SoylentNews

Frequently Asked Questions

Site Announcements

If you are having tech issues with the forum software, please Email Joel: soylent (at) finite (dot) ms

It's not certain whether we will be able to rollout on Monday as planned, but it's not out of the question either. Expect a rollout status update, late Monday

The slashcode group has been working very hard to get things up and running. SlashCode is 5 years old, heavily dependent on older revs (Apache, Perl, MySQL), and ran as root

Check out the look and feel of the new site!

---

To everyone involved... THANK YOU!

We are building a news site alternative to Slashdot. We have started only a few days ago, and this wiki is a temporary measure so that volunteers can coordinate and others can see what's happening.

The idea is to build a news aggregation site that delivers what's important - better articles, less fluff, and all the functionality you expect from the moderation system. We are still looking for volunteers so stop by the boards and the IRC and let us know you want to help!

• The proposed business model is here
  
• Some business planning is here
  
• A statement of functionality (turn into a requirements document?)--- FeatureList

Get Involved

Hop in to IRC! - IRC: ##altslashdot on chat.freenode.net (Webchat, we are growing in strength!)

Register on the forums - http://forums.SoylentNews.org

• Go to forums.SoylentNews.org and register a user
• Read this post if you are having problems. (Thanks MrGuy)
• Add yourself to whichever groups you are interested in

Slashcott Organized boycott of the Dice-owned Slashdot pages

• Show your support for the "Get rid of Beta" crowd by avoiding Slashdot during the week of February 10-17

Tell Somebody A friend, a colleague, any major news source....

• Do what you can to get the word out

Contact: If you want to send the project lead a message: John (at) SoylentNews (dot) org

Mumble (Voice / Text Server) : voice.whackperiod.org <--- Does not appear to be working ??

Status

Check out the FAQ

• Forums are available at forums.SoylentNews.org
• We upgraded the hosting by two tiers - this should fix the problems people were having yesterday accessing the system.
• The System team is working on installing SlashCode. If all goes well, we expect to have a working system by Monday. Everyone believes this goal is achievable.
• The site now has forums with four user groups: Code, Content, Style, and System.
• Probably won't be non-profit, see business model.
• We won't poach from Slashdot. This includes articles and logos, also "style" to a reasonable extent.

Mailing list update Messages are here

Site Name

We have a temporary name!

Thanks go out to everyone who made suggestions - some of them were absolutely brilliant! For example, it hadn't occurred to me to choose a name based on a non-English word, or a palindrome, or a puzzle. Many of the entries were quite clever. (Adies, it took me more than a day to figure yours out. Bravo!)

I won't post the runners up because squatters might take the names before we hold the real contest. We'll figure out a way to prevent this somehow - at worst case we can choose judges and do it privately (like I did, but with more people).

Jerry had the winning entry.

The temp name is: SoylentNews with the tagline: SoylentNews is people!

Does this rock? It hits the trifecta of website goodness:

• Descriptive in a way that mundanes will understand (compare "photoshop" with "gimp", "Internet Explorer" with "Firefox", and "MediaPlayer" with "VLC")

• It's part of Nerd culture, a pun, and slightly twisted

• It's suggestive of being community driven

• It is attached to some movie about eating corpses and implies "News fresh as processed corpses" (??)

• Trademark issues

• We are getting some community flak on the name

This will be a hard act to beat. Start thinking up names for the contest, or throw your weight behind this one. The contest will be held soon after we open the doors.

(And it was poutine (from IRC) who suggested we use a temporary name. Others may also have suggested it, but it was his post that I noticed. Be sure to thank him if you see him on IRC.)

ToDo

Slashcode Todo list

• Install SlashCode on the production site
• Get some people to help with the site
• Run a contest for a better name New name discussion
• Incorporate
• Consult a lawyer
• How to handle Advertising (necessary evil) - Opt Out, Limited, Typical(box with ads in the top-right corner)?
• Improved Mod/Meta-Mod/Story-Selection system to minimize required editor input
• Provide a voting system to decide which articles hit the main page (Mod point related?)
• Find and submit some stories

List of Discussion Pages

• NewName
• MailingListUpdates
• Finances -- which model would allow to minimise and/or distribute hosting costs
• Business
• Monetization - Duscussion on how to cover costs to make this thing happen (and grow)
• FeatureList - Discussion of required/desired characteristics
• Submission guidelines
• Content
• Style
• Migration of users from Slashdot (if we build it, they will come)

Milestones

• Grabbed the Domain Names: AltSlashdot.org, Soylentnews.org
• Other potential website solutions

Bruce Parens (created "technocrat.net") is aware of Soylentnews.org and is considering contributing (Relaunch ?? stay tuned)

/. user 'dotancohen' registered the domain "slashdotan" and is looking to build a new Slashdot (He is willing to coordinate and has cloud experience)

Add info on PipeDot...pipedot.org by 'Brian'

User somenickname (1270442) has registered bangslashdot.(org|net|com)

Usenet was also suggested as an alternative 'comp.misc is the new Slashdot'

• Scrapping content from old Slashdot suggestion made. benefits/drawbacks ? Overall I think this is a thumbs down

Content is easier to "find"

Moral/Legal objections were brought up (Even if it was initially "our" content)

We should build our own brand

Pointless to scrap, since it is the comments that draw people in

Editors should be in multiple timezones to cleanup/improve/multi-source submissions for presentation to the main page

• Initial code build will be from Slashcode... Available (Git?), Old:(5 years) Workable:(maybe)
• Alternate choices for code base: Wiki, Discourse, Usenet
• Non-profit vs For-profit discussion should go here ( Business )

Debian style project ?

Community driven projects need strong leadership or they tend to flounder

• Codebase

Code should be in the public domain

Allow the entire website (Stories+Comments+Code)? to be created as a Creative commons work - codebase also available ?

AGPL

• Keep the former Slashdot community together

Comment History

Comments

• Do this as a non-profit, user-run organization please. From what you write it looks like you want replace the regime, not giving the users the control over the website. Why should we trust you not to sell the website to a DICE-like company after it becomes successful? I applaud your efforts to change things, but I really believe that a Debian Project like institution that is both non-commercial and controlled/run by the community has a much higher chance of securing the goals we fight for right now in the long-term. --141.84.69.20 03:20, 6 February 2014 (MST)
• I like the comment on a Debian like project organization, also, maybe we can create a freenode IRC channel to further organize?

• relevant slashdot stats from 2011 [[1]]
  • 5.5 million user visits per month.
  • 7,000 comments are added every day.
  • Over 9 million pages views daily.
  • Over 21 million comments.
  • Average monthly bandwidth usage is around 40-50 mbit/sec (450GB/day)

• From Hacker News on Slasdot: 'When you have the same group of minds selecting the content that gets seen, over the course of years, the users eventually get burnt out seeing the same type of stuff, chosen by the same people over and over again. The content becomes stale even if its fresh <--- A really good point

IRC

General Slashdot Discussion: Come on IRC channel #slashdot at irc.slashnet.org. Or use the web client: http://www.slashnet.org/webclient

AltSlashdot Discussion: Head to IRC channel ##AltSlashdot on irc.freenode.net, Web client is here: https://webchat.freenode.net/

Stories from former Slashdot users

Confessions of an Ex-Slashdot Beta User

Banned from Slashdot

Dice is killing Slashdot

An interesting Idea

Check this out while it's still available. feedback appreciated

• http://slashdot.org/submission/3324011/a-modest-proposal-re-beta-vs-classic?utm_source=rss1.0&utm_medium=feed&sbsrc=firehose

Telling the world about SoylentNews.org

• Please mention SolentNews.org as much as possible.
• It seems like the word is spreading (over 45,000 views in <1 week) Good job everyone!
  • Any idea on how and where to make sure people know about this project, please post them here?

I'd send a note along to Ars Technica & BoingBoing. (That would get some attention)

Anyone have a Reddit account with a reasonable activity level?

The Register, Digg, Hacker News and anything else you feel would help get the word out there

• Contacted:
  • The Register:: No word back
  • Ars Technica:: Was passed along to one of the writers
  • Hacker News

Submission from when AltSlashdot just started

Due for an update once we get an actual site up and running

Similar thread from today Yahwotqa (talk) 10:05, 10 February 2014 (MST)

Licensing?

Apologies for the repost, but this got buried in a talk page and I think we need to start discussing licensing beyond just the term "open-source".

If no one's said it yet, I think we need to move the updated version of Slash to AGPL and get it in a git repo for people to hack on (preferably github). First step in seeing if that's possible is finding out if it's GPLv2+ (i.e. with something like the phrase "or any later version"). Then you go GPLv3 --> AGPL.

Case for the AGPL: It's recommended by the FSF for any Web software, or really any that runs primarily over a network. In my view, it will protect us from seeing the fruit of our labors turn into another locked up DiceDot... how nice would it have been to have at least the updated "Slashdot Classic" interface available now to hack on instead of the circa 2009 version? The AGPL would have made that possible by requiring the release of modifications to Slash.

Regardless of whether the forked version of Slash goes AGPL, we should still have a clear idea what the license will be. It may require the consent of the original authors to move to a license besides GPLv2 (Rob Malda, Jonathon Pater, Patrick Galbraith, Chris Nandor, Brian Aker, Cliff Wood, Jamie McCarthy), and being stuck forever on GPLv2 would be a shame.

Whether or not the project is going to have a CLA that assigns copyright to some organization, or specifies some other terms, is another question that needs community discussion.

Keep up the great work everyone, very glad to see this materializing! ~ Seandiggity (talk) 12:36, 9 February 2014 (MST)

Database license? To maintain good will, the database should be able to be forked onto new sites if SoylentNews has any sign of going corporate (maybe a bit scrubbed).