SoylentNews

Site News:

We had a few hiccups and a burp or two, but the site has held up pretty well over the past year, all-in-all.

We had a site issue last June where the Most Recent Journal Entries Slashbox disappeared for a while. The Mighty Buzzard (aka TMB, Buzz), investigated, verified the DB was okay, restarted mysqld, bounced Apache/Varnish, and got that running again. Thanks again, Buzz!

We've also had a few (thankfully short) site outages and some issues. One of which, of course, coincided with TMB being on a week's vacation. I investigated, but it was well beyond my ken. TMB made a valiant effort, but being far from home and trying to remotely diagnose/fix problems with a borrowed Windows laptop with a chicklet keyboard was just too much. He got things stable until he could return. At that point, things were fixed up right-quick. Thanks bunches!!

Work continues, in fits and starts, to get our new Gentoo server aluminum up and running. It is slated to take over for our single CentOS server: beryllium. Thanks to TMB and juggs as well as mechanicjay and audioguy for all you do!

Staff Activity:

As noted in last year's anniversary post, TMB had been remodeling a church into a home. "(end of April is what we're currently shooting for as a best case scenario)". Looks like his estimate was pretty close, but just had the wrong year. 😁 As soon as that remodeling is done and he's moved in, we are hoping to start working on some site updates.

That said, there are some non-Perl updates that were made through the template system. We pushed out just such a change last March. When loading a story which contains a wall-of-text, one can now just click "[Skip to comment(s)]" in the story's title bar and save a bunch of scrolling. (Updated the in-memory copy of template: "dispStory;misc;default".)

requerdanos joined the editorial staff last December. We were hoping for maybe a couple stories per week, but in short order he has already posted 106 stories! Thanks so much!

Thanks, too, go to Fnord666 who has been a solid and consistent contributor to the site. He's posted 6,234 stories of which 1,816 have been in the past year — 4.975 stories a day, every day. (No, I have no idea what 0.025 stories looks like!) He has often posted half of the day's stories, and some days has posted every single story. I couldn't have asked for a better Alternate Editor-in-Chief!

Then there's chromas who has posted 158 stories over the past year. (lifetime total: 1,237 stories). He often "seconds" stories (provides a review of the initial editor's efforts) and thereby helps keep our "foe paws" from making it out for everyone else to see and laugh at. But wait, there's more! He also maintains his systemd 'bot' on IRC. It submits stories, resolves links, and looks up things on Google, Wikipedia, and YouTube. It even extracts and generates citations for journal references! I shudder to think of how much harder it would be to post stories without the assistance. Thanks so much!

Our emeritus EiC (Editor-in-Chief) janrinok has had limited spare time while providing primary supportive care for his spouse. Nevertheless, he pushed out 193 stories in the past year (lifetime total: 5,237 stories). Furthermore, he maintains Arthur T. Knackerbracket which extracts and submit stories. Thanks JR! I especially treasure your gentle and able guidance as I try to follow in your footsteps!

Though less frequently, we continue to get regular contributions from mrpg, CoolHand, and FatPhil. Every bit helps and is MUCH appreciated!

Then there's takyon who continues to occasionally post stories (23 over the past year, lifetime total: 1,365). More amazingly, he is a prodigious submitter of stories, too. They are almost always well-researched and well-formatted, with supporting links from other sites beyond the primary source. I suspect he may have been an understudy on Dragnet "Just the facts, ma'am." Whenever I see one of his stories in the submissions queue, I know it will be a simple one to push out into the story queue. In the past year he has had 378 of his story submissions accepted! Thanks takyon!

Hopefully I didn't overlook someone, but before I close here, I should mention that TMB posted 10 stories over the past year... in addition to his efforts to keep the site up and running. Thanks Buzz!

Folding@Home:

You might not be aware, but SoylentNews has a Folding@Home team that contributes spare CPU cycles to a distributed computing project. The effort seeks to determine how different proteins fold and, thereby, be better able to come up with cures. Besides Parkinson's disease and Huntington's disease, the past year's efforts have had a huge emphasis on the CARS-CoV-2 virus which causes COVID 19. Huge multinationals like Amazon, Microsoft, Oracle, IBM, and many others have donated their spare compute power to fighting COVID-19. Yet, even measured against those heavy weights, SoylentNews is still ranked 368th in the WORLD. We have completed 163,441 work units. That has earned us 2,435,739,709 points so far. Yes, 2.4 Billion points!

Original Submission

Even our IRC service was not free from controversy. We had a spate of nick (nickname) impersonations. Going forward, IRC users are free to use whatever nick they like with the following caveats:

• Prefix / suffix of a nick is fine for practical purposes (e.g. ${nick}_laptop)
• Impersonation or misrepresentation will not be tolerated
• The use of another user's website nick or derivative thereof on IRC will be subject to sanctions up to and including perma ban.

Further, we understand conversations can easily ramble from subject to subject, but there are separate channels for different topics. (Use the /list comand to see what is available.) As #soylent is the default landing channel, we want to keep the discussions there civil. Name calling and personal attacks are grounds for a timeout. I have had discussions with deucalion (the site's CEO and also IRC-maintainer) about these activities.

NOTE: we are NOT going to sit there watching every discussion, poised to take action. But, if such activity is seen by staff on IRC, they are free to take such actions as they deem necessary.

Aspirations:

As I approach posting my 10,000th story(!) to SoylentNews, I think back to when it all started. How a group of people got together. They shared freely of their expertise, of their free time, and of their hard-earned funds. They tried to create a place free from corporate overlords where people could engage in discussions that focused primarily on technology, but with a dabbling in other areas and current events.

SoylentNews provides a forum for discussion. It also provides tools so the community can express themselves in the comments and moderate those comments, as well.

This got me to thinking. What are our aspirations today? What are our guiding principles? I will list some of my guiding principles, and I encourage the community to share what guides them in the comments.

• "Explanations exist; they have existed for all time; there is always a well-known solution to every human problem—neat, plausible, and wrong." --H. L. Mencken (cite)
• "People who think they know everything are a great annoyance to those of us who do." -- Isaac Asimov (cite)
• "If you speak when angry, you'll make the best speech you'll ever regret." -- Groucho Marx (cite)
• "Say what you mean, mean what you say, but don't say it mean."
• "Don't get furious, get curious" -- Miley Cyrus (cite)
• "Humiliation is when someone points out my shortcomings. Humility is when I confess them myself."
• "I need not participate in every fight I am invited to."
• The most difficult behaviors to observe in another person are the ones I dislike in my own.
• "You have not converted a man because you have silenced him." -- John, Lord Morley (cite)

How about you? What sayings guide your aspirations?

Thank You!

Lastly, I thank all of you for supporting me as Editor-in-Chief. I have no formal background in writing or management. I've made mistakes, but I've tried to own up to them as they happened. I strive to be fair, impartial, and open-minded. Under the watchful gaze of the community, I have grown. It is my hope that I may continue to earn your respect and continue in service for many years to come.

Original Submission

[UPDATE] (2021-01-01 20:46:45 UTC)

We did it! First, the "bad news": we missed our goal for the second half of the year. We had net subscription income of $2,351.56 (which was 67.2% of our $3,500.00 goal.

But... we did make our entire year goal: we had net subscription income of $7,106.08 (which was 101.5% of our $7,000.00 goal).

NB: All amounts are estimates; we will post a followup with final figures after they become available. That will probably not be until we file our taxes for the year 2020.

THANK-YOU EVERYBODY! We'll leave the year-end numbers up on the "Site News" Slashbox for a few days so that as many as reasonably possible have a chance to see.

--martyb
[/UPDATE]

As I write this, for the year, we have raised $6,890.77 (98.4%) of our $7,000 goal. That is, in large part, due to the excellent response to the fundraiser for the first half. For the second half of the year, we stand at $2,136.25 (61.0%) of our $3,500.00 goal. Thanks everyone who has already subscribed; we wouldn't be where we are without you!

If you haven't already done so, and are in a position to do so, please subscribe if you can. Every bit helps!

Journals:
Theeeyr're baaack! Well it seems that way, at least! I noticed the "Most Recent Journal Entries" Slashbox has returned and that the load on our servers has returned to normal levels. I have received no official word, but from what I can see, we are back in business. Yay!

Teamwork++:
Lastly, I am going to take this opportunity to thank the editorial team for keeping the stories coming 24/7/366 (Yeah, 2020 was a leap year). Between politics and the pandemic filling the headlines, it was difficult to find a balanced mix. In a highly polarized environment, it was sometimes difficult to sift the wheat from the chaff. Also, thanks to COVID-19 many events were cancelled and facilities closed or operating under reduced hours. That resulted in even less of the "normal" kinds of news we'd have available to us to choose from.

I am happy to report that requerdanos, who so graciously accepted an invitation to join the editorial team, has already been making a very positive impact. Not just in pushing out stories (though that has been huge), but also in bringing a positive attitude and a keen eye to bear. We are indeed fortunate to have him aboard!

A little history:
I got started as an editor in 2014. It all started when I noticed typos, formatting errors, or word omissions in stories posted to the site. I'd jump on IRC and try to reach out to an editor to get corrections made. After doing this several times, I started suggesting that if I were made an editor, I could make the corrections, myself! Seemed to fall on deaf ears. But I persisted and was eventually made an editor. Little did I suspect: I was in for a shock! There was so much more happening behind the scenes than I had ever imagined. (Can you say Dunning-Kruger?) It was only after I had undergone a few days' training that I was permitted to finally push out my first story.

I did not understand that what gets posted on the main page is the voice of the site. That we needed to watch out for troll submissions (some are plausible but fail under closer scrutiny). Other story submissions came with bold and italics omitted. Others had missing or broken links. There are also matters of defamation and fair use to watch for. That is entirely separate from the logistics of working as part of a team with members on multiple continents and in different time zones!

There is also the matter of following guidelines so that the site has a consistent layout (aka look-and-feel). Then, too, scheduling stories was functional, but unforgiving of errors.

I am grateful the extent of my ignorance was mostly made known only to other (very understanding and patient) staff members. (Yes, I've had my front page flubs, too.)

Join us:
So, with that most glowing of introductions to the work of an editor, I hereby offer an opportunity to anyone who is interested in joining the team. (I feel like I'm writing an ad inviting people to join a team trying to reach the North Pole: random hours, no pay, bring your own asbestos garments!)

Anyone who thinks the job of an editor is quick work or easy is hereby also invited to volunteer.

Here's wishing everyone in the SoylentNews community a safe, prosperous, and Happy New Year!

Original Submission