Soylent Update
It has been a while since I was able to update the community on various aspects of our site.
Back in the Saddle
Many of you will recall that I had to step back from many of my site duties to begin a period of medical treatment. That has now been completed and, although it was not 100% successful, I am feeling better than when it started. During that time I was asked, where possible, to continue to help manage the site until replacements could be found for various roles.
Unfortunately we have not been successful in finding anyone to help administer the site. It might appear a daunting task, and the job list is appreciable, but many of those tasks take literally 2 minutes to complete. Perhaps the most important role is being available to answer the queries that arrive at admin@soylentnews.org. They are often simple to resolve and again only take a few minutes, but the emails have to be checked fairly frequently, at least daily. It is usually an empty mailbox. I would be more than happy to step down from this role but I realise that some may be wary of volunteering to take on the task. You needn't be, and if several people wish to consider it the current job list can easily be divided between them. So if you are interested then please contact admin@soylentnews.org and I can start to show you around without any firm commitment on your part. If you do not fancy it you can say 'no thanks' and remain as a community member. However, I cannot say what the future will hold for me and I cannot keep the role indefinitely. I would rather have a person or two who at least are aware of how the site works before I disappear at some point in the future.
I have approached the Board and offered my services, although I would prefer to hand the role over to someone else. This should actually be as a result of an election process but unless someone wishes to step forward there is little point. The Board has agreed to me taking on the role again, for which I am grateful.
Jelizondo
'jelizondo' joined the editorial team a month or two back and has hit the ground running, having already published approaching 200 stories. Not only has he brought an extra pair of hands to the team but he has also brought a new perspective on what we do. It is always useful to have a fresh look at what we do and to question why we do it that way. Often there are very good reasons but it is sometimes easy to forget how the team has developed since the fledgling days in 2014. While he is a recent addition to the team he has been a community member from the first few weeks of the site's creation. I'm sure you will make him feel welcome.
Flagging Trial
Some of you will be unaware of 'flagging'. Staff with a specific seclev have had the ability to delete comments from the database since the site was created . This is necessary because legally we are required to remove certain material. Initially the deletion was a 'hard' delete and although the database remained in a stable condition, the linking of comments below a deletion was broken so that while they existed in the database but could not be seen. kolie corrected this to a soft delete - 'deleted' comments would not display but subsequent comments still displayed as they should. It is a far better system. However, it is a system that is still under development although the basic system is fully functional. It is a continuation of the community discussions that kolie held in his journal over the last year or two.
With the relatively small (but slowly growing) community the number of journals being used has also fallen. Furthermore, they have been targeted by ACs who in a small number of cases have abused the journals and made them unusable for the owners purpose. Flagging such abuses removes the abuse from view but of course others rightly complained that there was no community visibility of flagged material. Thus it is necessary to develop a management system which allows a flagged comment to be reviewed, returned to view if it has been incorrectly flagged, edited if the offending material can be removed, or blocked entirely in the event of CSAM, doxxing, banned users, or unacceptable material being found.
Journal owners complained that their journals were being spoiled by the antics of the few ACs and as a trial we have given the journal owners the ability to flag material that they believe is intended to disrupt their discussions or to abuse the journal owner directly. That trial is running at the moment. Several journal owners have used it, but there is no obligation on any journal owner to do so if they do not wish to. It is in addition to the current moderation system and it is not intended to replace it - indeed argument and moderation should be used if it is simply a difference of opinion. The alternative would be to make journals accessible only to logged-in users in the same way that front page stories are currently published.
Once the trial has finished we should be in a much better position to decide how the function will be managed: who will review the flagged comments, how quickly must reviews be carried out, and how will the contents be edited while showing clearly that such editing has taken place etc?
It has to be realised that flagging only affects a very small number of anonymous posters but they are intent on disrupting the site wherever they can. Unfortunately that is mainly in the few journals that are active, but it is also seen in Polls.
Once the trial has been completed it is intended to present the findings to the community for discussion and possible approval.
Finally...
As usual, we encourage the community to submit potential stories for publication and discussion. We normally approach submissions with the following priorities in mind, providing that the material is suitable for discussion.
- Submissions from named community accounts.
- Submissions from Upstart - the IRC submission bot. This is because an actual user has taken the trouble to make a submission even if he/she remains anonymous.
- Submissions from other anonymous sources.
- Submissions found by search bots.
Sometimes it is not possible to stick to this set of priorities because of the need to vary story content across the topics that we cover and, regrettably, not every submission is suitable for publication. It stands to reason that the better prepared a submission is then the more likely it is to be used, and the submission guidelines are contained in the Wiki.
Read more of this story at SoylentNews.