Update: see this comment below if you've expressed interest in volunteering.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by The Mighty Buzzard on Monday November 14 2016, @09:51PM
Let me answer that by bringing up the dev team. Slashdot, under shiny new management, has been promising unicode support for the better part of a year now. I coded it up for this site (having never looked at slashcode before) in around three weeks worth of spare time. And I'm fairly sure both NCommander and paulej72 are better than me at perl. And let's not forget martyb who could tear up an anvil given five minutes of playing with it. That's a quality you really want in a QA guy, though it is annoying when you think you're done with something and he shows you you're not.
There's also the editorial team. Click on the original submission link next time you see a story from MrPlow or exec. These guys do a lot of work that I'm very glad is not on my plate. Stories about every 90 minutes five days a week, every two hours on weekends, all year long. They don't let the site sit without a story even if they have to go out and find one when there's nothing in the submission queue and it's a holiday weekend with no significant news.
Not to neglect the admin team or anyone else. They know what they do, they do it well, and the rest of us are all very glad it's not our problem.
I dunno what kind of folks they got working for them over at Slashdot but I know we got one seriously badass team for the job here.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 15 2016, @03:53AM
What is even more sad is you fixed *THEIR* code. They could take notes and fix what is left. People have been telling them in the comments for the past year it is fixed. They have no interest in fixing it. That much is clear.
Their site does *not* work well if you turn javascript off. 99.99% of the time I try to comment it pretty much lets me do 1 maybe 2 comments a day as AC. Where as here I can comment pretty much as much as I need on a post as AC so long as I do not do it too fast.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Tuesday November 15 2016, @11:53AM
I did offer to help them. It would take me all of a morning to get their shat unicode-friendly after putting so much time in on ours. Even with the divergent code bases. They weren't interested.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 15 2016, @02:26PM
If you use TBB you can just copy your comment/title, go back to the comments.pl page with all the get fields tacked on it (the later ones with no option are 'post' form/cgi submissions and don't properly reset) and do new circuit, and usually get a 'fresh' ip to post more stories from. Soylentnews doesn't have that problem, however if you connect to the clearnet site over tor there is an issue with your comment audorization token not matching up with the ip address if your circuits change between clicking reply, and when your comment is finished and you hit submit. Slashdot has the same shortcoming (likely intentional anti-spam feature, but it obviously doesn't provide that benefit if switching circuits and hopping through three pages allows you to submit anyways.)