Soylent News Lessens the Scope of Discussion Due to Persistent Trolling and Online Abuse
Exactly 12 months ago: Soylent News Demonstrates Success by Focusing on Key Technology and Science Issues (February 10th, 2024)
The other day (Saturday to be exact) Jan Rinok published a long outline of the situation at Soylent News, a kind of successor or a fork of the 'original' Slashdot (before it sold out to Microsoft and Bill Gates).
One addendum to this recent article would be that it was the FOSS-oriented tech site Slashdot which was by far the biggest site back then, not Digg.com or Reddit, according to an associate. It's a zombie now.
Some people who have been attacking us were also simultaneously attacking Soylent News, trying to turn it into a zombie as well. Maybe that should be expected because Soylent News and us promote Free software. That alone should already make us a "target" to some sick lunatics and perverts.
Insults aside (albeit they're very much warranted in this case; Rinok has received plenty of abuse), Soylent's team "currently have $968.61. There was no money transferred from the previous site but we have received several donations and subscriptions. This is a healthy figure because our servers and data connections have also been donated by generous community members and so our outgoings are significantly less than they were previously."
Rinok ends by talking about "Anonymous Coward Contributions to this Discussion"; they still restrict access to comments, due in part to terrible and personal abuse (a lot of it directed at Rinok, sometimes at others too).
Right at this very moment I cannot even access their main IRC channel without registering an account on the network. For about a month now it has perpetually been like this:
* #soylent :Cannot join channel (+r) - you need to be logged into your NickServ account
Sites like Soylent News generally exist for a dialogue, they do not produce a lot of original stories. So if they make it a lot harder for new people to participate, then they limit the "general appeal" and reach. It sort of means that the trolls are "winning". █