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from the I'm-so-meta-even-this-acronym dept.
jcd writes:
"I'm rather excited to get going with Soylent and to watch it grow. Nay, help it grow. I have lurked in /. for more than a decade (note: I'm not the same username over there, I know, how sneaky), and always wished I could have been involved with the beginning. So this is a great opportunity, and I joined as soon as I saw what Soylent was doing. Not to mention the fact that I felt right at home with the old style. It's very comfortable.
So here's a question for everyone. Are we going to be the same as slashdot? A clone that focuses as entirely as possible on tech related news? Or will we branch out to other topics? I'm interested to see either way. I posted a comment to this effect in one of our two existing polls, and it may be a community-wide assumption, but I do think it merits a discussion."
(Score: 3, Insightful) by martink on Thursday February 20 2014, @04:58PM
Agreed, the tech+science+math segment is really what I'd like to see as well. Otherwise this will just become 'YANA' (Yet Another News Aggregator)
(Score: 5, Insightful) by frojack on Thursday February 20 2014, @05:24PM
Having been is Slashdot a long long time (5digit), I thing it had always about technology, programming, internet, science, etc. Math, tended to creep in later, it wasn't a big part in the beginning, at least not bigger than the sciences.
Then it started drifting.
It may have been the Motto that caused the topic drift over the years: News for Nerds, Stuff that matters.
People forgot about the first part, and concentrated on the "Stuff that matters" part to the point that it became far to focused on Politics and Social commentary, (things that mattered to them personally), two areas where you can never reach a consensus, or even an agreement to disagree.
SoylentNews, with its motto: "Its People", (pretty broad really) has even a greater risk of topic drift into the un-settle-able (and often unsettling) area of politics.
And perhaps that is by design. Perhaps its even a good thing. But I'm sort of sick [letssingit.com] of all that.
My lawn...
Discussion should abhor vacuity, as space does a vacuum.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Angry Jesus on Thursday February 20 2014, @08:24PM
5-digit /. uid here too and as I get older the more important I think the social and political stuff becomes. I'm not talking about the typical nightly news about society or even the sunday morning wonk talk show politics. I mean the intersection of tech and society in general.
More and more tech sets the parameters of society and politics. Drones killing wouldn't be happening if it weren't for advanced comm systems and computers fast enough and small enough to make them semi-autonomous. License plate scanners wouldn't be a threat if it weren't for Big Data. The NSA wouldn't have been living out their biggest wet dream ever if it weren't for the internet.
The technical stuff we do has serious repercussions on the world at large and we should be talking about it because simply leaving it up to "the people in charge" doesn't eliminate our moral responsibilities.
(Score: 2) by frojack on Thursday February 20 2014, @10:11PM
Agree with just about every thing you say.
Mankind can't seem to help himself from building skynet one piece at at time.
However, since we can all pretty much agree there has proven to be no significant difference between Tweedledee and Tweedledum arguments about raw politics are simply pointless.
Discussion should abhor vacuity, as space does a vacuum.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 20 2014, @10:36PM
As someone who was spoken at events previously regarding DRM in HTML5 at my local LUG, as well as privacy issues online during SFD 2013, I have to second this.
I got into technology originally because it was fun, but now the social and political aspects are perhaps even more important to me.
Posting as AC because I'm at work and don't have my SN account password here with me.
(Score: 1) by TheLink on Friday February 21 2014, @03:35AM
1) It can be done
2) They need to publish
3) They need $$$
Few seem to consider whether they really should do a particular thing from a longer term point of view.
For instance - human-animal hybrids or "Really Strong AIs". Is society even ready to decide which hybrids get the same rights and responsibilities as a human? What percent and how do you determine the percentage? It's all very easy to yell "luddite" but many of us have played those "Civ" style games - we have limited resources and time, there are plenty of other "tech trees" (and arguably more helpful tech trees) we could do first till society gets more ready or it becomes irrelevant (we "Ascend" or go extinct due to some other thing).
One day some bright spark may produce the "Cheap Big Red Button That Does Great Stuff But Kills Almost Everyone If You Press It Wrong" and society might not have reached the point where nobody will ever press it wrong. With Great Power comes Great Responsibility and all that, but giving everyone great power before they can use it responsibly is a recipe for disaster. No such thing? The research into creating dangerous viruses is one.
Some say "If I don't do it, someone else will", to that I say "if you don't do it now, at least it buys us a bit more time till someone else does", and history has examples where it can sometimes take a few decades before someone else does it and even more till it gets widespread.
(Score: 1) by TheRaven on Friday February 21 2014, @05:26AM
sudo mod me up
(Score: 2, Interesting) by dicknixondick on Thursday February 20 2014, @11:12PM
I've also been around slashdot since the days it was run on a babbage machine (1997). Lurked or posted ac...I cant even remember my old username.
I dont mind the topic drift as long as the oldtimers dont leave. Whatever the community care stand Im usually interested in reading. This quality of commentary on any subject is enlightening.
I would like to see a side bar of journal/diaries like dailykos (ugh...) since its the one redeeming quality there.
Im really relieved this new site is happening regardless.
(Score: 1) by dicknixondick on Thursday February 20 2014, @11:18PM
DOh! ...I see the journal entries over to the right AFTER I post a stupid comment...guess I picked a bad day to stop sniffing glue.
(Score: 1) by Thexalon on Friday February 21 2014, @09:35AM
I disagree with that idea:
- There's already an understanding in most political or social discussions that you're never really going to convince the "other" side to agree with you.
- If you're making arguments and not hurling insults, then the discussions clarify different worldviews, their strengths and weaknesses.
- As long as everyone is coming back to the table, there's a tacit agreement to disagree.
- On rare occasions, you find agreement where you didn't expect it. For example, a group of Occupy Wall Street folks met up with a group of Tea Party members, and promptly agreed on a number of points, mostly campaign finance and criminal penalties for bank executives.
Every task is easy if somebody else is doing it.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by TWiTfan on Thursday February 20 2014, @05:30PM
Agreed, don't make the same mistake that Digg did. Keep it tech related, "News for Nerds" and all that. Trying to be too many things to too many people will only help you digg your own grave.
If real life were like D&D, my Charisma score would be a negative number
(Score: 1) by EETech1 on Thursday February 20 2014, @10:26PM
Soylent News...
Feed your nerdy brain with what matters most!
(Score: 1) by philip on Friday February 21 2014, @08:45PM
Yes, please: make it "News for Nerds"
As 'nerds' have become popular in pop culture, the term has lost its meaning.
When 20-something former cheerleaders in bars claim to be nerds* it illustrates the problems we're talking about.
*this actually happened, and also, I have nothing against former cheerleaders being nerds, or former cheerleaders who aren't. I am just using this anecdotal experience to try to illustrate a point.
Also, there are so many people on /. that are very opinionated that I have become conditioned to caveat everything I say, in order to preemptively defend myself from people. I hope I can shake the habit here.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by DrMag on Thursday February 20 2014, @05:48PM
The above comments I agree with completely, and I would love to have the focus remain clearly on the scientific topics. That's not to say there aren't lots of news stories that are of interest to such a site that don't deal directly with math/science/technology, but interesting insights can come by discussing such topics among a bunch of mathematicians/scientists/engineers/techies, whether they be professional, amateur, or hobbyist.
One thing I would like to see, however, that might be "branching out" from the traditional feel of this type of news site would be a change in the comment system. I know, heresy! Please, hear me out...
One of my biggest gripes with /. was that so often the comments would diverge into off-topic, or at least uninteresting-to-me-topic, and I would have to sort through *hundreds* of comments that were back and forth arguments over semantics, insults, or some such, when all I wanted was more information on the topic itself. One feature that would make a world of difference to me is the ability to instantly collapse an entire thread that diverged away in order to find the other discussions that got buried amid the frenzy more easily.
I'm certain there is a way to keep the general format and feel of the current system we have all come to love while adding in a way to collapse and hide an entire section (even if many of the comments in that section are insightful/funny/whatever). It would also help in following a discussion as comments come in later.
Just my 3.5e-5 BTC. I'd settle for just a better assortment of worthwhile articles without all the fluff.
(Score: 1) by buswolley on Thursday February 20 2014, @06:22PM
That seems reasonable.
subicular junctures
(Score: 2, Informative) by Foobar Bazbot on Friday February 21 2014, @01:20AM
It's my understanding that this greasemonkey script [userscripts.org], which is said to work [dev.soylentnews.org] on soylentnews with one slight modification, will grant you the ability you seek. (Haven't had a chance to try it myself...)
userscript: Expand/Collapse buttons on every comment [userscripts.org]
(Score: 2) by NCommander on Friday February 21 2014, @02:26AM
For what's its worth, I tried it and no dice even after following the editing instructions to the letter.
Still always moving
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 21 2014, @07:53AM
Of course. "No Dice" is the whole point of Soylent News, after all. ;-)
(Score: 1) by stderr on Friday February 21 2014, @11:07AM
I have only tested this in "Nested"-mode, but if you can make some "pretty" buttons and hook them up to the following hide_comment(cid) and show_comment(cid) functions, I think we got a very simple POC...
cid is of course the comment-id, so hide_comment(4127); should hide your comment (except for the title bar) and all it's replies (including this, so don't try that!).
alias sudo="echo make it yourself #" #
(Score: 1) by stderr on Friday February 21 2014, @11:15AM
The comment systems inserts a blank after every 50 character in long lines of characters to avoid spam. It should be "commentBody" and "commentSub".
alias sudo="echo make it yourself #" #
(Score: 2) by Foobar Bazbot on Tuesday February 25 2014, @05:24PM
NCommander, get your numbered polyhedra here. [userscripts.org] No editing needed.
userscript: Expand/Collapse buttons on every comment [userscripts.org]
(Score: 3, Interesting) by hemocyanin on Friday February 21 2014, @01:49AM
I second that.
Nothing is more annoying than jumping into an interesting story and find that one of the early comments (so at the top) was some tangential BS that triggers a huge meaningless thread. I mean, I know that geeks can get hung up on something, and then beat it to a pulpy death -- been there done that myself -- but being able to collapse that junk would be awesome. Keeping a count of how many times a thread was collapsed might also be interesting, and maybe apply an automatic downmod to every post in the thread above a certain threshold of collapses.
(Score: 2) by Foobar Bazbot on Tuesday February 25 2014, @05:17PM
Remember the greasemonkey script I mentioned?
Fixed it! [userscripts.org]
userscript: Expand/Collapse buttons on every comment [userscripts.org]
(Score: 1) by DrMag on Tuesday February 25 2014, @07:08PM
Very nice, thank you! So far it works perfectly.
(Score: 1) by weeds on Thursday February 20 2014, @05:52PM
Mod parent up!
Get the strategic plan going! [dev.soylentnews.org]