Historic:Original Content Proposal

Original Content Proposal by Dopefish

8/24/14

Hello everyone. As a quick sidebar, I realize that some of you are wondering where the heck I ran off to for the past few months. I was on a sabbatical from all Internet activities for the summer. I have since returned and am in the midst of moving house once again.

Enough about me. I just wanted to post to the wiki real quick with a general proposition to the editorial team for consideration. As a means to better compete with the other green site, I was hoping that we could embark on some original content in addition to the basic news aggregation that we carry out on a day to day basis. Personally, I've been itching to getting back to writing product reviews and opinion pieces on the state of technology (or other topics we might touch on, such as Science, Politics, etc.

I would want to see SN become a one-stop-shop type of site without adding any considerable level of bloat. One school of thought thinks it would be wise to keep SN as-is, but include a sister site containing the editorial pieces that we can create from time to time. However, such a hard seperation could prove cumbersome, with current visitors having to deal with yet another URL and content page. What would be preferable would be to interweave editorial bits along side with news we report on, albeit with a modified color tag or some other filterable designation so that, if the logged-in reader is so inclined, can collapse and expand the editorial section at will if he or she desires to have a more classic other green site experience.

EDIT: nexuses (aka "Sections") would likely solve above problem satisfactorily. They are an upcoming feature as soon as we obtain wildcard certs (waiting on incorp details) mrcoolbp (talk) 00:07, 26 August 2014 (UTC)

I propose this concept for two reasons. One, who doesn't like to write original content? It will be empowering and will help us to further engage in the community by providing salient information with opinions, advice and whatever else tied with it. But more importantly, I think the second reason would be to eliminate any editorializing on our news aggregation bits. One thing the other green site does a whole lot of is linking to a news story, then twisting details around just enough to encourage clickbait. If we can eliminate that but then give editors and contributors a place to write about various musings, it could help to draw that line about what is fact, and what is opinion.

If anyone has any ideas that could be applied towards this proposal to further it along for consideration, please let me know. I also would like to see what LaminatorX's thoughts would be on this and how we could work the logistics out to keep the site clean, informative and engaging. I wouldn't suggest contributors write about anything willy nilly, and there would be an approval queue for original content, much like there is for the linkback bits.

Thank you all for your interest and I look forward to your responses.

~Dopefish