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So, what is SoylentNews? This is your chance to tell us!
I am announcing the first ever SoylentNews online video contest. The rules are pretty simple.
- Upload an original video (no more than about 60 seconds, please) to the site of your choice (but please tell us where it is up loaded and ensure it tracks views) that answers the question, "What is Soylent News?" Your video should ideally contain the phrase, "Soylent News is ..." but this is not strictly required. Let us know what site you upload to.
- Tag your video SoylentNews.
- Watch as the hits roll in.
- ????
- Profit!
Too easy, right? We will count the views on 31 March 2014, at 11:59 UTC. The winner is the individual video that has the most views.
You do not actually have to appear in the video! Make a cartoon, do CGI, do a voiceover of a movie, whatever. Be creative and explore your artistic vision! (Yes, you have one. It may be underutilized at times but it is there).
We have not yet determined the prize for the winner, but it will be jaw-droppingly awe-inspiring (it's a key-chain I found on the sidewalk somewhere). No, it'll be something good. At a minimum we'll feature your video on the site here and interview you for the "making of" your entry. But probably more (it's a keychain).
On behalf of the entire staff and volunteers, we continue to be amazed at the response we've gotten from the community so far. We will continue to provide ways that you can interact with us and help define us. I hope you enjoy this contest. If you have any other suggestions for how we can better meet your needs, feel free to let us know in IRC, the Forums, or the Wiki. Thanks for reading!
~Mattie_p
p.s. keychain!
p.p.s updated based on feedback
(Score: 5, Insightful) by c0lo on Tuesday February 25 2014, @11:49AM
You mean... give away my pseudonimity for a keychain? No way. I'd rather start "journalling" on /. about how SN is much better.
Seriously guys, that's your best shot in promoting SN?
(Score: 5, Insightful) by LookIntoTheFuture on Tuesday February 25 2014, @11:56AM
Why even promote it? Smart people will find Soylentnews themselves. Promoting on youtube like this will just bring more "normals" here. Boo!
(Score: 1) by naubol on Tuesday February 25 2014, @08:33PM
Not once they see the sort of people who comment here. And, I mean no aspersions, but lezz be honest, we're all a nice mixture of aspie, neutroatypical, overdriven people who pretty much scare the bejebus out of a lot of other "normal" people. Of course, this is a gross generality, but we're probably pretty gross in general.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by mcgrew on Tuesday February 25 2014, @09:58PM
Exactly. I fit here. I was starting to feel out of place at slashdot, too many two digit IQs have been showing up there.
Free Nobots! [mcgrewbooks.com]
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 26 2014, @08:36AM
Yeah! We one digit IQ's hate it when two digits show up
(Score: 1) by mcgrew on Tuesday February 25 2014, @12:04PM
I'd rather start "journalling" on /. about how SN is much better.
I'd rather journal about going to Mars with 200 hookers.
Free Nobots! [mcgrewbooks.com]
(Score: 4, Funny) by girlwhowaspluggedout on Tuesday February 25 2014, @12:10PM
Soylent is the best disinfectant.
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Tuesday February 25 2014, @01:02PM
You're in the right place. I just posted chapter 1 today (it's a crude draft).
Free Nobots! [mcgrewbooks.com]
(Score: 1) by SockPuppet on Wednesday February 26 2014, @02:50AM
You're a fracking blight upon beer. ;-)
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Wednesday February 26 2014, @10:13AM
Well, I am in America, most of the draft here is pretty crude (they do have some fine Irish drafts at D'Arcy's Pint).
Free Nobots! [mcgrewbooks.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 26 2014, @04:43PM
(Score: 1) by Buck Feta on Tuesday February 25 2014, @02:36PM
Where's the 60 second video of that?
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Tuesday February 25 2014, @04:03PM
Video? Hell, the first draft isn't even half finished!
Free Nobots! [mcgrewbooks.com]
(Score: 2) by unitron on Tuesday February 25 2014, @10:43PM
Space ship to Mars with 100 hookers on board, who needs a first draft, the script will write itself.
something something Slashcott something something Beta something something
(Score: 1) by SockPuppet on Wednesday February 26 2014, @03:19AM
Hooker 1: oh, oh, oh, oh baby
Hooker 2: mm yeah that's right
Hooker 1: oh, oh, oh, oh baby
For best results, use the OS X say command to read the script.
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Wednesday February 26 2014, @10:54AM
To tell you the truth, all my stuff writes itself. I just sit down and start typing and stories come out. There are actually a few chapters written, they were at slashdot before S/N existed and so far, it isn't porn. And I really doubt there will be anything like The Hacker in Nobots.
It's more about how this Lloyds guy deals with all these horny hookers, especially after he gets a girlfriend in a bar right before takeoff. The fact that the hookers are all drug addicts and the withdrawal is dangerous to folks who aren't the addicts... well, you're right, it writes itself.
I'm posting a chapter a day until it's caught up with what slashdot has, then posting them here a few days before they get there. First I'm going to have to read the damned thing, haven't worked on it in months and I can't even remember the protagonist's first name.
Today's chapter will come in a little while, or maybe this evening. It's unnamed at /. and will have a line or two that is missing from the /. version.
I hope you guys (and gals) enjoy it.
Free Nobots! [mcgrewbooks.com]
(Score: 1) by VanessaE on Wednesday February 26 2014, @11:28PM
(Score: 4, Informative) by mattie_p on Tuesday February 25 2014, @03:05PM
The only marketing I've seen to date is posting "Fuck Beta" comments on another site. I think we can do better. And I don't think I required you to appear on camera, even if you submit a video. I was thinking more along the lines of "StarWars Uncut" where a variety of formats would be good. Feel free to explore video, however you want to do it, or even choose to not participate.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by c0lo on Tuesday February 25 2014, @05:49PM
Mate, I'll be blunt, but please don't take it the wrong way. It's a candid dump of my mind and I'd be very grateful for the same in return, even if it would come equally blunt:
Are there some objective reason pushing you in the need of faster grow? Did someone/something imposed a deadline? You cannot access some sponsorship without a "critical community mass", thus running a risk of not being able to support the site?
(is it only a personal desire for a faster growth i.e. not necessarily an objective reason? If it is so, don't you think it would worth asking the community too how do they feel about?)
If you want a community to support you, I think that it's only fair that you, as a steward, be open towards it, otherwise you'll create dissonances in the feelings of inclusion/"belongliness" and those will accumulate to a breaking point - it happened in specific way with "the other site", it can happen to SN (maybe due to other reason, don't be naive to believe it was the Beta look-and-feel is the actual reason for the split, even if it well may have been the trigger for it).
If you really like to take the pulse of the nascent SN community, why don't you ask directly: "So, guys, why did you get here in the first place?"
Maybe I'm wrong, but I'm old enough not to be ashamed of being wrong; so, if you think I'm wrong, table your point of view and let's get this over with
(Score: 1) by enharmonix on Tuesday February 25 2014, @06:27PM
That is your target demographic though (not the trolls, their targets). I don't like those posts at all and don't think they're helpful, but admittedly, I found out about this site from them. If you want to attract that crowd (which is, admit it, exactly who you're after), the best way is to post stories they don't have and can't duplicate without plagiarizing you. You can't just have editors. You need reporters too. You know, interviews, articles instead of just summaries, journalism, that sort of thing. If you have enough actual content (more than just links), other sites can cite you instead of just linking to the same source as you and bypassing you altogether.
I checked out soylent news because it was mentioned on /. but I signed up because you have different stories (and you appear to be serious). Short of buying advertising from them, you want some way to get them (not YouTube) to link to you. Basically, you want soylent news to be the bastard child of Ars (journalism) and /. (discussion... and source code). However, that means you wouldn't be a slashdot replacement anymore. You'd be something else entirely.
(Score: 5, Informative) by mattie_p on Tuesday February 25 2014, @07:18PM
No, our target demographic isn't slashdot users. It is nerds of all colors, genders, stripes, and shapes. Yes, we forked from slashdot. However, why should we limit ourselves to ex-slashdotters? Can't we aim higher and do better? We, the staff, feel that the community should be made up of whoever chooses to associate with us. That includes younger people who are nerds, but possibly in different ways then you or I are. We are exploring how to use twitter and other social media platforms, because, like it or not, nerds use those! We are exploring using non-textual media, because some nerds like to receive information that way! I personally don't like watching video on my computer, but I'm not going to turn a nerd away because they do.
We do have very vague plans for actual journalism, but we cannot implement everything immediately. I'd ask you to check back on that in a while.
We are serious. We have a vision for being a serious site, but no sense of what the community wants, or if they buy into that vision. If this whole video thing flops, that is perfectly OK by me. Part of what I wanted for this was to get the word out. Check out our current "getting the word out [dev.soylentnews.org]," and let me know if you have any better ideas. You do? Great! Let us know! Why didn't you say something already?
Oh, nothing better than bash dice? Then you know what you can do and where you can go. Because, again, I'd rather do something positive for ourselves than continue to harangue a site that we've all known and loved for some time that has been steered in the wrong direction. Even if we make steps in the wrong direction (and this whole video idea may have been wrong - too soon to tell) we're willing to have the dialogue, instead of making pronouncements from up on high. The very fact that I am willing to respond personally should indicate we're doing something different, something better. We want to do better, and I hope that counts for something.
Last thing. We're not a replacement for anyone or any site. We are our own site. To use your own words, we are something else entirely. And it is time we stopped thinking about comparisons to the dead past, and started thinking of the living future. SoylentNews is the future of nerd news and nerd journalism. We want to have the dialogue on where that future takes us.
Thanks for reading and for posting such a thoughtful response. ~mattie_p
(Score: 2) by kebes on Tuesday February 25 2014, @08:52PM
I believe the video contest is potentially fun, but likely to not pan out. (I'm happy to be proven wrong.) My opinion is that SN should be targeting the nerdiest and most technically-minded segments; those are the people who will contribute to the awesome discussions that we want (and that so far we've been generating). I believe one of the characteristics of nerds of this type (whether young or old), is that they process information quickly, and they abhor roadblocks to their attempts to process that information. (Everyone hates slow-loading pages and pop-up ads, but we seem to especially hate them...) Text is much faster to read/understand, as well as generate. So, in this sense a video contest might turn off some users.
In fact, since we're trying to curate a community of people who fanatically enjoy fast-paced text-based discussions, it would seem that text-based 'events' could work. For instance, getting interesting people to do a Q&A story, but also arrange for the person to 'show up in the comments' during a prescribed time period to actually interact with the community. (Similar to a reddit AMA, I suppose.) The 'guests' for these things don't have to be super-stars in the tech community: I would love to be able to pick the brain (no-holds-barred, no question too stupid) of experts in datacenter design, databases, photography, etc. Picking a specific time-of-day for when some stories are released might also help focus the community and increase the comment-count on those stories.
Relatedly, one of the things I'm a bit worried with SN is that the discussions are not always reaching 'critical mass'. On Slashdot, the readership was large enough such that discussions would get 'fully formed' within a couple hours. Commenting after that was often pointless, as moderators and other users would rarely go back and look at old stories. SN has a smaller community (for now!), so it takes longer for a discussion to really 'build up'... but within a short time stories are pushed off the page and so those older discussions die. People don't seem to be going back to re-read and participate in the older posts (I'm guilty of this, too). I'm not sure what the solution is. Fewer posts-per-day would solve this problem but create another (not enough variety/content). Perhaps we could have mechanisms wherein an older post that was still getting actively commented-on gets re-promoted to the front page? Or perhaps reorganize the sidebar to more clearly and cleanly show the "still active" discussions from the last few days?
These ideas are vague and ill-formed. I'm just throwing them out there in the hopes of generating discussion...
(Score: 3, Insightful) by kebes on Tuesday February 25 2014, @09:11PM
And, a way to encourage these questions would be to explicitly up-moderate them, giving people karma for posing good/interesting questions. Alternatively, we could just update the moderation guidelines to say "Look out for good questions!"
(Score: 1) by Daniel Dvorkin on Tuesday February 25 2014, @09:49PM
Either of these might be a good idea, particularly if they could be controlled by a user setting: say the sidebar by default, with "bumping" recently-commented-on old stories as an option. A lot of people seem to dislike old stories being brought to the fore, but you know, it works for Usenet ...
Pipedot [pipedot.org]:Soylent [dev.soylentnews.org]::BSD:Linux
(Score: 1) by Maow on Tuesday February 25 2014, @11:55PM
You've given me a couple of my own (so far) ill-formed thoughts.
"Video of your science experiment" could be cool use of video.
Also, on /. I always made a point of mostly only reading somewhat older stories due to the conversation being more complete by that time.
My mod points probably weren't as effective as if I dove in to new stories, but I got more out of it. And helped promote the stragglers' comments.
(Score: 2) by Popeidol on Wednesday February 26 2014, @12:12AM
A quick patch for the 'critical mass' problem could be a Recent Comments page. At the moment if I want to see any fresh content in a discussion I have to open up a bunch of articles and sort by newest first. A list of recent comments would make that easier, and help people find interesting things going on in older articles (and as a bonus, it's a quick way to find comments that could use moderating).
It wouldn't scale well as the site increases, but might help keep conversations going at the moment.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Reziac on Wednesday February 26 2014, @12:30AM
If you really want SN to "be its own site" -- don't try to force it with silly marketing techniques that are, bluntly, the equivalent of handing out AOL disks to everyone who can be convinced to carry one off, and are likely to have the same result: a flood of "Oooh, shiny!" posters who only last long enough to frustrate the rest of us into leaving.
Remember, please -- that Other Site[TM] grew entirely via word-of-mouth. Give SN time, and remember it takes a couple years for a community to grow into being.
Trying to forcefeed it numbers comprised of anyone who can be conned into showing up makes me think the motivation is immediate profit rather than long-term viability.
I myself came here from a link in a Slashdot sig, because after 15 years there I consider it a trusted source. No way in hell would I have come here from a YouTube link.
(Score: 1) by enharmonix on Wednesday February 26 2014, @11:56AM
Very good to hear, actually. But I didn't mean you want /. users, I meant /. users are nerds and you want nerds, like you say. But you're right, /. is only a subset of nerds. I like the sound of nerds of all stripes. Some nerdy subjects off the top of my head that aren't on /. are music (not entertainment news, but things like music theory, software, etc... geeky stuff), anime, video games... I already like the site. I haven't abandoned /. but soylent news is already alongside them in my RSS feed.
(Score: 1) by Reziac on Thursday February 27 2014, @11:21PM
Addendum: I got mod points today -- I like having the moderate button WITH the comment instead of just at the bottom of the page. Excellent; I shall mod up some fine comments.
Small bug: the "Moderate" thing doesn't go away once I've modded that comment.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 25 2014, @07:20PM
Why don't you spill out what you hope to achieve with this site? What does your overlord say? Who is this Barrabas anyways?
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Tuesday February 25 2014, @10:05PM
Why do we need marketing? I see it growing. No need for it to be huge, in fact growing too fast is dangerous. As long as we're all enjoying ourselves, isn't that what matters? Yeah, I'd like to see a bigger community but a bigger community of nerds. If I wanted reddit I'd go there.
Free Nobots! [mcgrewbooks.com]
(Score: 1) by Reziac on Wednesday February 26 2014, @12:37AM
Yep, and as I say above... too much marketing, especially via the "fling it to the four winds" method, is a pretty good way to be "big" in a very transient way -- while those of us who want a real community, we who would show up every day for years to come ...fail to find it here, and depart.
Communities build of themselves. You can't forcefeed that, and you can't market it into existence. However, you can sure as hell market it OUT of existence.
(Score: 1) by CowboyTeal on Wednesday February 26 2014, @12:01AM
Turns out that I'm permabanned at /. as of today. Been talking too much about "fuckbeta" and they seemed to have enough with it. I'm quite happy that I won't need to ever go back there though. I suppose this is your answer to what soylentnews is to me.
Getting siggy with it.
(Score: 1) by adolf on Wednesday February 26 2014, @04:26AM
First, I agree with (some) others: The video idea is probably not going to work (video strongly implies camera work, but this is not a photogenic crowd, therefore we're camera-shy, therefore we don't futz with cameras much, and doing stick-frame animation with grep, awk, sed, and imagemagick is difficult)... But that's reason at all to avoid the effort, and I look forward to see what floats to the top.
We've got a lot of ground to cover here in this new place before end of March, and certainly no harm can come from some people being creative. Even if you only get one submission and it is terrible, that's still one submission more than you would've gotten last month.
Aaand. Since I've been looking for a few minutes and can't find private contact info for anyone at dev.soylentnews.org to drop them a line. Perhaps contact info is hidden in plain sight and it is my own fault for not seeing it: it is late for me, and the wine is yummy. So I'll just leave my opinions as a community member here instead.
First, whitespace. I know, I know: Everyone hates extraneous whitespace -- including myself. As I write this comment, my blank lines occupy a whole line. But if I preview or post the comment, my blank lines occupy much less than a whole line. I'm not suggesting that a blank [br] be fully-space, just that the spacing be increased: As it is, there is a lot of disparity between how my comment looks in the editing window, and how it presents itself. I'd double-blank-line-delineate my paragraphs ...but that doesn't work here either. (there are five blank lines between this partial paragraph and the paragraph above, as shown in my preview window, and I'm inputting "plain old text" just as I normally do with Slashcode)
And while I realize that HTML is a markup language instead a layout system (and et cetera), if I can't (de?)lineate my prose, then I (for one) will continue to be annoyed. And you know: I didn't come here to be annoyed. :) I haven't looked at the CSS to see how it lays out for real, but it looks like about .5, while perhaps .8 or .9 would be good.
Aaaand: Blockquote. Before /. introduced a vertical line to the left of blockquote, people used all kinds of ways to quote other people: Cut and paste with bold, leading and trailing hyphens, italics, etc, all within or without a [blockquote]. But once the vertical lines showed up, folks generally learned how to use blockquote by itself, and that greatly improved the consistency of the comments (which is the only reason I show up here, and used to show up there, to begin with).
I don't know if /.-style vertical lines are best, or something else. But mere indentation, as seems to be done now as it was done before on some other site that I'm having an extremely hard time not making comparisons to, is insufficient. [blockquote] needs to be more than than indentation.
Aaand, that's all for now. You folks have done a great job here, and I'm pleased as hell to be a part of it. I look forward to many years of senseless debates, and (this is the important part) occasionally changing people's mind, and occasionally having my own opinion swayed.
I have no further complaints at this time. Thank you. :)
I'm wasting my days as I've wasted my nights and I've wasted my youth
(Score: 1) by adolf on Wednesday February 26 2014, @04:35AM
This problem is particularly bothersome on very short segments of blockquote. For example, quoting myself from minutes prior
See what I mean? Yay! A few words are indented.
. . . . but so are these. A stylistic way to differentiate a quote (whatever the quote) ought to have more than indent.
especially when spaces are allowed
but blank lines aren't.
(and thanks, again. srsly.)
I'm wasting my days as I've wasted my nights and I've wasted my youth
(Score: 2) by mattie_p on Wednesday February 26 2014, @12:38PM
Well, if it doesn't work and no one comes, we've learned something. And that is ok. We are going to try very hard to avoid forcing change on the community. Some changes (like bug fixes) will come down, and some UI changes will come (minor) that will make the site more usable.
But we will offer ways for people to participate in building the future of the site. We will never be able to please everyone all of the time. Our aim is to serve most of the needs of most of the community most of the time. Sometimes we'll make mistakes, and as long we we learn from them it is ok. I'm not yet convinced this is a mistake, but even if it is I will learn from it, and mark an item in my notebook: "no more video contests, evar!"
We have a couple of places for suggestions. Some of them have been submitted as bugs (although we'd prefer you don't do that), some of them have been posted to our wiki page [dev.soylentnews.org], and we now have suggestions (at] soylentnews [dot) org available. We'll get them to the right group if you email.
Thanks for reading and contributing! ~mattie_p
(Score: 2) by Khyber on Tuesday February 25 2014, @04:44PM
So make a fake yet realistic sounding name to post one video to one account that you'll never touch again.
It's not terribly difficult.
Destroying Semiconductors With Style Since 2008
(Score: 3, Interesting) by c0lo on Tuesday February 25 2014, @06:07PM
Mate, ask me to help with SN promotion and I might be able, even willing, to do it somehow.
Ask me to waste my time in learning the minimal video editing/creation and I'll start asking impertinent questions [dev.soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by Khyber on Thursday February 27 2014, @11:57PM
"Ask me to waste my time in learning the minimal video editing/creation"
Click the record button. Shut the fuck up except about your topic. Click the record button again. Save.
If you need to learn how a record and stop record button works, you're nowhere near as old as me and you should probably be very quiet!
Destroying Semiconductors With Style Since 2008
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Friday February 28 2014, @12:42AM
Yeah, I was missing the sprinkle of rudeness and flame-biting from /. Thanks for providing it to me.
Seems that (your presumably longer than mine) life didn't teach you too many. But, hey, I reckon having a mind set of a bully 7 years old may be have its advantages.
So, what's your next desire: kick me out of SN?
(Score: 2) by Khyber on Friday February 28 2014, @01:09AM
"Seems that (your presumably longer than mine) life didn't teach you too many."
Too many what, son? You didn't learn how to finish your sentences?
"But, hey, I reckon having a mind set of a bully 7 years old may be have its advantages."
No, having the mind of an educated person with actual life experience has its advantages. Seriously. You still haven't demonstrated that you know the differences between a record and stop button/icon. Get to it, and maybe my attitude will change. Until then, you're demonstrating sheer ignorance or a solid lack of support for this site, and there's no excuse for that.
"So, what's your next desire: kick me out of SN?"
People with the proper mod points could in effect do that on a temporary basis.
Destroying Semiconductors With Style Since 2008
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Friday February 28 2014, @01:27AM
Mate, you know what? Read the first post of the thread, is mine.
In the context of my objections expressed in that post, try to think how much I value your "press record button" advice.
(Score: 2) by Khyber on Friday February 28 2014, @02:52AM
"Seriously guys, that's your best shot in promoting SN?"
You're obviously doing better? I fucking think not.
Destroying Semiconductors With Style Since 2008