SoylentNews - User contributions [en]

IRC

2015-02-16T05:59:20Z

Landon: /* Who we are */ I'm retired from IRC now :)

Contact '''chat@soylentnews.org''' if you are interested in working on one of these projects. Also, the [[SoylentNews:IRC|IRC Page]] has information about getting started with IRC, and the [[IRCVision|IRC vision]] is worth checking out.

==Who we are==
<section begin=whoarewe />
{| class="wikitable" width="100%"
!colspan="3"|'''[[IRC|IRC Team Main Page]]'''
|-
| style="width: 20%; background-color: #f2f2f2;"|
'''nick'''
| style="width: 40%; background-color: #f2f2f2;"|
'''position'''
| style="width: 40%; background-color: #f2f2f2;"|
'''timezone'''
|-
| [[User:xlefay|xlefay]]
| Co-team leader
| UTC+2 (CEST)
|-
| [[User:juggs|juggs]]
| Co-team leader
| UTC (GMT)
|-
| [[User:paulej72|paulej72]]
| Member
| UTC-4 (EDT)
|-
| [[User:FunPika|FunPika]]
| Member
| UTC-4 (EDT)
|-
| [[User:Landon|Landon]]
| Retired Member
| ?
|-
|}
<section end=whoarewe />

==Current Projects==

===Chat bot (Python)===
* ELIZA module that uses Futurama personalities (to match the bot's current nick)
* Modify bot logging to match existing formats (mIRC preferably)

===Services (C)===
* Single sign on against the website (coordinate with NCommander)
* Get the web IRC to use the website's sessions to sign in

===Documentation===
* Quick-Start/How-to guide for staff members (.op .topic nickserv commands etc.)

===Misc bots===
* Anyone wanting to join existing bot development projects should contact the developer(s) noted below.

===IRC Games===
* NerdRPG

==Dependencies==
*servers
*bots

[[Category:Teams]]
[[Category:IRC]]

==Channels==

===Official channels===

{| class="wikitable" style="width:100%;"
|-
! Channel !! Description !! Maintained by
|-
| #soylent || General chat/lobby, mostly family-friendly || All SoylentNews Staff
|-
| #staff || Public Staff channel - Everyone's welcome to join, but messages from non-voiced are only send to the ops in the channel || All SoylentNews Staff.
|-
| #editorial || The home of the SoylentNews editors, here you can volunteer for duty, report typo's & ask for submission tips and the like. || Editors & IRC Staff.
|-
| #dev || The home of and for developers that help develop our fork of SlashCode. || Development team & IRC staff.
|-
| #help || This is the IRC help channel, where IRC operators and others provide help and answer any questions related to IRC you may have. || IRC Staff.
|-
| #sysops || This is the Sysops homefront, where most of the magic happens. We maintain the servers and services. || Sysops & IRC Staff.
|-
| #wiki || This is the Wiki's channel, nothing much happens here except for a bot reporting our every edit on the wiki! || IRC Staff.
|-
| #irpg || This is our "nerdRPG"'s (our fork of idleRPG) channel, feel free to idle along! || IRC Staff.
|-
| #test || Main testing chambers, feel free to test anything in here (just be friendly & be considerative) || IRC Staff.
|}

===Private establishments (unofficial)===

{| class="wikitable" style="width:100%;"
|-
! Channel !! Description !! Maintained by
|-
| ## || This is a channel which isn't family safe. It's mostly about bacon and stuff' || team-bacon ([[User:kobach|kobach]], [[User:xlefay|xlefay]])
|-
| # || the batcave; bot testing/borking, random chaos, exec's home || [[User:Alberto|Alberto]]
|-
| #derp || aqu4bot's origin and the portal to Universe 2. Bring own peanut butter. || [[User:Subsentient|Subsentient]]
|-
| #sublight || Sublight's bot home ground || [[User:xlefay|xlefay]]
|-
| #rss-bot || various rss/atom feeds || [[User:juggs|juggs]]
|-
| #debug || bot error spew || [[User:chromas|chromas]]
|-
| #comments || soylentnews.org comments feed || [[User:crutchy|crutchy]]
|-
| #github || ~github-list repos push feed - checked every 5 mins || [[User:crutchy|crutchy]]
|}

==Bots==
There are a few bots lurking in the Soylent IRC channels besides the services mentioned above. 
Anyone wishing to develop bots should use #test or # for testing. 
Please avoid flooding in private establishments and official channels (except #test and #).

{| class="wikitable" width="100%"
|-
! nick !! channels !! triggers !! devs/ops/hosts !! source !! tasks !! usage/notes
|-
| [[Aqu4bot|aqu4]] ||
* # 
* ## 
* #Soylent 
* #derp 
* #test
||
* $ 
* aqu4:
||
* [[User:Subsentient|Subsentient]] (dev/op)
|| http://github.com/Subsentient/aqu4bot ||
* Memos ($sticky) 
* Messaging ($tell) 
* Logging/user tracking 
* Channel control (in #derp)
||
* $sr 
* $seen 
* $tell 
* $help 
* $burrito
|-
| [[IRC:Bender|Bender]] ||
* #Soylent 
* ## 
* #
||
* <nowiki>!</nowiki>
|| || ||
* karma 
* todo
||
* coffee++ 
* <nowiki>!</nowiki>whoup 
* <nowiki>!</nowiki>todo stuff
|-
| [[IRC:ciri|ciri]] ||
* #
|| ||
* [[User:arti|arti]]
|| || ||
* <nowiki>!</nowiki>decide yes "other stuff"
|-
| [[IRC:diego|diego]] ||
* #soylent
|| ||
* [[User:juggs|juggs]] (op)
|| pircbot + piespy
|| * Generation of piespy relationship maps for #soylent
|| http://stats.sylnt.us/social/soylent/index.html
|-
| [[IRC:exec|exec]] ||
* # 
* #comments 
* #debug 
* #github
||
* ~
||
* [[User:Crutchy|crutchy]] (dev/op) 
* [[User:chromas|chromas]] (admin) 
* [[User:juggs|juggs]] (admin)
|| http://sylnt.us/execsrc || ||
* SN comments feed (in #comments) 
* GitHub events feed (in #github) 
* refer to [[IRC:exec#Quick_start|quick start guide]]
|-
| [[IRC:Loggie|Loggie]] ||
* #Soylent
|| ||
* [[User:xlefay|xlefay]]
|| ||
* logging to logs.sylnt.us
||
* /invite Loggie
|-
| [[IRC:monopoly|monopoly]] ||
* # 
* #Soylent
||
* / (//)
||
* [[User:chromas|chromas]] (dev/op)
|| ||
* link title output
||
|-
| [[IRC:NerdRPG|NerdRPG]] ||
* #irpg
|| || || ||
* outputs game data
||
|-
| [[IRC:perlbot|perlbot]] || || ||
* [[User:Konomi|Konomi]] (dev/op)
|| || ||
|-
| [[IRC:Regurgitator|Regurgitator]] ||
* #rss-bot
* #soylent
||
* !rss
||
* [[User:juggs|juggs]] (op)
||
Eggdrop v1.8.0+fixbotnetloop http://www.egghelp.org/files.htm 
rss-synd v0.6 plugin https://github.com/eggtcl/rss-synd
||
* various rss / atom feeds
* logging only in #soylent for pisg stats
||
* #rss-bot !rss to see all feeds. !<feed> to see individual feed contents. Idle in channel to see all feeds.
* #soylent see pisg output here: http://stats.sylnt.us/pisg/index.html
|-
| [[SedBot]] || || ||
* [[User:FoobarBazbot|FoobarBazbot]] (dev/op)
|| https://github.com/FoobarBazbot/sedbot ||
* message correction
||
* s/old/new/ 
* nick: s/old/new/
|-
| [[IRC:SoylentMUD|SoylentMUD]] || || ||
* [[User:mattie_p|mattie_p]]
|| || ||
|-
| [[IRC:sublight|sublight]] || || ||
* [[User:xlefay|xlefay]] (dev/op)
|| || ||
|-
| [[IRC:tama|tama]] ||
* #
|| ||
* [[User:arti|arti]] (op)
|| || ||
|-
| [[IRC:TheMightyBot|TheMightyBot]] || || ||
* [[User:TheMightyBuzzard|TheMightyBuzzard]] (dev/op)
|| || ||
|-
| [[WikiRC|WikiRC]] ||
* #wiki
|| ||
* [[User:FunPika|FunPika]]
|| ||
* wiki events feed
||
|}

===Bot projects / task ideas===

* [[IRCiv]] is currently under development for the exec bot and is intended to be a civilization-like building game played on IRC.
* a Soylent PBC board meeting assistant script is currently under development for the exec bot, intended for minute taking and publishing on the wiki. See [[IRC:exec#Meeting_assistant]] for more details.
* an IRC voting system. refer to [[IRC:exec#Proposed_IRC_voting_system]] for details.
* returning data from the SoylentNews using the [[ApiDocs|SlashCode API]]

== Information for Sysops / IRC admins ==

=== Server Related Info ===

{{#lst:Carbon|ircops}}

== Information for IRC Operators ==

=== Useful Links ===

* [http://www.stack.nl/~jilles/irc/charybdis-oper-guide Charybdis IRC Ops Guide]
* [http://atheme.net/help/7.0/ Atheme Services Help Pages]

[[Category:IRC]]

Historic talk:IRCVision

2014-02-16T19:13:55Z

Landon: /* A little confused ... */

== A little confused ... ==

Is the intent of this is to make a separate IRC network for SoylentNews instead of using SoylentNews related channels on Freenode? I'm having trouble figuring this out from the current page. [[User:FunPika|Fun]][[User_Talk:FunPika|Pika]] 13:24, 14 February 2014 (MST)

Yep [[User:Landon|Landon]] ([[User talk:Landon|talk]]) 12:13, 16 February 2014 (MST)

Historic:IRCVision

2014-02-14T00:26:44Z

Landon:

What is the main purpose of IRC?
* To allow the Soylent News community to congregate in a real time format
* We want the community to feel free to do (almost) anything, so it's better to have less guidelines restricting them

What do we want to be available on IRC?
* Topical channels
* Channels for the various teams
** Editorial
** Systems
** Other
* Game channels
** Werewolf
** Trivia
** RPG channels

What do we *not* want on IRC?
* spam
* wAreZ

Initial Official IRC channels:
* Team specific channels
* Main discussion channel
** What do we name this? Probably want to keep ##AltSlashdot until the final branding is decided
* Topical channels
** 16:01:39 Protonic ∈ It'll be interested to see things evolve. I'd say have topical channels for the site available though, e.g. #linux - and a bot in all those "official tropical channels" will automatically message the channel when a new post arrives in said category
* Off topic channel

Cloaking:
* Team members
** Examples: Landon@Soylent/Staff/IRC/Landon, Landon@Soylent/Staff/Editor/Landon, Landon@Soylent/Staff/Dev/Landon
** If someone is in multiple teams, we should be able to let them choose which cloak they prefer
* (future plan) Members with IRC accounts connected to the main site:
** Should this be a requirement for registering on the IRC network? That you must have an account on the main site?
** Examples: Landon@Soylent/USERNAME
* Registered nicks without an account on the main site (if necessary)
** Examples: Landon@Soylent/Guest

Bots
* General utility bot for users to query weather, provide public logs, etc (I've got one in mind that we can maintain as the official bot/fun development project -- Landon)
* Name at least one bot Bender!

IRC Namespaces
* # is the only namespace that should contain Official channels once ##AltSlashdot is phased out
** We should allow user created channels under this namespace too
* ## The wild west.
** There should be no Official channels under this namespace, only user created

Logging
* Since it's almost guaranteed that some users will be logging, we should make it a service. There should be a bot in all of the Official channels that will gather logs and generate a webpage ( [http://i.imgur.com/RMwxD5F.png example by Juggs] )
** Opt-in logging/publishing for all user created channels (send a logging notice to people as they join the channel maybe)
** 1-2 day delay before publishing logs, in case someone reallyreallyreally needs to redact their root password from the logs :) (But, that's a false sense of security, so eh, but it would be a courteous gesture)

URLShortener

2014-02-14T00:25:32Z

Landon: Created page with "Hey. All the cool news sites have their own fancy URL shorteners (and some like BBC are just cool and have a short URL period.) Toss your ideas in here Ideas: * Can only link..."

Hey. All the cool news sites have their own fancy URL shorteners (and some like BBC are just cool and have a short URL period.) Toss your ideas in here

Ideas:
* Can only link to SoylentNews.org pages (maybe a few other select URLs?)
* /a/ARTICLE_ID url links to the article on SN
* /u/USER_ID_OR_NAME links to the user on SN
* /RANDOM_ALPHANUM works like a normal URL shortener, an arbitrary URL in the soylentnews.org domain

Historic:IRCVision

2014-02-14T00:21:31Z

Landon: Created page with "What is the main purpose of IRC? * To allow the Soylent News community to congregate in a real time format * We want the community to feel free to do (almost) anything, so it'..."

What is the main purpose of IRC?
* To allow the Soylent News community to congregate in a real time format
* We want the community to feel free to do (almost) anything, so it's better to have less guidelines restricting them

What do we want to be available on IRC?
* Topical channels
* Channels for the various teams
** Editorial
** Systems
** Other
* Game channels
** Werewolf
** Trivia
** RPG channels

What do we *not* want on IRC?
* spam
* wAreZ

Initial Official IRC channels:
* Team specific channels
* Main discussion channel
** What do we name this? Probably want to keep ##AltSlashdot until the final branding is decided
* Topical channels
** 16:01:39 Protonic ∈ It'll be interested to see things evolve. I'd say have topical channels for the site available though, e.g. #linux - and a bot in all those "official tropical channels" will automatically message the channel when a new post arrives in said category
* Off topic channel

Cloaking:
* Team members
** Examples: Landon@Soylent/Staff/IRC/Landon, Landon@Soylent/Staff/Editor/Landon, Landon@Soylent/Staff/Dev/Landon
** If someone is in multiple teams, we should be able to let them choose which cloak they prefer
* (future plan) Members with IRC accounts connected to the main site:
** Should this be a requirement for registering on the IRC network? That you must have an account on the main site?
** Examples: Landon@Soylent/USERNAME
* Registered nicks without an account on the main site (if necessary)
** Examples: Landon@Soylent/Guest

Bots
* General utility bot for users to query weather, provide public logs, etc (I've got one in mind that we can maintain as the official bot/fun development project -- Landon)

IRC Namespaces
* # is the only namespace that should contain Official channels once ##AltSlashdot is phased out
** We should allow user created channels under this namespace too
* ## The wild west.
** There should be no Official channels under this namespace, only user created

Logging
* Since it's almost guaranteed that some users will be logging, we should make it a service. There should be a bot in all of the Official channels that will gather logs and generate a webpage ( [http://i.imgur.com/RMwxD5F.png example by Juggs] )
** Opt-in logging/publishing for all user created channels (send a logging notice to people as they join the channel maybe)
** 1-2 day delay before publishing logs, in case someone reallyreallyreally needs to redact their root password from the logs :) (But, that's a false sense of security, so eh, but it would be a courteous gesture)

Bug tracker

2014-02-13T17:03:26Z

Landon: /* JIRA */

This page is for discussing possible options for a bug tracker to use. If you have any other possible options in mind, make a new level 3 heading for them.

== General requirements ==
* It should allow submitting issues without requiring logging in/creating an account.
* (?) Should it have the ability to allow uploading attachments (screenshots of the bug, patches, etc.)?

== Possible bug trackers ==

=== MediaWiki ===
* Uses this wiki that we already have running.
* Would use a Bug: namespace.
* This wiki currently requires registration before editing, although logged out editing can be re-enabled if needed.
* May be more difficult for developers to sort issues by values like status, assignee, etc. that are normally found in bug trackers.
* [[:Template:Bug]] was created to give some structure to bug reports if we use this system.

Needed configuration changes to the wiki if we did this:
<pre>
$wgGroupPermissions['*']['edit'] = true;
define("NS_BUG", 112);
define("NS_BUG_TALK", 113);
$wgExtraNamespaces[NS_BUG] = "Bug";
$wgExtraNamespaces[NS_BUG_TALK] = "Bug_talk";
</pre>

''Done.''

=== MediaWiki with semantic extensions ===
* Uses this wiki that we already have running.
* Would use a Bug: namespace.
* This wiki currently requires registration before editing, although logged out editing can be re-enabled if needed.
* Would require the installation of the [[mediawikiwiki:Extension:Semantic MediaWiki|Semantic MediaWiki]] and [[mediawikiwiki:Extension:Semantic Forms|Semantic Forms]] extensions.
* Should be easier to sort issues, although it still likely will lack features found in standalone bug trackers
* Probably needs more configuration and initial setup than MediaWiki alone.

=== GitHub issues ===
* Already set up and running alongside the repository where the code currently is.
* GitHub requires registration, which likely makes it undesirable.

=== Bugzilla ===
* Requires registration.
* Free and open source.

=== JIRA ===
* Pretty sure this one can handle creating issues without users logging in.
* Proprietary software, but they offer a free as in beer license to open source projects.
* [https://www.atlassian.com/opensource/overview Atlassian's open source overview]
* A bit of a resource hog, in my experience (For a 2-user setup) it will easily consume > 1 gig of RAM and still not be happy

=== Mantis ===
* It's not pretty, but allows bug submission without login.
* Some integration with MediaWiki apparently available, as per [http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:MantisIntegration this link]
* I've put up an install you can test out: [http://209.141.33.25 http://209.141.33.25]. If you create an account, check your spam folder for the confirmation email. [[User:Popeidol|Popeidol]]

Spreading the word

2014-02-13T16:16:28Z

Landon:

*Please mention SoylentNews.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
::: [http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2014/02/slashdots-new-interface-could-kill-what-keeps-slashdot-relevant/ Slashdot’s new interface could kill what keeps Slashdot relevant], but no mention of replacement projects.
** Hacker News
::: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7193251 Submission from when AltSlashdot just started]
::: Due for an update once we get an actual site up and running
:::: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7209927 Similar thread from today] [[User:Yahwotqa|Yahwotqa]] ([[User talk:Yahwotqa|talk]]) 10:05, 10 February 2014 (MST)

SoylentNews

2014-02-13T16:11:39Z

Landon:

[[FAQ|Frequently Asked Questions]] ... Was your question not answered? Get on IRC and pester the relevant person: [[WhosWho| Who's Who?]]

'''Feb 13, 2014 12:33AM EST:''' Status

A select few editors, dev, and system types are working through the system finding bugs. User registration works, there are stories on the front page, comments and replies. A screenshot of testing from last night is here: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/52836172/2014-02-13-SN-aplha.png

We could use a temporary bug tracking system that's easily accessible by the users (ie - not requiring onerous registration). Can anyone hook us up?
: How about "Bug:" namespace here on wiki? [[User:Yahwotqa|Yahwotqa]] ([[User talk:Yahwotqa|talk]]) 00:45, 13 February 2014 (MST) <=== Done
:: If you expect more reports, I suggest using something structured like [[Template:Bug]] (example use in [[Bug:Testbug]]). Expand the template however you see fit. :) [[User:Yahwotqa|Yahwotqa]] ([[User talk:Yahwotqa|talk]]) 02:07, 13 February 2014 (MST)
::: Technically, this solution still requires registration (since anonymous editing is disabled on the wiki), and I don't think it would be able to handle some usual features of bug trackers like being able to list issues and filter them by stuff like their status. [[User:FunPika|Fun]][[User_Talk:FunPika|Pika]] 04:22, 13 February 2014 (MST)
:::: I created a [[Bug tracker]] page for figuring out what we want to do. [[User:FunPika|Fun]][[User_Talk:FunPika|Pika]] 05:23, 13 February 2014 (MST)
: Why temporary? We should just get a proper bug tracker in place then even in the future when someone notices a quirk they can report it. One of the big issues with /. was people were constantly complaining about bugs with no way to tell if they were being addressed. How long were people complaining about unicode support? [[User:Vanderhoth|Vanderhoth]]

: ''Later we want to have recommendations and properly choose a system that's well suited. At present, we don't want to spend time on things not directly related to bringing the system up. -John''

E-mail me: John (at) SoylentNews (dot) org

'''Feb 12, 2014 9:40PM EST:''' Status

Freenode is complaining "Server is full" and not letting me into chat, so this is a '''guess status''' :-)

Thanks to everyone who volunteered to help test the system this evening. At the last minute, the team found a nest of bugs that effectively broke the moderation system, so testing was put off until 10:PM EST, and then later was put off until Thu.

* Nothing is impossible for the person who doesn’t have to do it himself.
* Any project can be estimated accurately once it’s completed.
* The sooner you get behind schedule, the more time you have to make it up.
* A badly planned project will take three times longer than expected
* A well planned project only twice as long as expected.
* Schedules are made to be broken
* Work expands to fill the Time. Cost expands to meet the Budget.
* The first 90% of a project takes 90% of the time. The last 10% takes the other 90%.
* The only certainty in a project is uncertainty
* On time, on budget, on spec – pick 2.

==WE HAVE A FIRST POST==

From the site:
I know its been a long wait, but we've been steadily moving towards launch. With luck, you're reading this on the main index of the site, which means we've gone, and haven't gone mad in the process. Now that we're here, we hope to have made the wait worth it, but we depend on everyone in the community. To make this site a success, we depend on each and every single user even if its just from passing word of mouth. Remember, every single user can submit stories, moderate, and contribute to discussions all at the same time, and that's what makes us unique. May I be the first to welcome you to your new home.

[[http://imgbin.org/index.php?page=image&id=16708]]

'''Site Announcements'''

'''Feb 11, 2014 8:01PM EST:''' Status

Yeah, yeah... we're working on it.

We're starting to get overlords that manage various features. An overlord is responsible for granting access - it's intended to be a ''no work'' position, so that it can be held for long periods without requiring much time.

So for example, Applesmasher is the overlord of forums. He grants access to people and recovers access when people leave, but he doesn't ''have'' to do any work himself (although he can if he wants). He ensures that the people with access are reliable.

So if you need a forum for your group, ask the overlord of forums. If you want a set of wiki pages, ask the overlord of the wiki, and so on.

The current overlords have agreed to hold the position until Mar 1, at which time we will choose overlords via some formal process. (And the current overlords might ask to continue.)

The current overlords can be contacted here:

art@SoylentNews.org

editors@SoylentNews.org

forums@SoylentNews.org

wiki@SoylentNews.org

chat@SoylentNews.org

There will be more to come. This is temporary to get us going - the community can change the structure later, but for now things seem to naturally separate into these areas of interest.

'''Feb 11, 2014 3:01PM EST:''' Status

We have a working system, and two people fixing the CSS (sadly, none for sphinx). As far as I can tell, we're trying to get the high-bandwidth aspects of the site running: Varnish, MySQL configuration options, and such. We want the system to be able to withstand a tsunami of visitors 10 meters high.

The system team has been working around the clock to get things running, and I mean that literally. I have to as-much-as order people to break off at night and go to bed. They *really* want to see this thing work. Send them some love in chat if you can.

Note that these are not "deadlines", nor do I particularly care if we miss them: We're reporting when we "predict" things will be ready. The first 90% of the project is done, now we're working on the remaining 90%.

Stand by for launch...

P.S. - Check out the logo

'''Feb 11, 2014 12:01PM EST:''' Need some sphinx help

We still need [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sphinx_(search_engine) sphinx (search engine)]
expertise, so if you are familiar with this package, please E-mail me:

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

EDIT: Sent a discussion to John (at) SoylentNews (dot) org
----

'''The Slashcott is getting attention'''
:A selection of Slashcott/Beta comments from around the web.......

::* http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2014/02/slashdots-new-interface-could-kill-what-keeps-slashdot-relevant/ <=== Nice article by Ars
::* http://spallshurgenson.blogspot.com/2014/02/tragedy-of-commons-redesigning-social.html <=== A good summary of the situation
::* https://community.republicwireless.com/thread/23151 <== "How not to treat your community"
::* http://www.tidbitsfortechs.com/2014/02/biting-hand-feeds-less-boycotting-slashdot-org-1-week
::* http://community.spiceworks.com/topic/442346-trouble-at-slashdot

Check out the [http://imgbin.org/index.php?page=image&id=16688| 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 [[Finances|here]] 
* Some business planning is [[Business|here]] 
* A statement of functionality (turn into a requirements document?)--- [[FeatureList]]

''' Get Involved '''

'''Hop in to IRC!''' - [[SoylentNews:IRC|IRC]]: ##altslashdot on chat.freenode.net ([https://webchat.freenode.net/?channels=##altslashdot Webchat], we are growing in [http://irc.netsplit.de/channels/details.php?net=freenode&room=%23%23altslashdot strength!])

'''Register on the forums''' - http://forums.SoylentNews.org
* Go to forums.SoylentNews.org and register a user
* Read [http://forums.soylentnews.org/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=38&sid=e55255cb6dfe68b28c8cf5f2b9697a64| this] post if you are having problems. (Thanks MrGuy)
* Add yourself to whichever groups you are interested in
* For tech issues with the forum software, please Email Joel: soylent (at) finite (dot) ms

'''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

==Status==

Check out the [[FAQ]]

* Forums are available at forums.SoylentNews.org
::The forums have four user groups: Code, Content, Style, and System.
* We upgraded the hosting by two tiers
* The System team is working on installing SlashCode. They are busting their collective tails to get this site up for us. Hopefylly, soon!
* Probably won't be non-profit, see [[Finances|business model]].
* We won't poach from Slashdot. This includes articles and logos, also "style" to a reasonable extent.

Mailing list update Messages are [[MailingListUpdates|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.

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

* Possible Trademark issues

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

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.)

== List of Discussion Pages ==
*[[NewName]]
*[[MailingListUpdates]]
*[[Finances]] -- which model would allow to minimise and/or distribute hosting costs
*[[Business]]
*[[Moderation]] -- how/if to enhance; was it so bad it was the primary reason for the diaspora?
*[[FeatureList]] -- discussion of required/desired characteristics
*[[Submission guidelines]]
*[[Content]]
*[[Style]]
*[[Migration of users from Slashdot]] -- how to handle Nicks and UIDs
*[[Licensing]]
*[[WhosWho]] -- points of contact in different project areas
*[[Spreading the word]]
*[[Comments]]
*[[To do]]
*[[Bugs]]
*[[Stories from former Slashdot users]]

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

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

'''Mumble (Voice / Text Server)''' : voice.whackperiod.org

== Similar Projects ==
* [http://pipedot.org/sign_up Pipedot]

SoylentNews

2014-02-13T16:04:50Z

Landon:

What did not work

2014-02-13T06:15:10Z

Landon:

*Feature that worked was the karma system allowed users to voluntarily disable the advertisement, made them feel happy even though it did nothing different for the business.
*Feature that did not work: Adding a sponsored poll / slashvertising
*Not being able to uniquely identify Anonymous Cowards (to track them in a thread, something like how 4chans "identified" anon works, I guess)

SoylentNews

2014-02-11T21:18:56Z

Landon:

[[FAQ|Frequently Asked Questions]] ... Was your question not answered? Get on IRC and pester the relevant person: [[WhosWho| Who's Who?]]

'''Site Announcements'''

'''Feb 11, 2014 12:01PM EST:''' We need some CSS and sphinx help

As part of the SlashCode rollout we need to fix a lot of broken CSS and to install [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sphinx_(search_engine) sphinx (search engine)]. We need 2+1 volunteers to help with the conversion this afternoon via IRC. Two to fix CSS issues, and one familiar with install and config of the sphinx software package.

We need people who are fast, so I'll choose based on experience.

If you're interested, please send ONLY a one liner of the number of years you've been doing CSS or sphinx. Something like this:

''3 years doing CSS professionally''

This will be on IRC, coordinating with robin and our tech lead.

Thanks go to everyone - it looks like we're on the final stretch!

If interested, send E-mail to: John (at) SoylentNews (dot) org

P.S. - Check out the logo.

'''3:01PM EST:''' Status

We have a working system, and two people fixing the CSS (sadly, none for sphinx). As far as I can tell, we're trying to get the high-bandwidth aspects of the site running: Varnish, MySQL configuration options, and such. We want the system to be able to withstand a tsunami of visitors 10 meters high.

The system team has been working around the clock to get things running, and I mean that literally. I have to as-much-as order people to break off at night and go to bed. They *really* want to see this thing work. Send them some love in chat if you can.

Note that these are not "deadlines", nor do I particularly care if we miss them: We're reporting when we "predict" things will be ready. The first 90% of the project is done, now we're working on the remaining 90%.

Stand by for launch...

----

'''The Slashcott is getting attention'''
:A selection of Slashcott/Beta comments from around the web.......

::* https://community.republicwireless.com/thread/23151 <== "How not to treat your community"
::* http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2014/2/7/183544/0702
::* http://community.spiceworks.com/topic/442346-trouble-at-slashdot
::* http://www.gamefaqs.com/boards/916373-pc/68540288
::* http://www.tuicool.com/articles/bmUvMj
::* http://www.reddit.com/r/socialmedia/comments/1x77zt/user_backlash_to_slashdotorg_beta/
::* http://www.fark.com/comments/8133044/Since-when-was-Slashdot-a-Fark-Beta-site-Since-Dice-started-redirecting-25-of-its-users-to-a-failed-site-redesign

----

'''Feb 10, 2014:''' We are still working on getting the &^#$*$%^ code to run. If everything comes together, we hope to open the doors on Wednesday. Cross your fingers everyone! When we are ready for "soft launch", we'll invite a bunch of people to use the site and see how things hold up.

There may be some teething problems in the first couple of days. We will bump the server to whatever level is needed, but it may take some hours of slow access before we decide to do that.

The Slashcode group has been working very hard to get things up and running. Consider that SlashCode is 5 years old - it's got sharp edges and rough spots. Please have patience.

Check out the [http://imgbin.org/index.php?page=image&id=16688| 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 [[Finances|here]] 
* Some business planning is [[Business|here]] 
* A statement of functionality (turn into a requirements document?)--- [[FeatureList]]

''' Get Involved '''

'''Hop in to IRC!''' - [[SoylentNews:IRC|IRC]]: ##altslashdot on chat.freenode.net ([https://webchat.freenode.net/?channels=##altslashdot Webchat], we are growing in [http://irc.netsplit.de/channels/details.php?net=freenode&room=%23%23altslashdot strength!])

'''Register on the forums''' - http://forums.SoylentNews.org
* Go to forums.SoylentNews.org and register a user
* Read [http://forums.soylentnews.org/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=38&sid=e55255cb6dfe68b28c8cf5f2b9697a64| this] post if you are having problems. (Thanks MrGuy)
* Add yourself to whichever groups you are interested in
* For tech issues with the forum software, please Email Joel: soylent (at) finite (dot) ms

'''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 [[Finances|business model]].
* We won't poach from Slashdot. This includes articles and logos, also "style" to a reasonable extent.

Mailing list update Messages are [[MailingListUpdates|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==
[[SlashcodeTodo|Slashcode Todo list]]

* Install SlashCode on the production site
* Get some people to help with the site
* Run a contest for a better name [[NewName|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)?
::Why can't we have an advertising cookie with things we are in the market for? I.e. if I'm in the market for a computer, I see computer-related ads. If I opt out, then I don't see any ads. An interest-centric (not user centric) cookie. <=='''+1 Insightful'''
* 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|NewName]]
*[[MailingListUpdates|MailingListUpdates]]
*[[Finances|Finances]] -- which model would allow to minimise and/or distribute hosting costs
*[[Business|Business]]
*[[Monetization]] -- Discussion on how to cover costs to make this thing happen (and grow)
*[[FeatureList]] -- Discussion of required/desired characteristics
*[[Submission guidelines|Submission guidelines]]
*[[Content]]
*[[Style]]
*[[Migration of users from Slashdot]] -- How to handle Nicks and UIDs
*[[Licensing]]
*[[WhosWho]] -- Points of contact in different project areas

== Noteworthy Comments==
*Grabbed the Domain Names: AltSlashdot.org, Soylentnews.org
*Other potential website solutions
::Bruce Perens (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...[http://pipedot.org/ pipedot.org] by 'Bryan'
::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 organization ?
:: 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 [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debian#Organization 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. --[[Special:Contributions/141.84.69.20|141.84.69.20]] 03:20, 6 February 2014 (MST)

* Relevant Slashdot stats from 2011 [[http://www.dbasoul.com/2011/992.html]]
:::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 Slashdot: '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 SoylentNews.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
::: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7193251 Submission from when AltSlashdot just started]
::: Due for an update once we get an actual site up and running
:::: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7209927 Similar thread from today] [[User:Yahwotqa|Yahwotqa]] ([[User talk:Yahwotqa|talk]]) 10:05, 10 February 2014 (MST)

Historic:FeatureList

2014-02-11T19:54:36Z

Landon: /* General Requirements */

== Overview ==

I'd appreciate if everyone would just start adding or removing things they think need to be in the to-be variant of this site

Rather than isolate the things that slashdot already had (we should be familiar with it), let's just explicitly state what we want to see, with the idea that most of it is a copy or inspired by the original. But we can possibly explain, refine, or restrict our focus to the bits that matter.

== General Requirements ==
* Cool new colour
* OAuth provider, could be useful when we integrate other means of communication (e.g. forums, IRC)

===What features worked and what features did not work during the lifetime of Slashdot?===
*Feature that worked was the karma system allowed users to voluntarily disable the advertisement, made them feel happy even though it did nothing different for the business.
*Feature that did not work: Adding a sponsored poll / slashvertising

== Engine Requirements ==

* '''Be mindful of bandwidth and the amount of processing done by the server when building any features. One extra character balloons into many megabytes of expensive bandwidth and consumption of server resources. Each feature that bloats a page response or causes the server to process something increases costs--KEEP COSTS DOWN!'''
* UTF-8 clean for anything that doesn't end up in a URL (i.e. tags, titles, channel names, user names)
** Of course, some combining marks would have to be filtered, and the resulting text round-tripped through NFD->NFC to prevent certain types of attacks against users or making text difficult to index.
* [http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/04/stack-exchange-partners-with-mathjax/ MathJax] support both in comments and in submissions
:: Mathjax is the math rendering engine used on [http://stackexchange.com/ stackexchange] and will allow scientific discussion between us (people who read math).
* Channels (like yro, politics, apple) as first class objects
** "Primary" channels that have DNS shorthand (http://apple.altslash.org/ being equiv to http://altslash.org/ch/apple/)
** "Secondary" channels that users could create and play editor that use the more verbose syntax (http://altslash.org/ch/baseball/) that is reminiscent of subreddits
** User channels (i.e. journals, as we've always had)
* Display user IDs
* Javascript Optional
** I enjoy having the comment rating slider for example, but main functionality should be accessible with lynx at the least!

* Submission queues for all channels with membership at the discretion of the channel owner; being able to submit also implies up/downvoting submissions and tagging
:: Editors/channel owners only
:: List of users who can submit
:: All of my friends (for user journals)
:: All users with mod status
:: All registered users
:: Everyone

* Articles are also first class objects
:: Perma-link independant of channel
:: Articles are tagged by topic(s) as well as channel
:: Articles are automatically archived
:: Archive is easily searchable, and should be referenced when submissions are edited.
:: Articles can be cross-posted to other channels by a channel owner (built into the UI if the editor manages more than one channel)
* Comment key features
:: Comments are first class objects, just as before, just like articles
:: Comments can be edited for a short period of time by owner
::: HOWEVER: Edited comments get a new ID and it links to older versions in the new one. This detail is made prominent to viewer if a comment reply happened before an edit.
:: Allow alternate markup options (bbcode, markdown, wiki markup)
::: Provide a mapping to actual div and styles that will be applied, or HTML equivalent codes

* Allow moderation in same article that you've posted in; only disallow moderation '''to your own reply chain'''.
** You're obviously not allowed to moderate in your own accepted or posted article (treating all comments as replies)
** Does "reply chain" include parent? If not, how do we deal with threadjacking:
**# AC posts first comment on a new article (let's presume it's an upmod-worthy comment, not fristpsot)
**# I post my unrelated comment as a reply to AC's FP, in order to achieve greater visibility
**# I downmod the AC to -1
**# Now AC is invisible to anyone with threshold != -1 (including many with mod points and threshold=0, who would have modded AC up on his own merits)
**# Unless/until users with threshold=-1 and mod points happen by to rectify things, my comment is now the first thing most users see.
**# ??? ''(sorry, can't resist...)''
**# Profit!
***Actually, not just the immediate parent like I said, but 'all' ancestor comments. Otherwise as step 1.5 I just reply with an AC troll (which someone else will rightfully downmod), then in step 2 I reply to ''that''; now that the original AC first post is my comment's gp, so I can still downmod it.
** ''' Good point ''' you should be prevented from moderating any children '''and''' ancestors of your posts (but sibling chains are still fair game)
* Moderation

** I forget who suggested this originally, but in addition to the above constraints, only allow users to moderate a subset of any particular article's comments.
::This seems like a bad idea. A moderator should be allowed access to any comment under an article. Maybe set a limit on how many points they can burn in a particular article, but don't make some comments off-limits based on an arbitrary randomization process.

* '''Moderation Engine'''
::{| class="wikitable"
|+ Moderation tags (default scores)
|-
! Mod Up
! Points
! Mod Down
! Points
|-
| Interesting
| +1
| Offtopic
| -1
|-
| Informative
| +1
| Troll/Spam
| -1
|-
| Insightful
| +1
| Groupthink ('''New''')
| -1 (or -0.5?)
|-
| Underrated
| +0.5 ('''New''')
| Overrated
| -0.5 ('''New''')
|-
| Funny
| +0.5 ('''New''')
| Flamebait
| -0.5 ('''New''')
|-
| Devils Advocate ('''New!''')
| +1
| Jibberish ('''New!''')
| -1
|}

** Users assign own weights to tags in the range -2.0 -> 2.0 with 0.5 increments
** System rounds x.5 towards 0 in comment spill / threshold logic, display capped at -1 and 5.
** A score for the default weights is saved for the comment for use by article spill (for googlebot or "load all comments" from anonmyous user)
** An optional cryptocoin tipping system, when you like someone's post you can give him a small cryptocoin tip. That might also work as an additional moderating system. Non-moderators could mod-up comments (Insightful, Funny, etc) by eg. 0.5 points by spending some money.
** What about not-posting in the thread where you moderated? Good or bad rule? Maybe if you really must post, allow cryptocoin paying for post? (eg. "Warning: you have moderated in this thread (or whole story), if you really want to post you need to spend cryptocoin on that" (??)) Not posting in the thread is okay, and much better than disallowing the whole story.
** I think it would be good to display both the positive mods and negative mods on a comment in a concise form (so you could see that this comment is generally regarded both Insightful.... but also Flamebait) <== Or a total of positive and negative comments to take up less space
** I like the idea of a system that allows users to have mod points on a regular basis. That way they do not feel like they have to use up all their points on comments that don't deserve them. A much better quality of moderation should do a better job of making the better comments float to the top.
** Let users set both ends of their moderation based comment 'scope'. To see the highlights, set at +4 and above. To look for abusive moderations, set to display 0 and below. (And I'm sure that someone will want to browse "only the 3's", so the system should allow that too)

===Moderation strategy===
** Chops instead of Karma
** Chops are derived from:
*** Articles accepted for submission
**** But NOT articles self-authored on a channel you're an editor of
*** Comments that are replied to by others without a troll/flamebait modifier
*** Positive moderation (as judged by the mod action with respect to their own point value weights... so if they think funny is bad, it counts against you)
*** Positive metamoderation outcome (see below)
** Registered users that have used the site > [threshold] days, posted > [threshold] times, and have positive chops get moderation duty (possibly [x] mod points per day?)
*** The more chops, the more mod points per day, with a total cap for unused

'''Meta-moderation'''
* Meta-moderation is a check and balance system that acts to identify bad moderators. It works best when a large number of users are available and willing to evaluate a comment's moderaton values
* Meta-moderation is available to users that have used the site > [big threshold] days and have > [threshold] chops
** Metamoderation is not "special", a meta-mod capable user can see a random selection of recent mods at any time and metamod.
** Metamod takes 2 mod points <==Wouldn't adding a cost for Meta-moderation decrease the pool of users willing to use it?
:::Metamod actions are like moderation actions, you spend modpoints on them. But they are twice as expensive as direct moderation. The theory is that users with more chops (and thus more modpoints to throw around) are more likely to spend some of them on metamoderation.
:::Alternatively.... Meta-mod should be open to all in good standing for RANDOM comments. Maybe allow burning 2 mod points to meta-mod a specific comment?
** Metamod can spend a mod point to "re-roll" and see a new set of random moderations
** A moderation is undone when it's "score" goes negative. It is "reapplied" when it goes positive. If the score dips to -3, the moderation is removed entirely. Default moderation value should be > 0, possibly 2 ??
** A user is not rewarded or punished for the metamod specifically
** A running total of positive and negative meta-moderations against them is calculated
** Certain threshold for positive and negative meta-mod counts result in fixed deltas in chops
*** Having >5 positive metamod could be +1 chop score. >10 +2, >20 +3; >3 negative is -1, > 5 is -2, > 10 is -3
** Your current chops as of more than 4 weeks ago is rolled into a fixed amount capped at 1.5 times the "Excellent" value and 1.5 times the most negative "Worst Poster" value.
** On a weekly basis a task is run across all accounts that collects chop point actions since the last summarization date forward a week (actions that happened about 3 weeks ago), applies these to the last +4 weeks ago score, truncates it to the ranges above, and stores it in the database with the new summarization date for that user's account.
** This prevents a user from "banking" actions that give them more chops to only later be a jerk.
** However it lets you be a bit grumpy in the short term since the value can go above the thresholds when calculating the current display/privs value (query all the outstanding chop actions for this user, add the point values to the historic value, store it for easy reference later, cached for an hour)

===Article submission===
** Editor:
*** UTF-8
*** MathJax (mentioned earlier)
*** ability to check links inline during writing the submission. To see how it works just try writing email in gmail. Everytime when you add a link, there's an option right below it to "check link"
** Encouraging submitting good articles:
*** Everytime when a story gets accepted, the submitter gets a small cryptocoin reward (as we know - very easy to automate this). Since we are very poor (at least at start) we will not pay a fixed amount, but a small percentage of all cryptocoins owned by altslashdot.
*** If a story gets accepted but is hugely downvoted later (think Roland Piquepaille), the submitter must give back his reward to be able to submit a new story. In fact even better if he had to give back a tiny fraction more cryptocoin than he received.
** '''To have funds for all that''', we could use (check also [[Finances]]):
*** That tipping system (mentioned above in moderation), and everytime you tip someone else a very tiny fraction of that tip goes to altslashdot.
*** Also payments from people desperate to post in thread (or story) where they have moderated (if we decide that this feature is useful, and if it is thread or whole story).
*** Failed submitters, who had to give back their reward plus some extra fraction because their story was hated after it was submitted (think Roland Piquepaille) as mentioned above.
*** Also we can simply hope for money from cryptocoin donations address. IMHO that is quite possible if we make this site good.
*** We might consider ''paying subscribers'' using cryptocoin.
*** Make a "featured product/serivce -> ask for review" section that charges for having a product reviewed

* Source standards (should this be spun out into its own page-- Submission Guidelines and Standards ???)
** Link to most primary source possible.
** No more linking to fly-by-night blogs or linkbaits <=== Editors should be responsible for checking all links that go in a story (preferably from inside a sandbox)
** Link to print-version instead of 50-page clickthrough
** If sites get Soylented, should article links automatically Corel Cache?
*** Would there be a way of switching to a different cache on the fly, for when Corel Cache goes out of business?
** No more linkbait titles. After Slashcott, will look up that article... but Dice basically admitted they put celebrity names and intentionally misleading subjects to entice people to click through from search engines. This is a scummy horrible practice that needs to go. !!
*** TFTitle == TFS == TFA !!!

WhosWho

2014-02-11T19:28:28Z

Landon: Created page with "In the interest of getting questions to the right people on IRC, this is a summary of who is involved in SoylentNews. Please add yourself or others if you can field questions ..."

In the interest of getting questions to the right people on IRC, this is a summary of who is involved in SoylentNews. Please add yourself or others if you can field questions about the topic.

==The Man Behind The Curtain==
* Barrabas
==Code==
* robinld
==Style==
==Content==
* LaminatorX
==Forums==
==Wiki==
==IRC==
* Landon

Historic:FeatureList

2014-02-10T17:42:23Z

Landon: /* Engine Requirements */ Lynx compatibility

== Overview ==

I'd appreciate if everyone would just start adding or removing things they think need to be in the to-be variant of this site

Rather than isolate the things that slashdot already had (we should be familiar with it), let's just explicitly state what we want to see, with the idea that most of it is a copy or inspired by the original. But we can possibly explain, refine, or restrict our focus to the bits that matter.

== General Requirements ==
What features worked and what features did not work during the lifetime of Slashdot?
*Feature that worked was the karma system allowed users to voluntarily disable the advertisement, made them feel happy even though it did nothing different for the business.
*Feature that did not work: Adding a sponsored poll / slashvertising
* Cool new colour

== Engine Requirements ==

* '''Be mindful of bandwidth and the amount of processing done by the server when building any features. One extra character balloons into many megabytes of expensive bandwidth and consumption of server resources. Each feature that bloats a page response or causes the server to process something increases costs--KEEP COSTS DOWN!'''
* UTF-8 clean for anything that doesn't end up in a URL (i.e. tags, titles, channel names, user names)
** Of course, some combining marks would have to be filtered, and the resulting text round-tripped through NFD->NFC to prevent certain types of attacks against users or making text difficult to index.
* [http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/04/stack-exchange-partners-with-mathjax/ MathJax] support both in comments and in submissions
:: Mathjax is the math rendering engine used on [http://stackexchange.com/ stackexchange] and will allow scientific discussion between us (people who read math).
* Channels (like yro, politics, apple) as first class objects
** "Primary" channels that have DNS shorthand (http://apple.altslash.org/ being equiv to http://altslash.org/ch/apple/)
** "Secondary" channels that users could create and play editor that use the more verbose syntax (http://altslash.org/ch/baseball/) that is reminiscent of subreddits
** User channels (i.e. journals, as we've always had)
* Display user IDs
* Javascript Optional
** I enjoy having the comment rating slider for example, but main functionality should be accessible with lynx at the least!

* Submission queues for all channels with membership at the discretion of the channel owner; being able to submit also implies up/downvoting submissions and tagging
:: Editors/channel owners only
:: List of users who can submit
:: All of my friends (for user journals)
:: All users with mod status
:: All registered users
:: Everyone

* Articles are also first class objects
:: Perma-link independant of channel
:: Articles are tagged by topic(s) as well as channel
:: Articles are automatically archived
:: Archive is easily searchable, and should be referenced when submissions are edited.
:: Articles can be cross-posted to other channels by a channel owner (built into the UI if the editor manages more than one channel)
* Comment key features
:: Comments are first class objects, just as before, just like articles
:: Comments can be edited for a short period of time by owner
::: HOWEVER: Edited comments get a new ID and it links to older versions in the new one. This detail is made prominent to viewer if a comment reply happened before an edit.
:: Allow alternate markup options (bbcode, markdown, wiki markup)
::: Provide a mapping to actual div and styles that will be applied, or HTML equivalent codes

* Allow moderation in same article that you've posted in; only disallow moderation '''to your own reply chain'''.
** You're obviously not allowed to moderate in your own accepted or posted article (treating all comments as replies)
** Does "reply chain" include parent? If not, how do we deal with threadjacking:
**# AC posts first comment on a new article (let's presume it's an upmod-worthy comment, not fristpsot)
**# I post my unrelated comment as a reply to AC's FP, in order to achieve greater visibility
**# I downmod the AC to -1
**# Now AC is invisible to anyone with threshold != -1 (including many with mod points and threshold=0, who would have modded AC up on his own merits)
**# Unless/until users with threshold=-1 and mod points happen by to rectify things, my comment is now the first thing most users see.
**# ??? ''(sorry, can't resist...)''
**# Profit!
***Actually, not just the immediate parent like I said, but 'all' ancestor comments. Otherwise as step 1.5 I just reply with an AC troll (which someone else will rightfully downmod), then in step 2 I reply to ''that''; now that the original AC first post is my comment's gp, so I can still downmod it.
** ''' Good point ''' you should be prevented from moderating any children '''and''' ancestors of your posts (but sibling chains are still fair game)
* Moderation
** I forget who suggested this originally, but in addition to the above constraints, only allow users to moderate a subset of any particular article's comments.
* '''Moderation Engine'''
::{| class="wikitable"
|+ Moderation tags (default scores)
|-
! Mod Up
! Points
! Mod Down
! Points
|-
| Interesting
| +1
| Offtopic
| -1
|-
| Informative
| +1
| Troll/Spam
| -1
|-
| Insightful
| +1
| Groupthink ('''New''')
| -1 (or -0.5?)
|-
| Underrated
| +0.5 ('''New''')
| Overrated
| -0.5 ('''New''')
|-
| Funny
| +0.5 ('''New''')
| Flamebait
| -0.5 ('''New''')
|-
| Devils Advocate ('''New!''')
| +1
| Jibberish ('''New!''')
| -1
|}

** Users assign own weights to tags in the range -2.0 -> 2.0 with 0.5 increments
** System rounds x.5 towards 0 in comment spill / threshold logic, display capped at -1 and 5.
** A score for the default weights is saved for the comment for use by article spill (for googlebot or "load all comments" from anonmyous user)
** An optional cryptocoin tipping system, when you like someone's post you can give him a small cryptocoin tip. That might also work as an additional moderating system. Non-moderators could mod-up comments (Insightful, Funny, etc) by eg. 0.5 points by spending some money.
** What about not-posting in the thread where you moderated? Good or bad rule? Maybe if you really must post, allow cryptocoin paying for post? (eg. "Warning: you have moderated in this thread (or whole story), if you really want to post you need to spend cryptocoin on that" (??)) Not posting in the thread is okay, and much better than disallowing the whole story.
** I think it would be good to display both the positive mods and negative mods on a comment in a concise form (so you could see that this comment is generally regarded both Insightful.... but also Flamebait)

===Moderation strategy===
** Chops instead of Karma
** Chops are derived from:
*** Articles accepted for submission
**** But NOT articles self-authored on a channel you're an editor of
*** Comments that are replied to by others without a troll/flamebait modifier
*** Positive moderation (as judged by the mod action with respect to their own point value weights... so if they think funny is bad, it counts against you)
*** Positive metamoderation outcome (see below)
** Registered users that have used the site > [threshold] days, posted > [threshold] times, and have positive chops get moderation duty (possibly [x] mod points per day?)
*** The more chops, the more mod points per day, with a total cap for unused
'''Meta-moderation'''
* Moderates the moderators in a check and balance type system
* Meta-moderation is available to users that have used the site > [big threshold] days and have > [threshold] chops
** Metamoderation is not "special", a meta-mod capable user can see a random selection of recent mods at any time and metamod.
** Metamod takes 2 mod points <==Open for discussion ??
:::Metamod actions are like moderation actions, you spend modpoints on them. But they are twice as expensive as direct moderation. The theory is that users with more chops (and thus more modpoints to throw around) are more likely to spend some of them on metamoderation.
:::Alternatively.... Meta-mod should be open to all in good standing for RANDOM comments. Maybe allow burning 2 mod points to meta-mod a specific comment ???
** Metamod can spend a mod point to "re-roll" and see a new set of random moderations
** A moderation is undone when it's "score" goes negative. It is "reapplied" when it goes positive. If the score dips to -3, the moderation is removed entirely. Default moderation value should be > 0, possibly 2 ??
** A user is not rewarded or punished for the metamod specifically.
** A running total of positive and negative meta-moderations against them is calculated
** Certain threshold for positive and negative meta-mod counts result in fixed deltas in chops
*** Having >5 positive metamod could be +1 chop score. >10 +2, >20 +3; >3 negative is -1, > 5 is -2, > 10 is -3
** Your current chops as of more than 4 weeks ago is rolled into a fixed amount capped at 1.5 times the "Excellent" value and 1.5 times the most negative "Worst Poster" value.
** On a weekly basis a task is run across all accounts that collects chop point actions since the last summarization date forward a week (actions that happened about 3 weeks ago), applies these to the last +4 weeks ago score, truncates it to the ranges above, and stores it in the database with the new summarization date for that user's account.
** This prevents a user from "banking" actions that give them more chops to only later be a jerk.
** However it lets you be a bit grumpy in the short term since the value can go above the thresholds when calculating the current display/privs value (query all the outstanding chop actions for this user, add the point values to the historic value, store it for easy reference later, cached for an hour)

===Article submission===
** Editor:
*** UTF-8
*** MathJax (mentioned earlier)
*** ability to check links inline during writing the submission. To see how it works just try writing email in gmail. Everytime when you add a link, there's an option right below it to "check link"
** Encouraging submitting good articles:
*** Everytime when a story gets accepted, the submitter gets a small cryptocoin reward (as we know - very easy to automate this). Since we are very poor (at least at start) we will not pay a fixed amount, but a small percentage of all cryptocoins owned by altslashdot.
*** If a story gets accepted but is hugely downvoted later (think Roland Piquepaille), the submitter must give back his reward to be able to submit a new story. In fact even better if he had to give back a tiny fraction more cryptocoin than he received.
** To have funds for all that, we could use:
*** That tipping system (mentioned above in moderation), and everytime you tip someone else a very tiny fraction of that tip goes to altslashdot.
*** Also payments from people desperate to post in thread (or story) where they have moderated (if we decide that this feature is useful, and if it is thread or whole story).
*** Failed submitters, who had to give back their reward plus some extra fraction because their story was hated after it was submitted (think Roland Piquepaille) as mentioned above.
*** Also we can simply hope for money from cryptocoin donations address. IMHO that is quite possible if we make this site good.

* Source standards (should this be spun out into its own page-- Submission Guidelines and Standards ???)
** Link to most primary source possible.
** No more linking to fly-by-night blogs or linkbaits.
** Link to print-version instead of 50-page clickthrough
** If sites get Soylented, should article links automatically Corel Cache?
*** Would there be a way of switching to a different cache on the fly, for when Corel Cache goes out of business?
** No more linkbait titles. After Slashcott, will look up that article... but Dice basically admitted they put celebrity names and intentionally misleading subjects to entice people to click through from search engines. This is a scummy horrible practice that needs to go.
*** TFTitle == TFS == TFA

Historic:FeatureList

2014-02-10T17:22:55Z

Landon: /* Engine Requirements */

== Overview ==

I'd appreciate if everyone would just start adding or removing things they think need to be in the to-be variant of this site

Rather than isolate the things that slashdot already had (we should be familiar with it), let's just explicitly state what we want to see, with the idea that most of it is a copy or inspired by the original. But we can possibly explain, refine, or restrict our focus to the bits that matter.

== General Requirements ==
What features worked and what features did not work during the lifetime of Slashdot?
*Feature that worked was the karma system allowed users to voluntarily disable the advertisement, made them feel happy even though it did nothing different for the business.
*Feature that did not work: Adding a sponsored poll / slashvertising
* Cool new colour

== Engine Requirements ==

* '''Be mindful of bandwidth and the amount of processing done by the server when building any features. One extra character balloons into many megabytes of expensive bandwidth and consumption of server resources. Each feature that bloats a page response or causes the server to process something increases costs--KEEP COSTS DOWN!'''
* UTF-8 clean for anything that doesn't end up in a URL (i.e. tags, titles, channel names, user names)
** Of course, some combining marks would have to be filtered, and the resulting text round-tripped through NFD->NFC to prevent certain types of attacks against users or making text difficult to index.
* [http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/04/stack-exchange-partners-with-mathjax/ MathJax] support both in comments and in submissions
:: Mathjax is the math rendering engine used on [http://stackexchange.com/ stackexchange] and will allow scientific discussion between us (people who read math).
* Channels (like yro, politics, apple) as first class objects
** "Primary" channels that have DNS shorthand (http://apple.altslash.org/ being equiv to http://altslash.org/ch/apple/)
** "Secondary" channels that users could create and play editor that use the more verbose syntax (http://altslash.org/ch/baseball/) that is reminiscent of subreddits
** User channels (i.e. journals, as we've always had)
* Display user IDs
* Javascript Optional

* Submission queues for all channels with membership at the discretion of the channel owner; being able to submit also implies up/downvoting submissions and tagging
:: Editors/channel owners only
:: List of users who can submit
:: All of my friends (for user journals)
:: All users with mod status
:: All registered users
:: Everyone

* Articles are also first class objects
:: Perma-link independant of channel
:: Articles are tagged by topic(s) as well as channel
:: Articles are automatically archived
:: Archive is easily searchable, and should be referenced when submissions are edited.
:: Articles can be cross-posted to other channels by a channel owner (built into the UI if the editor manages more than one channel)
* Comment key features
:: Comments are first class objects, just as before, just like articles
:: Comments can be edited for a short period of time by owner
::: HOWEVER: Edited comments get a new ID and it links to older versions in the new one. This detail is made prominent to viewer if a comment reply happened before an edit.
:: Allow alternate markup options (bbcode, markdown, wiki markup)
::: Provide a mapping to actual div and styles that will be applied, or HTML equivalent codes

* Allow moderation in same article that you've posted in; only disallow moderation '''to your own reply chain'''.
** You're obviously not allowed to moderate in your own accepted or posted article (treating all comments as replies)
** Does "reply chain" include parent? If not, how do we deal with threadjacking:
**# AC posts first comment on a new article (let's presume it's an upmod-worthy comment, not fristpsot)
**# I post my unrelated comment as a reply to AC's FP, in order to achieve greater visibility
**# I downmod the AC to -1
**# Now AC is invisible to anyone with threshold != -1 (including many with mod points and threshold=0, who would have modded AC up on his own merits)
**# Unless/until users with threshold=-1 and mod points happen by to rectify things, my comment is now the first thing most users see.
**# ??? ''(sorry, can't resist...)''
**# Profit!
***Actually, not just the immediate parent like I said, but 'all' ancestor comments. Otherwise as step 1.5 I just reply with an AC troll (which someone else will rightfully downmod), then in step 2 I reply to ''that''; now that the original AC first post is my comment's gp, so I can still downmod it.
** ''' Good point ''' you should be prevented from moderating any children '''and''' ancestors of your posts (but sibling chains are still fair game)
* Moderation
** I forget who suggested this originally, but in addition to the above constraints, only allow users to moderate a subset of any particular article's comments.
* '''Moderation Engine'''
::{| class="wikitable"
|+ Moderation tags (default scores)
|-
! Mod Up
! Points
! Mod Down
! Points
|-
| Interesting
| +1
| Offtopic
| -1
|-
| Informative
| +1
| Troll/Spam
| -1
|-
| Insightful
| +1
| Groupthink ('''New''')
| -1 (or -0.5?)
|-
| Underrated
| +0.5 ('''New''')
| Overrated
| -0.5 ('''New''')
|-
| Funny
| +0.5 ('''New''')
| Flamebait
| -0.5 ('''New''')
|-
| Devils Advocate ('''New!''')
| +1
| Jibberish ('''New!''')
| -1
|}

** Users assign own weights to tags in the range -2.0 -> 2.0 with 0.5 increments
** System rounds x.5 towards 0 in comment spill / threshold logic, display capped at -1 and 5.
** A score for the default weights is saved for the comment for use by article spill (for googlebot or "load all comments" from anonmyous user)
** An optional cryptocoin tipping system, when you like someone's post you can give him a small cryptocoin tip. That might also work as an additional moderating system. Non-moderators could mod-up comments (Insightful, Funny, etc) by eg. 0.5 points by spending some money.
** What about not-posting in the thread where you moderated? Good or bad rule? Maybe if you really must post, allow cryptocoin paying for post? (eg. "Warning: you have moderated in this thread (or whole story), if you really want to post you need to spend cryptocoin on that" (??)) Not posting in the thread is okay, and much better than disallowing the whole story.
** I think it would be good to display both the positive mods and negative mods on a comment in a concise form (so you could see that this comment is generally regarded both Insightful.... but also Flamebait)

'''Moderation strategy'''
** Chops instead of Karma
** Chops are derived from:
*** Articles accepted for submission
**** But NOT articles self-authored on a channel you're an editor of
*** Comments that are replied to by others without a troll/flamebait modifier
*** Positive moderation (as judged by the mod action with respect to their own point value weights... so if they think funny is bad, it counts against you)
*** Positive metamoderation outcome (see below)
** Registered users that have used the site > [threshold] days, posted > [threshold] times, and have positive chops get moderation duty (possibly [x] mod points per day?)
*** The more chops, the more mod points per day, with a total cap for unused
'''Meta-moderation'''
* Moderates the moderators in a check and balance type system
* Meta-moderation is available to users that have used the site > [big threshold] days and have > [threshold] chops
** Metamoderation is not "special", a meta-mod capable user can see a random selection of recent mods at any time and metamod.
** Metamod takes 2 mod points <==Open for discussion ??
:::Metamod actions are like moderation actions, you spend modpoints on them. But they are twice as expensive as direct moderation. The theory is that users with more chops (and thus more modpoints to throw around) are more likely to spend some of them on metamoderation.
:::Alternatively.... Meta-mod should be open to all in good standing for RANDOM comments. Maybe allow burning 2 mod points to meta-mod a specific comment ???
** Metamod can spend a mod point to "re-roll" and see a new set of random moderations
** A moderation is undone when it's "score" goes negative. It is "reapplied" when it goes positive. If the score dips to -3, the moderation is removed entirely. Default moderation value should be > 0, possibly 2 ??
** A user is not rewarded or punished for the metamod specifically.
** A running total of positive and negative meta-moderations against them is calculated
** Certain threshold for positive and negative meta-mod counts result in fixed deltas in chops
*** Having >5 positive metamod could be +1 chop score. >10 +2, >20 +3; >3 negative is -1, > 5 is -2, > 10 is -3
** Your current chops as of more than 4 weeks ago is rolled into a fixed amount capped at 1.5 times the "Excellent" value and 1.5 times the most negative "Worst Poster" value.
** On a weekly basis a task is run across all accounts that collects chop point actions since the last summarization date forward a week (actions that happened about 3 weeks ago), applies these to the last +4 weeks ago score, truncates it to the ranges above, and stores it in the database with the new summarization date for that user's account.
** This prevents a user from "banking" actions that give them more chops to only later be a jerk.
** However it lets you be a bit grumpy in the short term since the value can go above the thresholds when calculating the current display/privs value (query all the outstanding chop actions for this user, add the point values to the historic value, store it for easy reference later, cached for an hour)

* '''Article submission'''
** Editor:
*** UTF-8
*** MathJax (mentioned earlier)
*** ability to check links inline during writing the submission. To see how it works just try writing email in gmail. Everytime when you add a link, there's an option right below it to "check link"
** Encouraging submitting good articles:
*** Everytime when a story gets accepted, the submitter gets a small cryptocoin reward (as we know - very easy to automate this). Since we are very poor (at least at start) we will not pay a fixed amount, but a small percentage of all cryptocoins owned by altslashdot.
*** If a story gets accepted but is hugely downvoted later (think Roland Piquepaille), the submitter must give back his reward to be able to submit a new story. In fact even better if he had to give back a tiny fraction more cryptocoin than he received.
** To have funds for all that, we could use:
*** That tipping system (mentioned above in moderation), and everytime you tip someone else a very tiny fraction of that tip goes to altslashdot.
*** Also payments from people desperate to post in thread (or story) where they have moderated (if we decide that this feature is useful, and if it is thread or whole story).
*** Failed submitters, who had to give back their reward plus some extra fraction because their story was hated after it was submitted (think Roland Piquepaille) as mentioned above.
*** Also we can simply hope for money from cryptocoin donations address. IMHO that is quite possible if we make this site good.

SoylentNews

2014-02-10T17:02:40Z

Landon: /* Telling the world about SoylentNews.org */

[[FAQ|Frequently Asked Questions]]

'''Site Announcements'''

I'll have status about the first rollout late Monday.

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

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 [http://imgbin.org/index.php?page=image&id=16688| look and feel] of the new site!

----

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'''

And the tagline is: '''SoylentNews is people!'''

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

* It's 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

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.)

----

'''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 [[Finances|here]] 
* Some business planning is [[Business|here]] 
* A statement of functionality (turn into a requirements document?)--- [[FeatureList]]

''' Get Involved '''

'''Hop in to IRC!''' - [[AltSlashdot:IRC|IRC]]: ##altslashdot on chat.freenode.net ([https://webchat.freenode.net/?channels=##altslashdot Webchat])

'''Register on the forums''' - http://forums.SoylentNews.org
* Go to forums.SoylentNews.org and register a user
* Go to your user panel (UL corner of page) and then "Groups" tab
* Add yourself to whichever groups you are interested in

'''Mumble (Voice / Text Server)''' : voice.whackperiod.org

'''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

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

==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 [[Finances|business model]].
* We won't poach from Slashdot. This includes articles and logos, also "style" to a reasonable extent.

Mailing list update Messages are [[MailingListUpdates|here]]

==ToDo==
[[SlashcodeTodo|Slashcode Todo list]]

* Install SlashCode on the production site
* Get some people to help with the site
* Run a contest for a better name [[NewName|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 ==
*[[Finances|Finances]] -- which model would allow to minimise and/or distribute hosting costs
*[[FeatureList]] - Discussion of required/desired characteristics
*[[MailingListUpdates|MailingListUpdates]]
*[[Submission guidelines|Submission guidelines]]
*[[Business|Business]]
*[[NewName|NewName]]
*[[SlashcodeTodo|SlashcodeTodo]]
*[[Migration of users from Slashdot]]
That's all I see at the moment, please add more as you start or find new pages.

== Comments ==

* I've picked up the domain altslash.org, and I'm looking to be a part of a join effort to create a slashdot alternative more in the style of the classic slashdot system. I picked up this domain simply because a lot of the alternatives being discussed (e.g., altslashdot.org) may end up being the target of a trademark dispute. The "trademark" for altslash.org would be altslash, with the "dot.org" being merged into .org. It reads the same way as the original "slashdot.org," but looks very clean in my opinion. If anyone wants to setup a group to use altslash.org instead, let me know.

* Have you considered talking with Bruce Parens? He had a site called "technocrat.net" that some people from slashdot were quite fond of not too long ago. It seems some people on slashdot are already trying to get him to re-launch it. I don't know if the two of you would have compatible goals or not, but it might be worth sending him an email. He has a parking page up on technocrat.net right now that has his email address on it.

* I'm a professional web developer and can help. I was about to register a domain on my VPS to start something like this. If you want, I'll do what I can to help. I've built a few CMS from scratch and am downloading slashcode right now. Incidentally I'm a hybrid as I am also a digital artist (namely in UI). We need an IRC channel to talk about this I think.--[[User:Hedgie|Hedgie]] ([[User talk:Hedgie|talk]]) 18:34, 6 February 2014 (MST)

* I don't know about other people, but I think I would be more liable to stick with an alternative if it scraped content from original /. in addition to whatever else you do. [[Special:Contributions/173.13.21.65|173.13.21.65]] 09:21, 6 February 2014 (MST)

''I'm against this. I don't consider it fair - they've put a lot of effort into building up their brand and community. If we are to succeed, we need to do it on our own merits."

There are no doubt legal as well as moral objections to content scraping, but when you say "...they've put a lot of effort into building up their brand and community...", well, for over 15 years *we* have been that community and if not for us there would be some former college students who used to have a little hobby site.--unitron

** Scraping bad. Having editors dotted around the timezones that create their own better versions of the summaries, even if they contain just the same links as the /. story that inspired them, not bad. [[User:FatPhil|FatPhil]] ([[User talk:FatPhil|talk]]) 14:14, 6 February 2014 (MST)

** Agree with scraping bad. The general trend for the summaries has gone downhill badly over the past few years so better to have editors (re-)publish articles even if they use the same (or better) links ([[User:Qwade|Qwade]])

** Scraping Slashdot is pointless. It's been said many times, the discussion is the thing, not the articles. Considered purely as a news site, Slashdot is CRAP, always has been. Speaking of discussion, a Wiki is about the worst discussion medium I can imagine - is there anywhere we can move this to? - Mike Baranczak, 2014-02-07

* Maybe a wiki is the best way to do this? I see you've started with slashcode, but that might be a misstep. You have noticed by now that slashcode hasn't been updated in many years, hence it will be way behind the current slashdot. I think you might be better off hacking a wiki into slashdot-style functionality.

''I agree, this may be a misstep (and this occurred to me independently of your note). My best guess is to attempt installing slashcode and see where that goes, and try for a new system if it's unworkable. We'll see.''

:* I think hacking slashcode into slashdot-style functionality would be easier and better than hammering a wiki into that round hole. [[User:Mfnickster|Mfnickster]] ([[User talk:Mfnickster|talk]])

**[[https://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Main_Page Wikinews]] is Wikimedia's attempt to turn a wiki in to a news site. Not sure how easy that would be to mold in to a more Slashdotty site

* If you don't want to use the old slashcode, have you considered looking at '''discourse''' as the site server? AFAICT, it's a reasonably new project which being developed intended to address the authors' perceived flaws in the status-quo of forum software. It's written in JavaScript, but it might serve as a starting point for a new codebase, or worth a look to get some inspiration:
** http://www.discourse.org/faq/
** https://github.com/discourse/discourse

* '''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 [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debian#Organization 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. --[[Special:Contributions/141.84.69.20|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?

* see Freenode, #slashdot-refugees for real time discussion.

'''UPDATE:''' ''My proposed [[Finances|business plan]] should allay these fears.''

''You make some good points.''

''In my experience, community-driven projects don't usually do well. This is not to say that no such projects succeed, but the balance of probability does not favor group management.''

''There is a wide selection of projects which are successful because one person had a vision and the drive to make that vision happen - every successful business starts this way.''

''I've run businesses that use a lot of volunteer help, so I've got some experience there.''

''As far as selling the website, it's crossed my mind. I don't want to "sell out" and destroy the community, but it would be nice to have an "exit strategy". Commenting on Slashdot fun, but doing it as a day job will probably get tedious.''

''I don't know what the answer is - it's something that we'll have to work out.''

* (I put in a topic with a suggestion on the discussion page so this doesn't get too cluttered. ~ElectricTurtle)

* Additional points: Make the whole website (including stories/comments) available under [https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ CC-BY-SA] to retain the [http://meatballwiki.org/wiki/RightToFork right to fork]. You should also reconsider the name. I imagine "AltSlashdot" could get you into all sorts of legal trouble, since it is very close to the "Slashdot" trademark. --[[Special:Contributions/141.84.69.20|141.84.69.20]] 03:20, 6 February 2014 (MST)

* Attempt to '''coordinate and combine''' the parallel efforts. E.g. Slashdot user [http://slashdot.org/~dotancohen dotancohen] has [http://news.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=4757151&cid=46171009 apparently] registered the domain "slashdotan" and is looking to build a new Slashdot there. There are probably a dozen people hacking away separately on similar efforts. Competition is probably good, but combining efforts should be considered. --Slashdot user [http://slashdot.org/~JustinOpinion JustinOpinion].

* [https://github.com/digilord DigiLord] - I would like to help

* I'm the dotancohen mentioned by JustinOpinion. I have some limited experience with Amazon Web Services to run cloud servers for sites with very dynamic load profiles. Altslashdot seems like the perfect application of that technology, as we can expect to get slashdotted at any time. I also agree that we should coordinate efforts, as the whole premise is to keep the /. community together. [[User:Dotancohen|Dotancohen]] ([[User talk:Dotancohen|talk]]) 08:38, 6 February 2014 (MST)

* Re: combining efforts. User somenickname (1270442) has registered bangslashdot.(org|net|com) [[http://science.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=4757113&cid=46169131]]

* I ([[User:Bryan|Bryan]]) also plan on making a slashdot-inspired site. The website will be called "Pipedot" and be reachable at [http://pipedot.org/ pipedot.org] or [http://pipedot.com/ pipedot.com]. The motto will be "News for nerds, without the corporate slant." Get it? A pipe character looks like a slash without the slant! However, I plan on creating my own software instead of using slashcode/mediawiki/etc so it may take a while to get feature complete with slashdot classsic. (Why? Because I've always wanted to scratch that itch. Duh!)

* I think it would be best to just go over to Usenet. It is distributed, uncensorable, scales extremely well, the infrastructure is already in place, and it works. No Javascript, no business models, nothing but pure text-mode comment goodness. [http://www.eternal-september.org Eternal September] is free and works well, but does not allow binaries. That's fine, we have magnet links these days. EDIT: comp.misc is the new Slashdot. It's official now. Join us there and keep it free as in FREEDOM!

* relevant slashdot stats from 2011 [[http://www.dbasoul.com/2011/992.html]]
**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)

* I suggest that when updates to the code are made, it should be in the charter (or whatever we are calling it) to make that code public. -- CommonJoe

::* See [[SoylentNews#Licensing.3F|my questions about licensing below]]. The AGPL would guarantee that the code remain public... anyone actually working with the new site/codebase want to weigh in? ~ [[User:Seandiggity|Seandiggity]] ([[User talk:Seandiggity|talk]]) 07:56, 10 February 2014 (MST)

== 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 ==
*I don't know what John wants as far as advertising this page but I'm sure he wants as much exposure as possible.
*Please mention SolentNews.org as much as possible.
*It seems like the word is spreading (over 25,000 in 5 days) 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
::: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7193251 Submission from when AltSlashdot just started]
::: Due for an update once we get an actual site up and running

== 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! ~ [[User:Seandiggity|Seandiggity]] ([[User talk: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).

SoylentNews

2014-02-10T16:53:47Z

Landon: /* Licensing? */

[[FAQ|Frequently Asked Questions]]

'''Site Announcements'''

I'll have status about the first rollout late Monday.

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

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 [http://imgbin.org/index.php?page=image&id=16688| look and feel] of the new site!

----

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'''

And the tagline is: '''SoylentNews is people!'''

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

* It's 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

* Trademark issues

* "News fresh as processed corpses"

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.)

----

'''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 [[Finances|here]] 
* Some business planning is [[Business|here]] 
* A statement of functionality (turn into a requirements document?)--- [[FeatureList]]

''' Get Involved '''

'''Hop in to IRC!''' - [[AltSlashdot:IRC|IRC]]: ##altslashdot on chat.freenode.net ([https://webchat.freenode.net/?channels=##altslashdot Webchat])

'''Register on the forums''' - http://forums.SoylentNews.org
* Go to forums.SoylentNews.org and register a user
* Go to your user panel (UL corner of page) and then "Groups" tab
* Add yourself to whichever groups you are interested in

'''Mumble (Voice / Text Server)''' : voice.whackperiod.org

'''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

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

==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 [[Finances|business model]].
* We won't poach from Slashdot. This includes articles and logos, also "style" to a reasonable extent.

Mailing list update Messages are [[MailingListUpdates|here]]

==ToDo==
[[SlashcodeTodo|Slashcode Todo list]]

* Install SlashCode on the production site
* Get some people to help with the site
* Run a contest for a better name [[NewName|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 ==
*[[Finances|Finances]] -- which model would allow to minimise and/or distribute hosting costs
*[[FeatureList]] - Discussion of required/desired characteristics
*[[MailingListUpdates|MailingListUpdates]]
*[[Submission guidelines|Submission guidelines]]
*[[Business|Business]]
*[[NewName|NewName]]
*[[SlashcodeTodo|SlashcodeTodo]]
*[[Migration of users from Slashdot]]
That's all I see at the moment, please add more as you start or find new pages.

== Comments ==

* I've picked up the domain altslash.org, and I'm looking to be a part of a join effort to create a slashdot alternative more in the style of the classic slashdot system. I picked up this domain simply because a lot of the alternatives being discussed (e.g., altslashdot.org) may end up being the target of a trademark dispute. The "trademark" for altslash.org would be altslash, with the "dot.org" being merged into .org. It reads the same way as the original "slashdot.org," but looks very clean in my opinion. If anyone wants to setup a group to use altslash.org instead, let me know.

* Have you considered talking with Bruce Parens? He had a site called "technocrat.net" that some people from slashdot were quite fond of not too long ago. It seems some people on slashdot are already trying to get him to re-launch it. I don't know if the two of you would have compatible goals or not, but it might be worth sending him an email. He has a parking page up on technocrat.net right now that has his email address on it.

* I'm a professional web developer and can help. I was about to register a domain on my VPS to start something like this. If you want, I'll do what I can to help. I've built a few CMS from scratch and am downloading slashcode right now. Incidentally I'm a hybrid as I am also a digital artist (namely in UI). We need an IRC channel to talk about this I think.--[[User:Hedgie|Hedgie]] ([[User talk:Hedgie|talk]]) 18:34, 6 February 2014 (MST)

* I don't know about other people, but I think I would be more liable to stick with an alternative if it scraped content from original /. in addition to whatever else you do. [[Special:Contributions/173.13.21.65|173.13.21.65]] 09:21, 6 February 2014 (MST)

''I'm against this. I don't consider it fair - they've put a lot of effort into building up their brand and community. If we are to succeed, we need to do it on our own merits."

There are no doubt legal as well as moral objections to content scraping, but when you say "...they've put a lot of effort into building up their brand and community...", well, for over 15 years *we* have been that community and if not for us there would be some former college students who used to have a little hobby site.--unitron

** Scraping bad. Having editors dotted around the timezones that create their own better versions of the summaries, even if they contain just the same links as the /. story that inspired them, not bad. [[User:FatPhil|FatPhil]] ([[User talk:FatPhil|talk]]) 14:14, 6 February 2014 (MST)

** Agree with scraping bad. The general trend for the summaries has gone downhill badly over the past few years so better to have editors (re-)publish articles even if they use the same (or better) links ([[User:Qwade|Qwade]])

** Scraping Slashdot is pointless. It's been said many times, the discussion is the thing, not the articles. Considered purely as a news site, Slashdot is CRAP, always has been. Speaking of discussion, a Wiki is about the worst discussion medium I can imagine - is there anywhere we can move this to? - Mike Baranczak, 2014-02-07

* Maybe a wiki is the best way to do this? I see you've started with slashcode, but that might be a misstep. You have noticed by now that slashcode hasn't been updated in many years, hence it will be way behind the current slashdot. I think you might be better off hacking a wiki into slashdot-style functionality.

''I agree, this may be a misstep (and this occurred to me independently of your note). My best guess is to attempt installing slashcode and see where that goes, and try for a new system if it's unworkable. We'll see.''

:* I think hacking slashcode into slashdot-style functionality would be easier and better than hammering a wiki into that round hole. [[User:Mfnickster|Mfnickster]] ([[User talk:Mfnickster|talk]])

**[[https://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Main_Page Wikinews]] is Wikimedia's attempt to turn a wiki in to a news site. Not sure how easy that would be to mold in to a more Slashdotty site

* If you don't want to use the old slashcode, have you considered looking at '''discourse''' as the site server? AFAICT, it's a reasonably new project which being developed intended to address the authors' perceived flaws in the status-quo of forum software. It's written in JavaScript, but it might serve as a starting point for a new codebase, or worth a look to get some inspiration:
** http://www.discourse.org/faq/
** https://github.com/discourse/discourse

* '''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 [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debian#Organization 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. --[[Special:Contributions/141.84.69.20|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?

* see Freenode, #slashdot-refugees for real time discussion.

'''UPDATE:''' ''My proposed [[Finances|business plan]] should allay these fears.''

''You make some good points.''

''In my experience, community-driven projects don't usually do well. This is not to say that no such projects succeed, but the balance of probability does not favor group management.''

''There is a wide selection of projects which are successful because one person had a vision and the drive to make that vision happen - every successful business starts this way.''

''I've run businesses that use a lot of volunteer help, so I've got some experience there.''

''As far as selling the website, it's crossed my mind. I don't want to "sell out" and destroy the community, but it would be nice to have an "exit strategy". Commenting on Slashdot fun, but doing it as a day job will probably get tedious.''

''I don't know what the answer is - it's something that we'll have to work out.''

* (I put in a topic with a suggestion on the discussion page so this doesn't get too cluttered. ~ElectricTurtle)

* Additional points: Make the whole website (including stories/comments) available under [https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ CC-BY-SA] to retain the [http://meatballwiki.org/wiki/RightToFork right to fork]. You should also reconsider the name. I imagine "AltSlashdot" could get you into all sorts of legal trouble, since it is very close to the "Slashdot" trademark. --[[Special:Contributions/141.84.69.20|141.84.69.20]] 03:20, 6 February 2014 (MST)

* Attempt to '''coordinate and combine''' the parallel efforts. E.g. Slashdot user [http://slashdot.org/~dotancohen dotancohen] has [http://news.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=4757151&cid=46171009 apparently] registered the domain "slashdotan" and is looking to build a new Slashdot there. There are probably a dozen people hacking away separately on similar efforts. Competition is probably good, but combining efforts should be considered. --Slashdot user [http://slashdot.org/~JustinOpinion JustinOpinion].

* [https://github.com/digilord DigiLord] - I would like to help

* I'm the dotancohen mentioned by JustinOpinion. I have some limited experience with Amazon Web Services to run cloud servers for sites with very dynamic load profiles. Altslashdot seems like the perfect application of that technology, as we can expect to get slashdotted at any time. I also agree that we should coordinate efforts, as the whole premise is to keep the /. community together. [[User:Dotancohen|Dotancohen]] ([[User talk:Dotancohen|talk]]) 08:38, 6 February 2014 (MST)

* Re: combining efforts. User somenickname (1270442) has registered bangslashdot.(org|net|com) [[http://science.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=4757113&cid=46169131]]

* I ([[User:Bryan|Bryan]]) also plan on making a slashdot-inspired site. The website will be called "Pipedot" and be reachable at [http://pipedot.org/ pipedot.org] or [http://pipedot.com/ pipedot.com]. The motto will be "News for nerds, without the corporate slant." Get it? A pipe character looks like a slash without the slant! However, I plan on creating my own software instead of using slashcode/mediawiki/etc so it may take a while to get feature complete with slashdot classsic. (Why? Because I've always wanted to scratch that itch. Duh!)

* I think it would be best to just go over to Usenet. It is distributed, uncensorable, scales extremely well, the infrastructure is already in place, and it works. No Javascript, no business models, nothing but pure text-mode comment goodness. [http://www.eternal-september.org Eternal September] is free and works well, but does not allow binaries. That's fine, we have magnet links these days. EDIT: comp.misc is the new Slashdot. It's official now. Join us there and keep it free as in FREEDOM!

* relevant slashdot stats from 2011 [[http://www.dbasoul.com/2011/992.html]]
**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)

* I suggest that when updates to the code are made, it should be in the charter (or whatever we are calling it) to make that code public. -- CommonJoe

::* See [[SoylentNews#Licensing.3F|my questions about licensing below]]. The AGPL would guarantee that the code remain public... anyone actually working with the new site/codebase want to weigh in? ~ [[User:Seandiggity|Seandiggity]] ([[User talk:Seandiggity|talk]]) 07:56, 10 February 2014 (MST)

== 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 ==
*I don't know what John wants as far as advertising this page but I'm sure he wants as much exposure as possible.
*Please mention SolentNews.org as much as possible.
*It seems like the word is spreading (over 25,000 in 5 days) 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

== 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! ~ [[User:Seandiggity|Seandiggity]] ([[User talk: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).

SoylentNews

2014-02-10T16:51:26Z

Landon: /* Telling the world about SoylentNews.org */ formatting

[[FAQ|Frequently Asked Questions]]

'''Site Announcements'''

I'll have status about the first rollout late Monday.

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

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 [http://imgbin.org/index.php?page=image&id=16688| look and feel] of the new site!

----

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'''

And the tagline is: '''SoylentNews is people!'''

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

* It's 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

* Trademark issues

* "News fresh as processed corpses"

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.)

----

'''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 [[Finances|here]] 
* Some business planning is [[Business|here]] 
* A statement of functionality (turn into a requirements document?)--- [[FeatureList]]

''' Get Involved '''

'''Hop in to IRC!''' - [[AltSlashdot:IRC|IRC]]: ##altslashdot on chat.freenode.net ([https://webchat.freenode.net/?channels=##altslashdot Webchat])

'''Register on the forums''' - http://forums.SoylentNews.org
* Go to forums.SoylentNews.org and register a user
* Go to your user panel (UL corner of page) and then "Groups" tab
* Add yourself to whichever groups you are interested in

'''Mumble (Voice / Text Server)''' : voice.whackperiod.org

'''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

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

==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 [[Finances|business model]].
* We won't poach from Slashdot. This includes articles and logos, also "style" to a reasonable extent.

Mailing list update Messages are [[MailingListUpdates|here]]

==ToDo==
[[SlashcodeTodo|Slashcode Todo list]]

* Install SlashCode on the production site
* Get some people to help with the site
* Run a contest for a better name [[NewName|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 ==
*[[Finances|Finances]] -- which model would allow to minimise and/or distribute hosting costs
*[[FeatureList]] - Discussion of required/desired characteristics
*[[MailingListUpdates|MailingListUpdates]]
*[[Submission guidelines|Submission guidelines]]
*[[Business|Business]]
*[[NewName|NewName]]
*[[SlashcodeTodo|SlashcodeTodo]]
*[[Migration of users from Slashdot]]
That's all I see at the moment, please add more as you start or find new pages.

== Comments ==

* I've picked up the domain altslash.org, and I'm looking to be a part of a join effort to create a slashdot alternative more in the style of the classic slashdot system. I picked up this domain simply because a lot of the alternatives being discussed (e.g., altslashdot.org) may end up being the target of a trademark dispute. The "trademark" for altslash.org would be altslash, with the "dot.org" being merged into .org. It reads the same way as the original "slashdot.org," but looks very clean in my opinion. If anyone wants to setup a group to use altslash.org instead, let me know.

* Have you considered talking with Bruce Parens? He had a site called "technocrat.net" that some people from slashdot were quite fond of not too long ago. It seems some people on slashdot are already trying to get him to re-launch it. I don't know if the two of you would have compatible goals or not, but it might be worth sending him an email. He has a parking page up on technocrat.net right now that has his email address on it.

* I'm a professional web developer and can help. I was about to register a domain on my VPS to start something like this. If you want, I'll do what I can to help. I've built a few CMS from scratch and am downloading slashcode right now. Incidentally I'm a hybrid as I am also a digital artist (namely in UI). We need an IRC channel to talk about this I think.--[[User:Hedgie|Hedgie]] ([[User talk:Hedgie|talk]]) 18:34, 6 February 2014 (MST)

* I don't know about other people, but I think I would be more liable to stick with an alternative if it scraped content from original /. in addition to whatever else you do. [[Special:Contributions/173.13.21.65|173.13.21.65]] 09:21, 6 February 2014 (MST)

''I'm against this. I don't consider it fair - they've put a lot of effort into building up their brand and community. If we are to succeed, we need to do it on our own merits."

There are no doubt legal as well as moral objections to content scraping, but when you say "...they've put a lot of effort into building up their brand and community...", well, for over 15 years *we* have been that community and if not for us there would be some former college students who used to have a little hobby site.--unitron

** Scraping bad. Having editors dotted around the timezones that create their own better versions of the summaries, even if they contain just the same links as the /. story that inspired them, not bad. [[User:FatPhil|FatPhil]] ([[User talk:FatPhil|talk]]) 14:14, 6 February 2014 (MST)

** Agree with scraping bad. The general trend for the summaries has gone downhill badly over the past few years so better to have editors (re-)publish articles even if they use the same (or better) links ([[User:Qwade|Qwade]])

** Scraping Slashdot is pointless. It's been said many times, the discussion is the thing, not the articles. Considered purely as a news site, Slashdot is CRAP, always has been. Speaking of discussion, a Wiki is about the worst discussion medium I can imagine - is there anywhere we can move this to? - Mike Baranczak, 2014-02-07

* Maybe a wiki is the best way to do this? I see you've started with slashcode, but that might be a misstep. You have noticed by now that slashcode hasn't been updated in many years, hence it will be way behind the current slashdot. I think you might be better off hacking a wiki into slashdot-style functionality.

''I agree, this may be a misstep (and this occurred to me independently of your note). My best guess is to attempt installing slashcode and see where that goes, and try for a new system if it's unworkable. We'll see.''

:* I think hacking slashcode into slashdot-style functionality would be easier and better than hammering a wiki into that round hole. [[User:Mfnickster|Mfnickster]] ([[User talk:Mfnickster|talk]])

**[[https://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Main_Page Wikinews]] is Wikimedia's attempt to turn a wiki in to a news site. Not sure how easy that would be to mold in to a more Slashdotty site

* If you don't want to use the old slashcode, have you considered looking at '''discourse''' as the site server? AFAICT, it's a reasonably new project which being developed intended to address the authors' perceived flaws in the status-quo of forum software. It's written in JavaScript, but it might serve as a starting point for a new codebase, or worth a look to get some inspiration:
** http://www.discourse.org/faq/
** https://github.com/discourse/discourse

* '''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 [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debian#Organization 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. --[[Special:Contributions/141.84.69.20|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?

* see Freenode, #slashdot-refugees for real time discussion.

'''UPDATE:''' ''My proposed [[Finances|business plan]] should allay these fears.''

''You make some good points.''

''In my experience, community-driven projects don't usually do well. This is not to say that no such projects succeed, but the balance of probability does not favor group management.''

''There is a wide selection of projects which are successful because one person had a vision and the drive to make that vision happen - every successful business starts this way.''

''I've run businesses that use a lot of volunteer help, so I've got some experience there.''

''As far as selling the website, it's crossed my mind. I don't want to "sell out" and destroy the community, but it would be nice to have an "exit strategy". Commenting on Slashdot fun, but doing it as a day job will probably get tedious.''

''I don't know what the answer is - it's something that we'll have to work out.''

* (I put in a topic with a suggestion on the discussion page so this doesn't get too cluttered. ~ElectricTurtle)

* Additional points: Make the whole website (including stories/comments) available under [https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ CC-BY-SA] to retain the [http://meatballwiki.org/wiki/RightToFork right to fork]. You should also reconsider the name. I imagine "AltSlashdot" could get you into all sorts of legal trouble, since it is very close to the "Slashdot" trademark. --[[Special:Contributions/141.84.69.20|141.84.69.20]] 03:20, 6 February 2014 (MST)

* Attempt to '''coordinate and combine''' the parallel efforts. E.g. Slashdot user [http://slashdot.org/~dotancohen dotancohen] has [http://news.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=4757151&cid=46171009 apparently] registered the domain "slashdotan" and is looking to build a new Slashdot there. There are probably a dozen people hacking away separately on similar efforts. Competition is probably good, but combining efforts should be considered. --Slashdot user [http://slashdot.org/~JustinOpinion JustinOpinion].

* [https://github.com/digilord DigiLord] - I would like to help

* I'm the dotancohen mentioned by JustinOpinion. I have some limited experience with Amazon Web Services to run cloud servers for sites with very dynamic load profiles. Altslashdot seems like the perfect application of that technology, as we can expect to get slashdotted at any time. I also agree that we should coordinate efforts, as the whole premise is to keep the /. community together. [[User:Dotancohen|Dotancohen]] ([[User talk:Dotancohen|talk]]) 08:38, 6 February 2014 (MST)

* Re: combining efforts. User somenickname (1270442) has registered bangslashdot.(org|net|com) [[http://science.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=4757113&cid=46169131]]

* I ([[User:Bryan|Bryan]]) also plan on making a slashdot-inspired site. The website will be called "Pipedot" and be reachable at [http://pipedot.org/ pipedot.org] or [http://pipedot.com/ pipedot.com]. The motto will be "News for nerds, without the corporate slant." Get it? A pipe character looks like a slash without the slant! However, I plan on creating my own software instead of using slashcode/mediawiki/etc so it may take a while to get feature complete with slashdot classsic. (Why? Because I've always wanted to scratch that itch. Duh!)

* I think it would be best to just go over to Usenet. It is distributed, uncensorable, scales extremely well, the infrastructure is already in place, and it works. No Javascript, no business models, nothing but pure text-mode comment goodness. [http://www.eternal-september.org Eternal September] is free and works well, but does not allow binaries. That's fine, we have magnet links these days. EDIT: comp.misc is the new Slashdot. It's official now. Join us there and keep it free as in FREEDOM!

* relevant slashdot stats from 2011 [[http://www.dbasoul.com/2011/992.html]]
**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)

* I suggest that when updates to the code are made, it should be in the charter (or whatever we are calling it) to make that code public. -- CommonJoe

::* See [[SoylentNews#Licensing.3F|my questions about licensing below]]. The AGPL would guarantee that the code remain public... anyone actually working with the new site/codebase want to weigh in? ~ [[User:Seandiggity|Seandiggity]] ([[User talk:Seandiggity|talk]]) 07:56, 10 February 2014 (MST)

== 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 ==
*I don't know what John wants as far as advertising this page but I'm sure he wants as much exposure as possible.
*Please mention SolentNews.org as much as possible.
*It seems like the word is spreading (over 25,000 in 5 days) 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

== 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! ~ [[User:Seandiggity|Seandiggity]] ([[User talk:Seandiggity|talk]]) 12:36, 9 February 2014 (MST)

SoylentNews

2014-02-10T16:50:39Z

Landon: /* Telling the world about SoylentNews.org */

[[FAQ|Frequently Asked Questions]]

'''Site Announcements'''

I'll have status about the first rollout late Monday.

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

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 [http://imgbin.org/index.php?page=image&id=16688| look and feel] of the new site!

----

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'''

And the tagline is: '''SoylentNews is people!'''

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

* It's 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

* Trademark issues

* "News fresh as processed corpses"

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.)

----

'''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 [[Finances|here]] 
* Some business planning is [[Business|here]] 
* A statement of functionality (turn into a requirements document?)--- [[FeatureList]]

''' Get Involved '''

'''Hop in to IRC!''' - [[AltSlashdot:IRC|IRC]]: ##altslashdot on chat.freenode.net ([https://webchat.freenode.net/?channels=##altslashdot Webchat])

'''Register on the forums''' - http://forums.SoylentNews.org
* Go to forums.SoylentNews.org and register a user
* Go to your user panel (UL corner of page) and then "Groups" tab
* Add yourself to whichever groups you are interested in

'''Mumble (Voice / Text Server)''' : voice.whackperiod.org

'''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

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

==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 [[Finances|business model]].
* We won't poach from Slashdot. This includes articles and logos, also "style" to a reasonable extent.

Mailing list update Messages are [[MailingListUpdates|here]]

==ToDo==
[[SlashcodeTodo|Slashcode Todo list]]

* Install SlashCode on the production site
* Get some people to help with the site
* Run a contest for a better name [[NewName|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 ==
*[[Finances|Finances]] -- which model would allow to minimise and/or distribute hosting costs
*[[FeatureList]] - Discussion of required/desired characteristics
*[[MailingListUpdates|MailingListUpdates]]
*[[Submission guidelines|Submission guidelines]]
*[[Business|Business]]
*[[NewName|NewName]]
*[[SlashcodeTodo|SlashcodeTodo]]
*[[Migration of users from Slashdot]]
That's all I see at the moment, please add more as you start or find new pages.

== Comments ==

* I've picked up the domain altslash.org, and I'm looking to be a part of a join effort to create a slashdot alternative more in the style of the classic slashdot system. I picked up this domain simply because a lot of the alternatives being discussed (e.g., altslashdot.org) may end up being the target of a trademark dispute. The "trademark" for altslash.org would be altslash, with the "dot.org" being merged into .org. It reads the same way as the original "slashdot.org," but looks very clean in my opinion. If anyone wants to setup a group to use altslash.org instead, let me know.

* Have you considered talking with Bruce Parens? He had a site called "technocrat.net" that some people from slashdot were quite fond of not too long ago. It seems some people on slashdot are already trying to get him to re-launch it. I don't know if the two of you would have compatible goals or not, but it might be worth sending him an email. He has a parking page up on technocrat.net right now that has his email address on it.

* I'm a professional web developer and can help. I was about to register a domain on my VPS to start something like this. If you want, I'll do what I can to help. I've built a few CMS from scratch and am downloading slashcode right now. Incidentally I'm a hybrid as I am also a digital artist (namely in UI). We need an IRC channel to talk about this I think.--[[User:Hedgie|Hedgie]] ([[User talk:Hedgie|talk]]) 18:34, 6 February 2014 (MST)

* I don't know about other people, but I think I would be more liable to stick with an alternative if it scraped content from original /. in addition to whatever else you do. [[Special:Contributions/173.13.21.65|173.13.21.65]] 09:21, 6 February 2014 (MST)

''I'm against this. I don't consider it fair - they've put a lot of effort into building up their brand and community. If we are to succeed, we need to do it on our own merits."

There are no doubt legal as well as moral objections to content scraping, but when you say "...they've put a lot of effort into building up their brand and community...", well, for over 15 years *we* have been that community and if not for us there would be some former college students who used to have a little hobby site.--unitron

** Scraping bad. Having editors dotted around the timezones that create their own better versions of the summaries, even if they contain just the same links as the /. story that inspired them, not bad. [[User:FatPhil|FatPhil]] ([[User talk:FatPhil|talk]]) 14:14, 6 February 2014 (MST)

** Agree with scraping bad. The general trend for the summaries has gone downhill badly over the past few years so better to have editors (re-)publish articles even if they use the same (or better) links ([[User:Qwade|Qwade]])

** Scraping Slashdot is pointless. It's been said many times, the discussion is the thing, not the articles. Considered purely as a news site, Slashdot is CRAP, always has been. Speaking of discussion, a Wiki is about the worst discussion medium I can imagine - is there anywhere we can move this to? - Mike Baranczak, 2014-02-07

* Maybe a wiki is the best way to do this? I see you've started with slashcode, but that might be a misstep. You have noticed by now that slashcode hasn't been updated in many years, hence it will be way behind the current slashdot. I think you might be better off hacking a wiki into slashdot-style functionality.

''I agree, this may be a misstep (and this occurred to me independently of your note). My best guess is to attempt installing slashcode and see where that goes, and try for a new system if it's unworkable. We'll see.''

:* I think hacking slashcode into slashdot-style functionality would be easier and better than hammering a wiki into that round hole. [[User:Mfnickster|Mfnickster]] ([[User talk:Mfnickster|talk]])

**[[https://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Main_Page Wikinews]] is Wikimedia's attempt to turn a wiki in to a news site. Not sure how easy that would be to mold in to a more Slashdotty site

* If you don't want to use the old slashcode, have you considered looking at '''discourse''' as the site server? AFAICT, it's a reasonably new project which being developed intended to address the authors' perceived flaws in the status-quo of forum software. It's written in JavaScript, but it might serve as a starting point for a new codebase, or worth a look to get some inspiration:
** http://www.discourse.org/faq/
** https://github.com/discourse/discourse

* '''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 [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debian#Organization 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. --[[Special:Contributions/141.84.69.20|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?

* see Freenode, #slashdot-refugees for real time discussion.

'''UPDATE:''' ''My proposed [[Finances|business plan]] should allay these fears.''

''You make some good points.''

''In my experience, community-driven projects don't usually do well. This is not to say that no such projects succeed, but the balance of probability does not favor group management.''

''There is a wide selection of projects which are successful because one person had a vision and the drive to make that vision happen - every successful business starts this way.''

''I've run businesses that use a lot of volunteer help, so I've got some experience there.''

''As far as selling the website, it's crossed my mind. I don't want to "sell out" and destroy the community, but it would be nice to have an "exit strategy". Commenting on Slashdot fun, but doing it as a day job will probably get tedious.''

''I don't know what the answer is - it's something that we'll have to work out.''

* (I put in a topic with a suggestion on the discussion page so this doesn't get too cluttered. ~ElectricTurtle)

* Additional points: Make the whole website (including stories/comments) available under [https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ CC-BY-SA] to retain the [http://meatballwiki.org/wiki/RightToFork right to fork]. You should also reconsider the name. I imagine "AltSlashdot" could get you into all sorts of legal trouble, since it is very close to the "Slashdot" trademark. --[[Special:Contributions/141.84.69.20|141.84.69.20]] 03:20, 6 February 2014 (MST)

* Attempt to '''coordinate and combine''' the parallel efforts. E.g. Slashdot user [http://slashdot.org/~dotancohen dotancohen] has [http://news.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=4757151&cid=46171009 apparently] registered the domain "slashdotan" and is looking to build a new Slashdot there. There are probably a dozen people hacking away separately on similar efforts. Competition is probably good, but combining efforts should be considered. --Slashdot user [http://slashdot.org/~JustinOpinion JustinOpinion].

* [https://github.com/digilord DigiLord] - I would like to help

* I'm the dotancohen mentioned by JustinOpinion. I have some limited experience with Amazon Web Services to run cloud servers for sites with very dynamic load profiles. Altslashdot seems like the perfect application of that technology, as we can expect to get slashdotted at any time. I also agree that we should coordinate efforts, as the whole premise is to keep the /. community together. [[User:Dotancohen|Dotancohen]] ([[User talk:Dotancohen|talk]]) 08:38, 6 February 2014 (MST)

* Re: combining efforts. User somenickname (1270442) has registered bangslashdot.(org|net|com) [[http://science.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=4757113&cid=46169131]]

* I ([[User:Bryan|Bryan]]) also plan on making a slashdot-inspired site. The website will be called "Pipedot" and be reachable at [http://pipedot.org/ pipedot.org] or [http://pipedot.com/ pipedot.com]. The motto will be "News for nerds, without the corporate slant." Get it? A pipe character looks like a slash without the slant! However, I plan on creating my own software instead of using slashcode/mediawiki/etc so it may take a while to get feature complete with slashdot classsic. (Why? Because I've always wanted to scratch that itch. Duh!)

* I think it would be best to just go over to Usenet. It is distributed, uncensorable, scales extremely well, the infrastructure is already in place, and it works. No Javascript, no business models, nothing but pure text-mode comment goodness. [http://www.eternal-september.org Eternal September] is free and works well, but does not allow binaries. That's fine, we have magnet links these days. EDIT: comp.misc is the new Slashdot. It's official now. Join us there and keep it free as in FREEDOM!

* relevant slashdot stats from 2011 [[http://www.dbasoul.com/2011/992.html]]
**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)

* I suggest that when updates to the code are made, it should be in the charter (or whatever we are calling it) to make that code public. -- CommonJoe

::* See [[SoylentNews#Licensing.3F|my questions about licensing below]]. The AGPL would guarantee that the code remain public... anyone actually working with the new site/codebase want to weigh in? ~ [[User:Seandiggity|Seandiggity]] ([[User talk:Seandiggity|talk]]) 07:56, 10 February 2014 (MST)

== 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 ==
*I don't know what John wants as far as advertising this page but I'm sure he wants as much exposure as possible.
*Please mention SolentNews.org as much as possible.
*It seems like the word is spreading (over 25,000 in 5 days) 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

== 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! ~ [[User:Seandiggity|Seandiggity]] ([[User talk:Seandiggity|talk]]) 12:36, 9 February 2014 (MST)

Historic:FeatureList

2014-02-10T16:42:25Z

Landon: /* Engine Requirements */ Positive/Negative mod display

== Overview ==

I'd appreciate if everyone would just start adding or removing things they think need to be in the to-be variant of this site

Rather than isolate the things that slashdot already had (we should be familiar with it), let's just explicitly state what we want to see, with the idea that most of it is a copy or inspired by the original. But we can possibly explain, refine, or restrict our focus to the bits that matter.

== General Requirements ==
What features worked and what features did not work during the lifetime of Slashdot?
*Feature that worked was the karma system allowed users to voluntarily disable the advertisement, made them feel happy even though it did nothing different for the business.
*Feature that did not work: Adding a sponsored poll / slashvertising
* Cool new colour

== Engine Requirements ==

* '''Be mindful of bandwidth and the amount of processing done by the server when building any features. One extra character balloons into many megabytes of expensive bandwidth and consumption of server resources. Each feature that bloats a page response or causes the server to process something increases costs--KEEP COSTS DOWN!'''
* UTF-8 clean for anything that doesn't end up in a URL (i.e. tags, titles, channel names, user names)
** Of course, some combining marks would have to be filtered, and the resulting text round-tripped through NFD->NFC to prevent certain types of attacks against users or making text difficult to index.
* [http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/04/stack-exchange-partners-with-mathjax/ MathJax] support both in comments and in submissions
:: Mathjax is the math rendering engine used on [http://stackexchange.com/ stackexchange] and will allow scientific discussion between us (people who read math).
* Channels (like yro, politics, apple) as first class objects
** "Primary" channels that have DNS shorthand (http://apple.altslash.org/ being equiv to http://altslash.org/ch/apple/)
** "Secondary" channels that users could create and play editor that use the more verbose syntax (http://altslash.org/ch/baseball/) that is reminiscent of subreddits
** User channels (i.e. journals, as we've always had)
* Display user IDs
* Javascript Optional

* Submission queues for all channels with membership at the discretion of the channel owner; being able to submit also implies up/downvoting submissions and tagging
:: Editors/channel owners only
:: List of users who can submit
:: All of my friends (for user journals)
:: All users with mod status
:: All registered users
:: Everyone

* Articles are also first class objects
:: Perma-link independant of channel
:: Articles are tagged by topic(s) as well as channel
:: Articles are automatically archived
:: Archive is easily searchable, and should be referenced when submissions are edited.
:: Articles can be cross-posted to other channels by a channel owner (built into the UI if the editor manages more than one channel)
* Comment key features
:: Comments are first class objects, just as before, just like articles
:: Comments can be edited for a short period of time by owner
::: HOWEVER: Edited comments get a new ID and it links to older versions in the new one. This detail is made prominent to viewer if a comment reply happened before an edit.
:: Allow alternate markup options (bbcode, markdown, wiki markup)
::: Provide a mapping to actual div and styles that will be applied, or HTML equivalent codes

* Allow moderation in same article that you've posted in; only disallow moderation '''to your own reply chain'''.
** You're obviously not allowed to moderate in your own accepted or posted article (treating all comments as replies)
** Does "reply chain" include parent? If not, how do we deal with threadjacking:
**# AC posts first comment on a new article (let's presume it's an upmod-worthy comment, not fristpsot)
**# I post my unrelated comment as a reply to AC's FP, in order to achieve greater visibility
**# I downmod the AC to -1
**# Now AC is invisible to anyone with threshold != -1 (including many with mod points and threshold=0, who would have modded AC up on his own merits)
**# Unless/until users with threshold=-1 and mod points happen by to rectify things, my comment is now the first thing most users see.
**# ??? ''(sorry, can't resist...)''
**# Profit!
***Actually, not just the immediate parent like I said, but 'all' ancestor comments. Otherwise as step 1.5 I just reply with an AC troll (which someone else will rightfully downmod), then in step 2 I reply to ''that''; now that the original AC first post is my comment's gp, so I can still downmod it.
** ''' Good point ''' you should be prevented from moderating any children '''and''' ancestors of your posts (but sibling chains are still fair game)

* '''Moderation Engine'''
::{| class="wikitable"
|+ Moderation tags (default scores)
|-
! Mod Up
! Points
! Mod Down
! Points
|-
| Interesting
| +1
| Offtopic
| -1
|-
| Informative
| +1
| Troll/Spam
| -1
|-
| Insightful
| +1
| Groupthink ('''New''')
| -1 (or -0.5?)
|-
| Underrated
| +0.5 ('''New''')
| Overrated
| -0.5 ('''New''')
|-
| Funny
| +0.5 ('''New''')
| Flamebait
| -0.5 ('''New''')
|-
| Devils Advocate ('''New!''')
| +1
| Jibberish ('''New!''')
| -1
|}

** Users assign own weights to tags in the range -2.0 -> 2.0 with 0.5 increments
** System rounds x.5 towards 0 in comment spill / threshold logic, display capped at -1 and 5.
** A score for the default weights is saved for the comment for use by article spill (for googlebot or "load all comments" from anonmyous user)
** An optional cryptocoin tipping system, when you like someone's post you can give him a small cryptocoin tip. That might also work as an additional moderating system. Non-moderators could mod-up comments (Insightful, Funny, etc) by eg. 0.5 points by spending some money.
** What about not-posting in the thread where you moderated? Good or bad rule? Maybe if you really must post, allow cryptocoin paying for post? (eg. "Warning: you have moderated in this thread (or whole story), if you really want to post you need to spend cryptocoin on that" (??)) Not posting in the thread is okay, and much better than disallowing the whole story.
** I think it would be good to display both the positive mods and negative mods on a comment in a concise form (so you could see that this comment is generally regarded both Insightful.... but also Flamebait)

'''Moderation strategy'''
** Chops instead of Karma
** Chops are derived from:
*** Articles accepted for submission
**** But NOT articles self-authored on a channel you're an editor of
*** Comments that are replied to by others without a troll/flamebait modifier
*** Positive moderation (as judged by the mod action with respect to their own point value weights... so if they think funny is bad, it counts against you)
*** Positive metamoderation outcome (see below)
** Registered users that have used the site > [threshold] days, posted > [threshold] times, and have positive chops get moderation duty (possibly [x] mod points per day?)
*** The more chops, the more mod points per day, with a total cap for unused
'''Meta-moderation'''
* Moderates the moderators in a check and balance type system
* Meta-moderation is available to users that have used the site > [big threshold] days and have > [threshold] chops
** Metamoderation is not "special", a meta-mod capable user can see a random selection of recent mods at any time and metamod.
** Metamod takes 2 mod points <==Open for discussion ??
:::Metamod actions are like moderation actions, you spend modpoints on them. But they are twice as expensive as direct moderation. The theory is that users with more chops (and thus more modpoints to throw around) are more likely to spend some of them on metamoderation.
:::Alternatively.... Meta-mod should be open to all in good standing for RANDOM comments. Maybe allow burning 2 mod points to meta-mod a specific comment ???
** Metamod can spend a mod point to "re-roll" and see a new set of random moderations
** A moderation is undone when it's "score" goes negative. It is "reapplied" when it goes positive. If the score dips to -3, the moderation is removed entirely. Default moderation value should be > 0, possibly 2 ??
** A user is not rewarded or punished for the metamod specifically.
** A running total of positive and negative meta-moderations against them is calculated
** Certain threshold for positive and negative meta-mod counts result in fixed deltas in chops
*** Having >5 positive metamod could be +1 chop score. >10 +2, >20 +3; >3 negative is -1, > 5 is -2, > 10 is -3
** Your current chops as of more than 4 weeks ago is rolled into a fixed amount capped at 1.5 times the "Excellent" value and 1.5 times the most negative "Worst Poster" value.
** On a weekly basis a task is run across all accounts that collects chop point actions since the last summarization date forward a week (actions that happened about 3 weeks ago), applies these to the last +4 weeks ago score, truncates it to the ranges above, and stores it in the database with the new summarization date for that user's account.
** This prevents a user from "banking" actions that give them more chops to only later be a jerk.
** However it lets you be a bit grumpy in the short term since the value can go above the thresholds when calculating the current display/privs value (query all the outstanding chop actions for this user, add the point values to the historic value, store it for easy reference later, cached for an hour)

* '''Article submission'''
** Editor:
*** UTF-8
*** MathJax (mentioned earlier)
*** ability to check links inline during writing the submission. To see how it works just try writing email in gmail. Everytime when you add a link, there's an option right below it to "check link"
** Encouraging submitting good articles:
*** Everytime when a story gets accepted, the submitter gets a small cryptocoin reward (as we know - very easy to automate this). Since we are very poor (at least at start) we will not pay a fixed amount, but a small percentage of all cryptocoins owned by altslashdot.
*** If a story gets accepted but is hugely downvoted later (think Roland Piquepaille), the submitter must give back his reward to be able to submit a new story. In fact even better if he had to give back a tiny fraction more cryptocoin than he received.
** To have funds for all that, we could use:
*** That tipping system (mentioned above in moderation), and everytime you tip someone else a very tiny fraction of that tip goes to altslashdot.
*** Also payments from people desperate to post in thread (or story) where they have moderated (if we decide that this feature is useful, and if it is thread or whole story).
*** Failed submitters, who had to give back their reward plus some extra fraction because their story was hated after it was submitted (think Roland Piquepaille) as mentioned above.
*** Also we can simply hope for money from cryptocoin donations address. IMHO that is quite possible if we make this site good.

Talk:SoylentNews

2014-02-06T22:44:19Z

Landon: /* Alternate domain ideas? */ new section

"You have followed a link to a page that does not exist yet. To create the page, start typing in the box below"

Okay, let's see if that works.

And help kill beta by joining the Slashcott

February 10th -17th

unitron

Slashdot UID 5733

== Teething pains? ==

This message was created automatically by mail delivery software.

A message that you sent could not be delivered to one or more of its
recipients. This is a permanent error. The following address(es) failed:

John@AltSlashdot.org
SMTP error from remote mail server after RCPT TO:<John@AltSlashdot.org>:
host mail.altslashdot.org [66.147.244.192]: 550 No Such User Here

...

Is this an "only if Slashdot doesn't back down on beta" contingency, or =
"going to happen no matter what Slashdot does"?

...

== Hot Grits ==

I have poured them down my pants. Thank you. [[Special:Contributions/86.50.93.164|86.50.93.164]] 10:16, 6 February 2014 (MST) Iskender (1040286)

*Why are they down your pants? They should be on Natalie Portman - naked and petrified..

== Group or Business ==

Okian Warrior seems to want to be CmdrTaco all over again. While I am a very, very pro-business sort of person, I don't think we want to just push reset and do Slashdot over again as another build it up and cash out endeavor. It seems like that's exactly what would happen, and on the backs of volunteers no less. The only way I could see supporting this endeavor as a business would be with some sort of codified protection like a charter, whereby certain attributes of the way the site functions would be guaranteed, and those guarantees could only be changed if (the charter could only be modified if) the users were polled and agreed to it. In this way the business could operate but be ultimately accountable to and restrained by the userbase. This seems like a good hybrid solution. ~ElectricTurtle

You could solve this by managing it similar to the debian project.

==Stories==
*Could there be [[Open Hardware FPGAs]]? http://www.electronicsweekly.com/mannerisms/fpga/will-expiring-patents-boost-fp-2007-03/

== Barrapunto ==

People here should be familiar with the Spanish language version of Slashdot,
Barrapunto.com. It looks like it was forked from older Slashcode, and it does
not appear to be a dice holding. This is the most durable SlashClone with which
I'm familiar. I seem to recall reading about it more than 5 years ago. If nothing
else, we could learn a lot from them about running a successful SlashClone.

We should make a list of any currently running clones.
*http://slashcode.com/www.slashcode.com/

Thanks for posting the link. That looks a lot more like /. Classic. Now we certainly
don't want to knock over the server that discusses SlashCode, so we shouldn't be
posting there... but they seem like an ideal candidate for a bunch to form a non-profit
org. IMHO, that's the answer. We need to form a non-profit dedicated to serving the
users. Worst case scenario we replace ads with something like the annual Wikipedia
begging; but it might be worth it.

The Wikipedia begging beats having advertizes dictating the content of your site or selling the users info for $$$ Wikipedia I believe does it right. [[User:Script Cat|Script Cat]] ([[User talk:Script Cat|talk]]) 14:28, 6 February 2014 (MST)

== Alternate domain ideas? ==

It's come up elsewhere online that a name including slashdot might get this project into hot water with DICE

SoylentNews

2014-02-06T22:32:43Z

Landon: Link to webchat

'''A little less terrified...'''

I'm building a news site alternative to Slashdot. I've only started a couple of hours ago, this wiki is a temporary measure so that volunteers can coordinate and others can see what's happening.

I intend to run a site much like Slashdot used to be - better articles, less decoration and less "in your face" functionality. I'm looking for volunteers to help with setup and running the site. If the site becomes profitable, I intend to hire from the pool of volunteers. If you've ever wanted to participate in a site like Slashdot, here's your chance!

The summary of the financial model is: People who help run the site will get an annuity ''in perpetuity''. This means that the annuity will survive after the death of the recipient, it can be inherited, and so on.

The proposed business model is [[Finances|here]].
Some business planning is [[Business|here]].

I'm particularly in need of people who can:

* Set up and manage a high-traffic site (servers, load-balancers, data sites, &c)
* Edit story submissions
* HTML, CSS, and script creation/bugfix/repair

Is anyone really good at getting big packages up and running? Slashcode has not been updated in several years (as far as I can tell) and it may be a little clunky at first. It's based on MySql, Apache, and perl. I have "passing familiarity" with these, but an expert could probably blast through it in a couple of hours... Another issue might be security vulnerabilities. Anyone want to audit the code?

Contact me if interested

John (at) AltSlashdot (dot) org

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/

==Status==

* We need a new name, see [[NewName|New name discussion]]
* Probably won't be non-profit, see [[Finances|business model]].
* We won't poach from Slashdot. This includes articles and logos, also "style" to a reasonable extent.
* We won't monetize our readers (ie - we won't sell contact info to spammers)
* The site is intended to make money - in the same way Slashdot does (ads, merchandise, job postings)

Mailing list update Messages are [[MailingListUpdates|here]]

==Done==

* Registered "AltSlashdot.org", also ".com" and ".net".
* Purchased hosting through BlueHost
* I'm wading through SlashCode, learning the install procedures.

==ToDo==

* Install SlashCode on the production site
* Get some people to help with the site
* Run a contest for a better name
* Incorporate
* Consult a lawyer
* How to handle Advertising (necessary evil) - Opt Out, Limited, Standard ??
* Find and submit some stories
* Improved Mod/Meta-Mod/Story-Selection system to minimize required editor input
* Profit! ???

== List of Discussion Pages ==

*[[Finances|Finances]]
*[[MailingListUpdates|MailingListUpdates]]
*[[Submission guidelines|Submission guidelines]]
*[[Business|Business]]
*[[NewName|NewName]]

That's all I see at the moment, please add more as you start or find new pages.

== Comments ==

* I don't know about other people, but I think I would be more liable to stick with an alternative if it scraped content from original /. in addition to whatever else you do. [[Special:Contributions/173.13.21.65|173.13.21.65]] 09:21, 6 February 2014 (MST)

''I'm against this. I don't consider it fair - they've put a lot of effort into building up their brand and community. If we are to succeed, we need to do it on our own merits."

** Scraping bad. Having editors dotted around the timezones that create their own better versions of the summaries, even if they contain just the same links as the /. story that inspired them, not bad. [[User:FatPhil|FatPhil]] ([[User talk:FatPhil|talk]]) 14:14, 6 February 2014 (MST)

* Maybe a wiki is the best way to do this? I see you've started with slashcode, but that might be a misstep. You have noticed by now that slashcode hasn't been updated in many years, hence it will be way behind the current slashdot. I think you might be better off hacking a wiki into slashdot-style functionality.

''I agree, this may be a misstep (and this occurred to me independently of your note). My best guess is to attempt installing slashcode and see where that goes, and try for a new system if it's unworkable. We'll see.''

**[[https://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Main_Page Wikinews]] is Wikimedia's attempt to turn a wiki in to a news site. Not sure how easy that would be to mold in to a more Slashdotty site

* If you don't want to use the old slashcode, have you considered looking at '''discourse''' as the site server? AFAICT, it's a reasonably new project which being developed intended to address the authors' perceived flaws in the status-quo of forum software. It's written in JavaScript, but it might serve as a starting point for a new codebase, or worth a look to get some inspiration:
** http://www.discourse.org/faq/
** https://github.com/discourse/discourse

* '''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 [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debian#Organization 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. --[[Special:Contributions/141.84.69.20|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?

* see Freenode, #slashdot-refugees for real time discussion.

'''UPDATE:''' ''My proposed [[Finances|business plan]] should allay these fears.''

''You make some good points.''

''In my experience, community-driven projects don't usually do well. This is not to say that no such projects succeed, but the balance of probability does not favor group management.''

''There is a wide selection of projects which are successful because one person had a vision and the drive to make that vision happen - every successful business starts this way.''

''I've run businesses that use a lot of volunteer help, so I've got some experience there.''

''As far as selling the website, it's crossed my mind. I don't want to "sell out" and destroy the community, but it would be nice to have an "exit strategy". Commenting on Slashdot fun, but doing it as a day job will probably get tedious.''

''I don't know what the answer is - it's something that we'll have to work out.''

* (I put in a topic with a suggestion on the discussion page so this doesn't get too cluttered. ~ElectricTurtle)

* Additional points: Make the whole website (including stories/comments) available under [https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ CC-BY-SA] to retain the [http://meatballwiki.org/wiki/RightToFork right to fork]. You should also reconsider the name. I imagine "AltSlashdot" could get you into all sorts of legal trouble, since it is very close to the "Slashdot" trademark. --[[Special:Contributions/141.84.69.20|141.84.69.20]] 03:20, 6 February 2014 (MST)

* John@AltSlashdot.org seems to be bouncing. I'd like to help.

''It's fixed now - please try again.''

''(I created the E-mails through the registrar and tested them. When I pointed the DNS to BlueHost the E-mail target changed along with the web. Didn't expect that to change, so never bothered to check after initial test.)''

* Attempt to '''coordinate and combine''' the parallel efforts. E.g. Slashdot user [http://slashdot.org/~dotancohen dotancohen] has [http://news.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=4757151&cid=46171009 apparently] registered the domain "slashdotan" and is looking to build a new Slashdot there. There are probably a dozen people hacking away separately on similar efforts. Competition is probably good, but combining efforts should be considered. --Slashdot user [http://slashdot.org/~JustinOpinion JustinOpinion].

* [https://github.com/digilord DigiLord] - I would like to help

* I'm the dotancohen mentioned by JustinOpinion. I have some limited experience with Amazon Web Services to run cloud servers for sites with very dynamic load profiles. Altslashdot seems like the perfect application of that technology, as we can expect to get slashdotted at any time. I also agree that we should coordinate efforts, as the whole premise is to keep the /. community together. [[User:Dotancohen|Dotancohen]] ([[User talk:Dotancohen|talk]]) 08:38, 6 February 2014 (MST)

* Re: combining efforts. User somenickname (1270442) has registered bangslashdot.(org|net|com) [[http://science.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=4757113&cid=46169131]]

== Less Political Bullshit ==

Will your site have less global warming bs on it? That would be an improvement...

I think the climate change discussions land pretty squarely in the Science area. It's only "Political Bullshit" when people move it that way. - Cactus

It wouldn't be slashdot without hot-button topics generating hundreds of posts in areas on the more political charged side of science (global warming, nuclear energy, weapons, evolution, etc.)

[http://images2.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20080229083202/girlgenius/images/8/86/Dimoportrait.jpg|Yez!]

''Slashdot might cave and go back to the original layout, so where would that leave us?''

''I've noticed that the quality of articles on Slashdot has gone down a lot in recent years. Even if Slashdot goes back to the original format, I think we can make a much better site by having better articles.''

''I've some ideas on how to do this, but right now I'm pressed for time. Perhaps someone could start a separate discussion page for submission guidelines?'' - [[Submission_guidelines|here]]

:Yeah... no, your petty political censorship won't make for a better site. Thanks. [[Special:Contributions/159.45.129.14|159.45.129.14]] 14:42, 6 February 2014 (MST)

SoylentNews

2014-02-06T22:30:35Z

Landon: Added project specific channel

'''A little less terrified...'''

I'm building a news site alternative to Slashdot. I've only started a couple of hours ago, this wiki is a temporary measure so that volunteers can coordinate and others can see what's happening.

I intend to run a site much like Slashdot used to be - better articles, less decoration and less "in your face" functionality. I'm looking for volunteers to help with setup and running the site. If the site becomes profitable, I intend to hire from the pool of volunteers. If you've ever wanted to participate in a site like Slashdot, here's your chance!

The summary of the financial model is: People who help run the site will get an annuity ''in perpetuity''. This means that the annuity will survive after the death of the recipient, it can be inherited, and so on.

The proposed business model is [[Finances|here]].
Some business planning is [[Business|here]].

I'm particularly in need of people who can:

* Set up and manage a high-traffic site (servers, load-balancers, data sites, &c)
* Edit story submissions
* HTML, CSS, and script creation/bugfix/repair

Is anyone really good at getting big packages up and running? Slashcode has not been updated in several years (as far as I can tell) and it may be a little clunky at first. It's based on MySql, Apache, and perl. I have "passing familiarity" with these, but an expert could probably blast through it in a couple of hours... Another issue might be security vulnerabilities. Anyone want to audit the code?

Contact me if interested

John (at) AltSlashdot (dot) org

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

==Status==

* We need a new name, see [[NewName|New name discussion]]
* Probably won't be non-profit, see [[Finances|business model]].
* We won't poach from Slashdot. This includes articles and logos, also "style" to a reasonable extent.
* We won't monetize our readers (ie - we won't sell contact info to spammers)
* The site is intended to make money - in the same way Slashdot does (ads, merchandise, job postings)

Mailing list update Messages are [[MailingListUpdates|here]]

==Done==

* Registered "AltSlashdot.org", also ".com" and ".net".
* Purchased hosting through BlueHost
* I'm wading through SlashCode, learning the install procedures.

==ToDo==

* Install SlashCode on the production site
* Get some people to help with the site
* Run a contest for a better name
* Incorporate
* Consult a lawyer
* How to handle Advertising (necessary evil) - Opt Out, Limited, Standard ??
* Find and submit some stories
* Improved Mod/Meta-Mod/Story-Selection system to minimize required editor input
* Profit! ???

== List of Discussion Pages ==

*[[Finances|Finances]]
*[[MailingListUpdates|MailingListUpdates]]
*[[Submission guidelines|Submission guidelines]]
*[[Business|Business]]
*[[NewName|NewName]]

That's all I see at the moment, please add more as you start or find new pages.

== Comments ==

* I don't know about other people, but I think I would be more liable to stick with an alternative if it scraped content from original /. in addition to whatever else you do. [[Special:Contributions/173.13.21.65|173.13.21.65]] 09:21, 6 February 2014 (MST)

''I'm against this. I don't consider it fair - they've put a lot of effort into building up their brand and community. If we are to succeed, we need to do it on our own merits."

** Scraping bad. Having editors dotted around the timezones that create their own better versions of the summaries, even if they contain just the same links as the /. story that inspired them, not bad. [[User:FatPhil|FatPhil]] ([[User talk:FatPhil|talk]]) 14:14, 6 February 2014 (MST)

* Maybe a wiki is the best way to do this? I see you've started with slashcode, but that might be a misstep. You have noticed by now that slashcode hasn't been updated in many years, hence it will be way behind the current slashdot. I think you might be better off hacking a wiki into slashdot-style functionality.

''I agree, this may be a misstep (and this occurred to me independently of your note). My best guess is to attempt installing slashcode and see where that goes, and try for a new system if it's unworkable. We'll see.''

**[[https://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Main_Page Wikinews]] is Wikimedia's attempt to turn a wiki in to a news site. Not sure how easy that would be to mold in to a more Slashdotty site

* If you don't want to use the old slashcode, have you considered looking at '''discourse''' as the site server? AFAICT, it's a reasonably new project which being developed intended to address the authors' perceived flaws in the status-quo of forum software. It's written in JavaScript, but it might serve as a starting point for a new codebase, or worth a look to get some inspiration:
** http://www.discourse.org/faq/
** https://github.com/discourse/discourse

* '''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 [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debian#Organization 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. --[[Special:Contributions/141.84.69.20|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?

* see Freenode, #slashdot-refugees for real time discussion.

'''UPDATE:''' ''My proposed [[Finances|business plan]] should allay these fears.''

''You make some good points.''

''In my experience, community-driven projects don't usually do well. This is not to say that no such projects succeed, but the balance of probability does not favor group management.''

''There is a wide selection of projects which are successful because one person had a vision and the drive to make that vision happen - every successful business starts this way.''

''I've run businesses that use a lot of volunteer help, so I've got some experience there.''

''As far as selling the website, it's crossed my mind. I don't want to "sell out" and destroy the community, but it would be nice to have an "exit strategy". Commenting on Slashdot fun, but doing it as a day job will probably get tedious.''

''I don't know what the answer is - it's something that we'll have to work out.''

* (I put in a topic with a suggestion on the discussion page so this doesn't get too cluttered. ~ElectricTurtle)

* Additional points: Make the whole website (including stories/comments) available under [https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ CC-BY-SA] to retain the [http://meatballwiki.org/wiki/RightToFork right to fork]. You should also reconsider the name. I imagine "AltSlashdot" could get you into all sorts of legal trouble, since it is very close to the "Slashdot" trademark. --[[Special:Contributions/141.84.69.20|141.84.69.20]] 03:20, 6 February 2014 (MST)

* John@AltSlashdot.org seems to be bouncing. I'd like to help.

''It's fixed now - please try again.''

''(I created the E-mails through the registrar and tested them. When I pointed the DNS to BlueHost the E-mail target changed along with the web. Didn't expect that to change, so never bothered to check after initial test.)''

* Attempt to '''coordinate and combine''' the parallel efforts. E.g. Slashdot user [http://slashdot.org/~dotancohen dotancohen] has [http://news.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=4757151&cid=46171009 apparently] registered the domain "slashdotan" and is looking to build a new Slashdot there. There are probably a dozen people hacking away separately on similar efforts. Competition is probably good, but combining efforts should be considered. --Slashdot user [http://slashdot.org/~JustinOpinion JustinOpinion].

* [https://github.com/digilord DigiLord] - I would like to help

* I'm the dotancohen mentioned by JustinOpinion. I have some limited experience with Amazon Web Services to run cloud servers for sites with very dynamic load profiles. Altslashdot seems like the perfect application of that technology, as we can expect to get slashdotted at any time. I also agree that we should coordinate efforts, as the whole premise is to keep the /. community together. [[User:Dotancohen|Dotancohen]] ([[User talk:Dotancohen|talk]]) 08:38, 6 February 2014 (MST)

* Re: combining efforts. User somenickname (1270442) has registered bangslashdot.(org|net|com) [[http://science.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=4757113&cid=46169131]]

== Less Political Bullshit ==

Will your site have less global warming bs on it? That would be an improvement...

I think the climate change discussions land pretty squarely in the Science area. It's only "Political Bullshit" when people move it that way. - Cactus

It wouldn't be slashdot without hot-button topics generating hundreds of posts in areas on the more political charged side of science (global warming, nuclear energy, weapons, evolution, etc.)

[http://images2.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20080229083202/girlgenius/images/8/86/Dimoportrait.jpg|Yez!]

''Slashdot might cave and go back to the original layout, so where would that leave us?''

''I've noticed that the quality of articles on Slashdot has gone down a lot in recent years. Even if Slashdot goes back to the original format, I think we can make a much better site by having better articles.''

''I've some ideas on how to do this, but right now I'm pressed for time. Perhaps someone could start a separate discussion page for submission guidelines?'' - [[Submission_guidelines|here]]

:Yeah... no, your petty political censorship won't make for a better site. Thanks. [[Special:Contributions/159.45.129.14|159.45.129.14]] 14:42, 6 February 2014 (MST)