memedumpster will always have been the first user to sign up

*sniff*

Open Q: I have it set to confirm email addresses as part of my anti-bot strategy. I think it will also help slightly reduce ridiculous multi-account posting, but maybe that's just supposed to be part of the experience.

Do you guys want it that way or would you prefer if I don't check emails?

Also, I've adjusted the TOS from their boring vanilla version that probably covered my ass in all kinds of clever ways.

Actually, looking through my logs, it looks like someone else at my host has caused MailSpike to distrust my mailserver. Rad. I know at least one confirmation email got bounced by them. I kind of don't want a million fake accounts cluttering things up, but I guess I want that more than a million unconfirmed accounts. So until it proves a problem, I guess I'll turn off email confirmation, and also those of you who are unconfirmed I'll go confirm.

Yeah, I tried twice to get confirmed, but alas no email was sent.

You're all set up. Sorry for the delay.

Is this the result of some bo-ne.ws internal feud or something?

Well so long as it remains a site along the lines of POENEWS, in that the submitted news stories are supposed to be depressing/extreme/evil in some way and then we make snarky comments on them, yea, I'm down. Only please try to make it a bit prettier than poenews was.

That's pretty much the plan to a T: news stories of horrible nature with a forum that's unusually snarky.

In fact that's the main reason I'm announcing the site before it's ready, so that interested parties can come say how they wish things worked. It's a lot easier to build it one way the first time than to build it, get complaints, and rebuild it.

At this point, everything from appearance to policies is on the table. I don't have a firm "it must be this way" vision, except as far as what MS just said. What I want it to be is popular with you lot.

What if we could rate the source of the news story. Maybe the front page would have an article structure like...

OBAMA LINKED TO HIGHER RATES OF DEATH IN WHITE PEOPLE - (FOX NEWS ☆) - A Focus on the Fascist Poll show white people more likely to die of stress since 2008...

CATS ARE NOT PSYCHIC SAY ECONOMISTS - (CNN MONEY ☆☆) According to Timothy Geitner, cats can't predict stock market trends...

THE WORLD IS DOOMED BECAUSE AMERICA - (RUSSIA TODAY ☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆ 734;☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆ ;☆) Dooooooooooooom...

Or a way to submit supporting or contradictory additional sources to the story. A sort of peanut gallery peer review that may derail a lot of the "uh huh" "nuh uh" arguments. Cite a source of STFU.

It must have cats, and anime once in a while, just to piss off some bouncers

I like the idea of rating sources, and of having some sort of structural relationship between articles. Almost like you could use them to set up syllogisms or something. A vague thought.

It certainly seems like source-rating is something you'd want to keep around. I mean, Foxes gotta Fox, Guardians gotta Guard. We can keep rating them, since things change/Murdochs buy newspapers, so they may possibly fluctuate, but it could be a good open prejudice about articles'/publishers' credibility to publish.

Sometimes a story seems evil because it's a story about a politician sexting an intern: evil content. Sometimes it's evil because it's evil reporting, like someone writing how Gitmo isn't that bad when you get right down to it. Sometimes it's anime. Are simple story categories enough or should we categorize ratings too? (as i describe more @ 54evil)

Out of the poe-news experience I'm a bit weary of threaded forums because they have a tendency to turn into two people just insulting each other ad nauseam. I do visit bo-ne.ws because I like some of the stories they post. A lot of the ones I like most are not really "evil" at all but are mostly good finds from the smithsonian blog and other stuff on natural sciences or interesting reportages. I don't have an account there and I don't post though.

I guess I'll register an account with your place and see how it develops.

I don't have a problem with how this site works and the lack of support. I like it.

I check bo-news too, once I realized it existed. It's a little weird proposing what's kind of a direct competitor. But bo-news seems set up to run maybe just a little more like poe-news than I want to deal with, and for whatever reason various others of the 'ex?-poe' community won't go there.

When the occasional hiccup in poetv comes, folks get nervous because there's gotta be some backup plan other than just becoming the poetv diaspora. Or maybe there doesn't, I realized it was a comforting thought to me. I'm really not trying to "give bo a run for his money," I'm just looking to try it out. I haven't done anything quite like this since setting up a BBS in high school.

I thought there was a fairly regular wistful tone around here for the old days, so I thought I'd see if enough people wanted them back. If you know of an adequate news/discussion replacement, let me know! and I'll quit sinking my time.

I would like to second these thoughts that bac has.