Dev.SN ♥ developers
Sections
Dev.SN
prospectacle writes:
"An important choice remains for this site. What kind of organisation will we be, practically, legally and financially?
A for-profit, shareholder corporation seems out of the question, by general consensus (correct me if I'm wrong), but other questions remain. The basic choice is this:
Will we be like a charity, a co-op, or a recreational club?
- (Like a) Charity:
Being like a charity means operating for the public benefit. What we produce is news and englightened commentary for the benefit of the world. All our finances and operations would be geared towards this aim. All excess revenue is reinvested into the site. - Co-op:
A co-op is for the mutual financial benefit of individual (possibly paid) members. Three main sub-options for this exist that might be appropriate for this site:
2a) A retailer's co-op. Members use a common organisation in order to make individual profits. For example if members used this site to display their stunning intelligence, and then put their resume or website links on their profile page so people could hire them. Maybe there are services built into the site to find someone to hire who fits your requirements.
2b) A worker's co-operative: Employees share any excess revenue. Some revenue would go to expenses, some would be reinvested, whatever remains is shared among employees.
2c) A buyer's co-op. We exist to get discounts, or to buy together what we can't afford separately. Maybe we're buying well-written news and analysis from professional authors. Or maybe we're bulk-buying electronics, etc, so the price-per individual can be lower. - A Recreational Club:
This takes membership fees to provide access to equipment, organize competitions, etc. Maybe paid members would get to use extra services, like an email account, or storage space, or their own discussion thread area, or software project hosting, or chat-rooms, etc. Non-members could still be permitted, with fewer privileges, and would have to pay-per-use for the extra services (or pay to become a member).
This is a gross simplification, but gives some idea of the options involved. Feel free to offer alternatives. So what should we be, what is our purpose, really? And what kind of a structure is required to make sure we serve that purpose, and that money doesn't end up in the wrong pockets?
Bonus question: which jurisdiction should we set ourselves up in to fulfil our mission most effectively?"
(Score: 4, Insightful) by weeds on Wednesday March 12 2014, @09:08AM
Agreed,
We have a place for this type of "meta" discussion - on the forum (http://forums.dev.soylentnews.org/). Exactly what it is there for.
This site and these pages are for SoylentNews. News about SoylentNews belongs in the journals or in the forum.
Get the strategic plan going! [dev.soylentnews.org]
(Score: 5, Interesting) by linsane on Wednesday March 12 2014, @10:23AM
Concur - a link to the forums from the main site would be good if there is a topic picked out for debate please.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by mrcoolbp on Wednesday March 12 2014, @10:31AM
The forums have fallen into near-complete disuse, due to the plethora of other communications systems available. The plan is to nuke the forums from orbit (as soon as relevant info is migrated to the wiki).
As to your request not to have these updates on the main site, I think it is valid. The commenting system here is very useful to get an idea of what the community thinks. My vision would be to have a separate "topic" for these discussions so they could be filtered out. Currently that would require some dev work so it's on our list.
(Score:1^½, Radical)
(Score: 2) by weeds on Wednesday March 12 2014, @11:03AM
Well, OK... But, you are adding to the dev list when you have a solution already in hand. The forum is ideal for this and as I have mentioned elsewhere can be a chat center too.
As a development manager, I almost always put new features and bug fixes before reworking old code. I pretty much never build what I can get for free.
Get the strategic plan going! [dev.soylentnews.org]
(Score: 5, Insightful) by mmcmonster on Wednesday March 12 2014, @12:27PM
I would disagree with this.
If you move these discussions away from the home page, you end up discussing it with only the people who remember where it's moved to. Even if you put a permanent link to it -- people aren't expecting a link to ongoing discussion anywhere except the stories and polls.
So make it at most one story a day. That makes you pick the topic carefully.
And give it a meta tag and icon so people can avoid it if they want to.
(Score: 1) by sbgen on Wednesday March 12 2014, @03:25PM
I second this. If I cant see it on the front page I am not going to actively seek. At the very least provide journal entry for such news at the top where I can see it.
Cheers
Warning: Not a computer expert, but got to use it. Yes, my kind does exist.
(Score: 1) by SlackStone on Wednesday March 12 2014, @04:24PM
I like seeing this unfold on the main page. The whole 'beta' thing has been very entertaining and enlightening to watch, kind of like SCO back in the day. I'm very interested in the evolution process of SN.
Not that it matters, but the new stories have just been so-so at matching my interests, I'd like to see more tin-foil hat stories that generate fun discussions. Most of the other news here is a bit dry for my taste, but still damn good compared to the rest of the WWW.
And as for the IRC poll, SoylentNews has done a great job of reminding me how much fun IRC can be. As for FreeNode, isn't it primarily for Open Source projects? SN hasn't released back any code updates, so it doesn't seem like the right place for SN folks.
(Score: 2) by mrcoolbp on Thursday March 13 2014, @12:49PM
The plan is to have all the code open-source. It's all on github:
https://github.com/SoylentNews/slashcode [github.com]
There haven't been many updates recently due to the NCommander being overseas, but there is a lot in the que as I understand. Excuse my ignorance if this is not what you mean, I'm really not a dev.
(Score:1^½, Radical)
(Score: 1) by BradTheGeek on Thursday March 13 2014, @07:06AM
This +1