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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: 2, Interesting) by linsane on Thursday February 20 2014, @05:41PM
A personal view that needs to be balanced with aspects of comments above:
As the comments, participation, moderation etc form such an important part of the experience, what will give SN some staying power will be slowly building the base of regular participants. Currently comment counts seem to be typically mid 50s, and while there is a distinct lack of trolls adding to this number, seeing this regularly north of 100 would likely mean that a critical mass was being achieved.
To get there, there may be a need to include more mainstream tech things but ideally there would bethe odd 'scoop' on top of the aggregation aspect. Either that or highlighting items from less mainstream sources than are typically currently found on /. Looking (very very quickly) at their front page, sources include bbc, google.com, nytimes, volvo, sony, cnn and in my opinion to avoid where possible.
What about scoops? There must be a tech audience who are able to drop the odd insider gem, particularly relating to larger tech companies, that are not direct from their marketing departments - if you are able to pledge regarding anonymity (surely a USP?) then you never know where this project might go. Not suggesting a wiki-leaks approach, more like a sprinkling of nerd gossip among the type of articles that have been put forward to date.
As an aside, I'm not entirely sure the balance of mod points is there yet. As comments on articles seem to currently have a 'slow burn' building up comments rather than the mad rush that having a larger audience brings, combined with the additional difference that there are few trolls to down-mod means that it i have to resist the urge to spend 'em, quite a novel experience!
Oh yes, I definitely second the international angle too.
(Score: 1) by Phoenix666 on Thursday February 20 2014, @07:22PM
One of the aspects of Slashdot I loved the best was when an article on a project at, say, JPL would post to the front page and people with inside knowledge of it would post. That's incredibly valuable to me, and why the /. of old was always worth a million times any old news aggregator site. Having a mechanism for these kinds of inside baseball articles would greatly amplify the value of SN.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 21 2014, @04:03AM
As you wish...
Trolls are utterly impervious to criticism (constructive or otherwise). You cannot negotiate with them; you cannot cause them to feel shame or compassion; you cannot reason with them. They cannot be made to feel remorse. For some reason, trolls do not feel they are bound by the rules of courtesy or social responsibility.
If the choice of a sexual partner were protected by the Constitution, prostitution, adultery, necrophilia, bestiality, possession of child pornography, and even incest and pedophilia also would be. All of these acts should be legal as long as no one is coerced. They are illegal only because of prejudice and narrowmindedness. Some rules might be called for when these acts directly affect other people's interests. For incest, contraception could be mandatory to avoid risk of inbreeding. For prostitution, a license should be required to ensure prostitutes get regular medical check-ups, and they should have training and support in insisting on use of condoms. This will be an advance in public health, compared with the situation today. For necrophilia, it might be necessary to ask the next of kin for permission if the decedent's will did not authorize it. Necrophilia would be my second choice for what should be done with my corpse, the first being scientific or medical use. Once my dead body is no longer of any use to me, it may as well be of some use to someone.
Hitler was a horrible monster. Is it even worth debating? He was a failure as a leader and a human being; this is universally accepted. Why even discuss the actions of this mad demagogue? I mean, think about it... the guy rises to a position of absolute power, with (arguably) the most powerful army in Europe. He's Blitzkrieging all over the place, Churchill is trying to appease his demands to avoid a full-out war, he's essentially unstoppable: and then comes the horror of the Holocaust. What kind of demonic possesion would cause a man in his position to use his power to practically wipe out the jewish people and culture in Germany? The final death toll was estimated at 4-6 million jews, despite the -years- in power that they could have been executing the Jewish people. The death toll could have been much, much higher. Hitler was a disgrace to the human race, more a monster than man. Even discussing his actions, despite his motives, is an affront to all that is pure and good. The most unfortunate thing is that he took his own life before the proper punishment could be bestowed on him for his terrible failure.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 21 2014, @08:07AM
Funny that you write this right after doing just that. ;-)