Starting next week, Thom Holwerda will be beginning a seven week internship at a Netherlands-based translation firm, so he’ll be cutting his OSNews efforts back, and the rest of the OSNews team is going to need to fill in. We’ve been talking forever about how we need to recruit new editors to freshen up the viewpoints here at OSNews, and I guess there’s nothing like a crisis to force everybody to do what they should have done a long time ago. So if you think you have something to contribute to the OSNews effort, read on.There are a lot of roles that go into making OSNews a success. Here are a few off the top of my head:
- Scouring other web sites every day to find news to post at OSNews
- Either posting those stories as an editor or simply using the submit news interface
- Writing the daily news-oriented analysis and commentary items (main section, black headlines)
- Writing feature articles: longer, original articles such as reviews, investigative pieces, interviews, etc (red headlines)
- Working to recruit writers and industry folks to contribute articles, and give them assistance with writing and editing
- Promoting OSNews by encouraging other sites to link to OSNews articles
- Working behind-the-scenes on OSNews’ ongoing CMS improvements (design and web development)
- Contributing to the weekly OSNews podcast
- Helping develop relationships with other companies to augment our revenues (shopping, job search, advertising, etc)
- Actively moderating the OSNews comments and forums
- Working on OSNews offshoots such as the OS Reference Wiki I’ve been wanting to start forever
- We’ll welcome other suggestions
If you think you might be good at any of these things, please let me know. You can comment on this article or email me at the address displayed here
I have something to say, but its all! blasphemy. Thom, don’t let the door hit you too hard on the way out.
I take it, of course, you are going to volunteer in Thom’s place then? Naturally, you can so very obviously do it so much better judging from your intelligence in the last comment…
I gave you a +1 (hopefully). Is not going to change anything but yeah,feeling the same.
Edited 2010-06-13 18:08 UTC
And the trolls voted you down … why? +1
I can do some features. I’ve been meaning to do a series of features for a while now focusing on accessibility, in various aspects, of any oses which sport such things or 3rd party add-ons. This includes desktop systems and mobile oses as well. If there’s an interest, I’d be happy to write features concerning such things. I’d also like to, if possible, test the upcoming V5 somehow for accessibility-related issues. I can get down in the code if I find something, have to brush up on my php and HTML 5 though as it’s been a little while since I’ve done web dev work. Any call for these things?
Not yet, but there will be at the appropriate time. Your name vill also go on ze list.
First, I’d be willing to help with writing or editing, though I don’t have any story ideas at the moment.
SuperDaveOsbourne: Please chill out a little. I’ve found myself in disagreement with Thom’s stated opinion often enough (though we do agree on some topics as well), but anyone who does half of what he does for this site pro bono deserves some respect, rather than ad hominem attacks. No one fired him, since if its volunteer ‘work’ they can’t, it sounds more like he’s stepping down temporarily, of his own free will. That whole ‘…door hit you on the way out’ line was so reminiscent of 14 year olds with no social skills playing Doom while drinking too much caffeine. It is in the interest of everyone, both the site operators and visitors to remain civil and gives reasoned arguments, not random flaming.
darknexus: If the ‘staff’ cares, I hope they do let you write stuff up, you are one of the posters that exemplifies the mature attitude the site needs to avoid becoming ‘the worst of slashdot’ (fanboish name calling with no useful content). In other words you have my vote.
I did a lot of that when I was 14. Good times.
Was about to write something similar. You have my vote too.
I’ll second that vote, I’ve always found darknexus to be amiable and intelligent.
As for me, well I love to write (as anyone who has seen my longer posts can attest) but I barely have time to maintain my local weather blog and my fledgling personal blog, not to mention story writing, paying work and family life. My hat is off to Thom, Kroc, David, Eugenia and all the other contributors to this site for doing such a wonderful job in keeping us both up to date and entertained.
Morgan: your comments are rather well thought out as well. The site could do worse for contributors.
P.S. Since voodoomoth said “I second”, that would make you third. Which is a good thing, so far as darknexus’ chances of writing something up is concerned. Minor point of order ‘nazism’.
P.P.S. Should reiterate that anyone who contributed to the site deserves a ‘thank you’ (at least), and the h8rs deserve ‘u w4nk3r’.
Matt: I understand (and empathize with) your POV. Apple stuff is overhyped, especially in Murikqa! OTOH, That rant URL is a bit ‘Aspberger syndrome’ (really). ‘My international mega-corp is better than your international mega-corp!’ Where have I heard this before (said as a sometime fan of both companies’ products)? Ooh, I know, my team will KILL your team THIS year! No offence intended, please accept this as personal commentary, not a flame. Apple makes nice product but their policies often SUCK for both the customer and developer. Nokia also makes nice stuff, but sometimes their future direction is uh, erratic? I have the N800, since the N770(?) seemed a bit prototype, and bound to be obsolete, to put it nicely. And then the 810 came out, and N900 after that, all within what, 5 years? And people accuse Apple of planned obsolescence? I understand new developments in mobile hardware and OSes/Toolkits were pushing them in new, unanticipated directions, but seriously, slow down a bit! Don’t dump the last model every time you change Toolkits, please.
nt_jerkface: Again, no offence, but while I am not judging you if you played Doom at 14 after drinking too much Dew, (I can see how it was fun), it is useful in an FPS, but in a forum where people share knowledge, not so much. Moderation in all things has been a proverb since the Roman Empire was the greatest power in all of Europe (perhaps longer? Speaking as someone who was born and raised in Europe until age 11 and grew up in the US for the past 2+ decades).
I really wish I had more time, because I always thought I’d be pretty good at picking the solid, content-rich stories out of each tech news cycle. There are some amazing developer blogs that I’ve always thought deserved more attention, and language design has been driving traffic like crazy lately, but it’s all getting passed over on OSNews because the editorial staff doesn’t do software development. The only reason I hesitate is the whole Page 1/Page 2 thing. I work; I flat out don’t have the time to write several short essays each day, and I know you’re really strong on keeping Page 1/Page 2.
Perhaps you should consider splitting the roles. I’m pretty sure there are people out there who would love to contribute to OSNews that are brilliant writers, but not programmers.
I, on the other hand, can’t write something to be read by thousands of people, but I’d love to help developing the site (or, perhaps, an iPhone app)
I’ve always wished to contribute to OSNEWS somehow since OSNEWS is the top most favourite site out of handful sites that I visit everyday, though had found no time or else, and only thing that I think I could contribute is web development part anyway (~3+ years commercial experience + more on else). Only if I could work casual in my spare time..
David, I’m game! I actually have been running my own site over at Geekvine.net for the past month, and used to run TipMonkies.com a few years back, and Thom may or may not remember me from the SkyOS days…
BTW, congrats on the internship Thom!
I think this will be a good refresh for everyone. Good for Thom because he has an internship and good for OS news for the change of editors for a while. While such a thing does sound interesting to be a contributor and editor, I just don’t have the journalistic skills for it but I do look forward to reading the new content.
Best of luck on your internship, look forward to any articles you get time for, you always provide a means to active discussion.
If anybody has further questions or would like to talk, add me to your MSN / GTalk via [email protected]. I might be busy today, but in general I’m often around.
I would say that we’re not looking for talent, we’re looking for commitment. I wouldn’t think myself that I matched those criteria, but here I am, doing the job. If you can put yourself forward, are willing to simply try and care enough about osnews to stick around then you could be the right person.
Doesn’t transforming osnews into a site that produces its own content really require both? If it’s not feasible to get that in one person, then perhaps multiple complimentary people can achieve the same result?
OSNews is the site that opens with my browser every morning and I’ll be more than glad to help out whenever I have a few moments off work (or during work…).
Btw., anyone going to LinuxTag in Berlin today?
I would if I still lived there. One day we’ll move back…one day.
Can we have some information about how the revenues are shared at OSNews? No big deal, I’m just curious. I suppose the revenues are not that high anyway.
Right now, advertising rates are in the toilet, but when things are better, OSNews revenue gets doled out to keep the most active contributors decked out with computing goodies, and we can usually put together a budget for travel to conferences and stuff like that.
Hope he will stay here and Eugenia comes back.
Nooooooooooo !
I was thinking the same thing! Would be great if Eugenia could find the time and motivation to bridge this 5-week period to keep continuity up.
I couldn’t start my day without OSnews. Nothing wakes me better than reading comments and articles by linux tards, Mac fags and other alternative assholes. It gives me rage to work thru day, it boils my coffee and I like it! I hope next guy is as nuts as Thom was, you nutty dutch I’m gonna miss you. I sure hope you will be back otherwise Krocs articles will overboil my coffee and Davids Guardian style borefest will leave it luke warm.
And no I didn’t read whole article, instead I decided to rage like lunatic.
You just boiled my coffee, warmed my lunch, and ordered me pizza for dinner.
In addition to contributors, I’m curious if OSNews should define a clearly set of topic criteria. Just what sort of posts do we want on the site? Are editorials and opinion posts allowed?
While the site does have a style guide, without a defined I can imagine many people submitting posts and quickly becoming frustrated with denials. (This is in part why I tend to post only to my site and not to OSNews.)
21 accepted submissions so far
Will Thom still join in the podcast?, alas, just as he switches to linux he leaves osnews, hope the podcast keeps running.
Good luck in your new position Thom!
Don’t forget it’s only an internship and as such unpaid. Maybe he’ll be getting free travel to work but who could ever live on that?
Then again the social is a lot more generous on the continent than here in the UK.
I presume, and hope, Thom will be back. How could he cope without the free gadgets he must have become accustomed to.
Edited 2010-06-12 22:47 UTC
I don’t see cookies on that list, I’ve been mislead.
Haven’t you played Portal? “The cake is a lie” — words to live by.
Not unless it was recently ported to OpenBSD.
That would be nice! Steam just made it to MacOS and Linux, so there’s hope.
Steam has not officially made it to Linux. It will run under Wine, but that is as good as we get for now.
I would love to write some entries, but I already smell the rejection.
My writing style is pretty much along the lines of this guy:
http://www.thebestpageintheuniverse.net/c.cgi?u=iphone
I’ve sent an email to David – haven’t received a reply back so I assume that is Dave’s polite well of telling me to “piss off and never email again”.
Oh well, I’d probably do write a few articles regarding the future direction of IT, speculation on Microsoft products, maybe a few reviews as I trip over software and hardware I buy.
*shrugs* oh well, I’ve always got my blog to keep me happy.
I’m in the same situation, but I’m hoping it’s more a matter of he’s got a giant pile of e-mail to wade through and there’s still hope. … It is the weekend after all, Dave probably has better things to do than write rejection/acceptance letters.
I would personally vote for you if that count, though you’ve got a strong bias toward Apple (sorry I am mainly using a linux guest thru virtualbox).
But reading your comment through time, you mostly make sense and got a strong understanding of OS work ( well better than most of the fanboys I see here ). Even though commenting and contributing are two different things, I think that bringing you on the OSnews team wouldn’t hurt that much.
Hiya, I made a new version of this, but it’s not ready yet.
http://www.paradoxuncreated.com/articles/Millennium/Millennium.html
I would hope to see more articles about alternative OS’s. Windows/Mac/Linux articles are a dime a dozen these days and just lead into huge flame threads. The tech community needs to see what else is out there and this is what made OSNews worth checking out.
Would love to, but that news simply isn’t being submitted nor is of any interest (v0.0.3: bug fixes…). If anybody here is passionate about alternative OSes and wants to chase them and feature short and long articles about them on OSnews then please put yourself forward and contact David or begin using our submission form to send articles our way.
It really isn’t that we wouldn’t have such news, but as Thom discussed in his article about OSnews’ focus shift, AFAWK nothing interesting is happening in alt-OSes right now.
As I’ve stated in the past here and elsewhere, there are several new alternative OSes to be studied and talked about; they just don’t exist on the desktop. I really think OSNews would benefit from a dedicated mobile device and OS editor/contributor, possibly even crossing into the realm of embedded systems. A quick glance at engadget.com and hackaday.com nets several different projects that are just dying for coverage here.
I know, OSNews picks up a mobile story once or twice a week, but it’s becoming quite obvious that the mobile computing arena is the future of mainstream computing. I’m not just saying that because Apple says so, either. It’s been a steady shift over the past ten years or so towards smaller, faster, more capable mobile devices — and most recently towards those devices supplanting the traditional desktop and laptop.
As much as I personally dislike the iPad, I have to admit it’s become a very influential player in the world of digital devices. Sure, it has a lot of room for improvement, and there will be competitors that will knock its socks off. But, those competitors wouldn’t exist if the iPad never came about. Change is upon us whether we want it or not, and when you combine the “cloud” with devices designed specifically to access it, you have this amazing new paradigm for getting work done and entertaining yourself.
The way I see it, sites like Engadget and Gizmodo saw this wave coming a long time ago. No, I don’t think OSNews should copy either of those sites, nor do I think they are “better” than this one. I merely suggest broadening the coverage of the mobile scene to stay in line with what is happening in the world today.
Well, what you’re describing (sub-netbook cloud mobile devices which can’t do more than content consumption supplanting the desktop) is more or less my worst nightmare in terms of computing evolution
I even submitted an article about why, and it got published.
Then several people showed me in the comments why it was pretty much unlikely.
Thom is gone and the main news have halted. The effects are clearly visible =)
Hi,
I believe that I have what it takes to carry out the duties/roles as described.
For my own personal use, I use RSS feeds, aggregators, google alerts, and custom bots to seek the news that I’m after. I like to think of myself as resourceful. For other clients, I’ve developed somewhere between 250-300 bots to do particular research-related tasks.
In particular, I’m excited about helping out with the behind-the-scenes activities, such as working with your CMS and other technical components that make this site possible.
Please have a look at my website for detailed qualifications, http://www.mweichert.com.
Thanks for your consideration!
Cheers,
Mike
I tend to keep up with a few mailing lists that have nice little tidbits many of the more linux-centric sites miss. Not big news, but interesting stuff for the technically-inclined.
I also could pull a few tutorials out of my posterior for some neat little FreeBSD tricks.