The news forum

[Cap'n Refsmmat]

SFN really needs to crank up the amount of science news posted in the news forum. It looks rather dull, but considering it's what's on the front page, it ought to be active.

 

Now that I've set up my RSS feeds in Firefox, I'm going to try to post a few science items. But I think we need something like Neowin's setup--people of the rank "newsposter" that post items and moderate the submissions of other members. This way the people with spare time could be allowed to post all sorts of items, and moderate submissions of other members.

[ecoli]

makes sense to me.

[Cap'n Refsmmat]

I just posted two items from my RSS feeds, waiting for them to be approved by a moderator.

 

Sage is really nice. (Sage is a sidebar for Firefox that is a complete RSS aggregator)

[5614]

I think the delay in how long it takes for news items to be approved needs to be looked at. Either by removing the initial approval system or by assigning more people who can approve articles. New articles are often not approved until several hours after the original thread was posted, especially when there is some breaking or current news this can be very annoying.

 

Otherwise yes I would agree.

 

I think part of the problem is demonstrated in the example when someone posted a thread about a breakthrough in quantum computers in the QM section. Now people would say "fair enough" because it is QM! But at the same time it was a news item... this kind of thing happens often, a news article is posted in the relevant section of the forum.

[Cap'n Refsmmat]

Any moderator can approve articles. The problem is that moderators aren't online often enough. That's why I was suggesting dedicated people who just approve news articles and write them.

 

I'm definitely going to take advantage of RSS to start posting more news, when I have time.

[5614]

Agreed.

 

Also we have things like the "skymarshall shot passenger" thread which again fair enough it is politics, but it is equally also news.

[Cap'n Refsmmat]

Then we have to decide if we want news to be exclusively scientific, and have a seperate forum for general stuff. Personally, I think we should stick to science for front-page news.

[Dave]

If people would be interested in setting up a news group, then I can create a usergroup for those budding journalists to post current news, and maybe display it a bit more prominently on the front page. I think they'd need to be a bit more professional than we had at the moment, but if the interest was there then that would be cool. Obviously the usergroup would bypass moderation

[Cap'n Refsmmat]

Okay, sure.

 

Now we just have to find out if anybody is interested.

 

 

Responses from others are welcome, I'd like to see how the public likes this idea.

[ecoli]

Okay' date=' sure.

 

Now we just have to find out if anybody is interested.

 

 

Responses from others are welcome, I'd like to see how the public likes this idea.[/quote']

 

Count me in

[Rakdos]

i would also do this job

[Cap'n Refsmmat]

Glad to hear that both of you are willing to do it. If you'd like, you can start making threads now so we can see what sort of things you can do...

 

If this is done, we'll probably have a lot more discussion on SFN and I think new members will be more attracted to it. When a site has interesting articles on its front page, rather than just latest threads, I think they'd be more likely to join and comment on them.

 

Anybody else interested?

[Cap'n Refsmmat]

And might I ask the moderators to check the forum a bit more frequently for threads to be checked?

[ecoli]

Just out of curiosity, how many members did you want working on this thing?

[Cap'n Refsmmat]

Not many dedicated ones (3-4 maybe) but anybody should feel free to make a post or two if they see something interesting.

[ecoli]

any more information about this being implemented?

 

By the way, I posted some new articles the other day, but they never appeared in the News section... weird

[Cap'n Refsmmat]

Actually, nothing is appearing. Can a moderator go over there and approve things? I've quit posting there because of this.

[Dak]

If people would be interested in setting up a news group, then I can create a usergroup for those budding journalists to post current news, and maybe display it a bit more prominently on the front page. I think they'd need to be a bit more professional than we had at the moment, but if the interest was there then that would be cool. Obviously the usergroup would bypass moderation

 

A few ideas:

 

Why not just make the usergroup capable of clearing something in the news forum for posting? That way, they could push their own stories through and also help clear others.

 

or, maybe if you said that they couldnt push their own stories through, then the members would have to peer-review each others articles and you could lower the criteria for being in the news-usergroup a bit and have a few more news-usergroup helpers.

 

Also, on what criteria is a news article allowed through or not?

[Cap'n Refsmmat]

Why not just make the usergroup capable of clearing something in the news forum for posting? That way, they could push their own stories through and also help clear others.

That's what I was thinking they could do... essentially, they'd have the same priveliges as a moderator of that forum.

 

or, maybe if you said that they couldnt push their own stories through, then the members would have to peer-review each others articles and you could lower the criteria for being in the news-usergroup a bit and have a few more news-usergroup helpers.

I was thinking that once interest built up, a hidden forum for this usergroup could be made so that someone could post their news there, and others would give suggestions and comments. Once it was approved by several others, it would be moved to the public news forum.

 

Also, on what criteria is a news article allowed through or not?

I have a feeling that at the moment it mostly involves if a moderator bothers to look and see if any need approval.

[ecoli]

That's what I was thinking they could do... essentially' date=' they'd have the same priveliges as a moderator of that forum.

 

 

I was thinking that once interest built up, a hidden forum for this usergroup could be made so that someone could post their news there, and others would give suggestions and comments. Once it was approved by several others, it would be moved to the public news forum.[/quote']

 

good ideas

 

I have a feeling that at the moment it mostly involves if a moderator bothers to look and see if any need approval.

 

probably, although I suppose they don't tell us if a news story is ever not approved

[Helix]

I'm all for this, as a science forum we should have a large section devoted to science/policy news.

[Cap'n Refsmmat]

I'd just like to say that I'm still interested in doing this. I'll talk to dave on IRC if I have the chance, and in the meantime, I've posted more news.

 

I don't have too much time any more now that I've started a coding project and such, but I can still stir things up (a news post takes me just a few minutes, anyways).

[ecoli]

same here... still interested.

[Dave]

I just want to say that I am going to start and get the ball rolling on this one. Capn, I will PM you in a few hours when I get out of lectures to try and start to do something about this. Can't go into details right now since I'm a little pushed for time (as usual).

[Cap'n Refsmmat]

Okay, folks, dave has kindly set things up for us, so if you're interested and you have the time, PM me or post here. If applicable, include information like subscriptions to a scientific journal (it would be nice to get articles from a wide variety of sources) and so on. I won't take everybody (we won't need that many people in the start) so please don't be offended if I don't accept you.

 

Regular users can still post submissions to the news forum, however, their threads will be moderated.