Cryptogon.net: Cryptogon News Network
January 22nd, 2011If you read and enjoy Cryptogon, there’s a good chance that you have information that would interest me, and other Cryptogon readers. The Cryptogon News Network is an informal way for you to share that information. This is a dedicated, Cryptogon themed social news site that isn’t subject to the same constraints as the Cryptogon main page.
My goal with the main page is to actually give people less to read. For years, I’ve realized that discernment is much more important for producing actionable intelligence than a deluge of stories. We all have enough to read each day, and Cryptogon works mostly because of what I exclude. What remains has been useful to readers since 2002.
While I need control over the main page—in order to produce an overall representation of information that I’m happy with, and one that readers have come to expect—that presents limitations. Without those limitations, Cryptogon wouldn’t work, but they’re still limitations. We can cast the net wider on cryptogon.net.
Let’s work together to uncover the best information and share it with each other. You never know… I might think that your information belongs on the Cryptogon main page.
Notes:
The HotaruCMS theme I’m using was very broken with Internet Explorer out of the box. I spent some time trying to fix it and it’s pretty much working (although I have no idea why anyone would be using Internet Explorer).
The post sort order defaults to ‘All’ which actually means chronological; new posts on top, regardless of score. ‘Popular’ are posts with at least a vote score of 2 (I started this out low and I can adjust it as necessary). ‘Latest’ shows posts in chronological order that don’t yet have a score of 2. Once they are upvoted they no longer appear in ‘Latest’. If you mainly want a chronological sort order, that’s what you will get when you go to the home page. If you want popular stories, click the ‘Popular’ tab at the top.
I think the creator of Hotaru built a system similar to Digg. Digg always gave me a headache to look at, so I’m not that familiar with it. I’m mainly interested in a chronological view of the posts, so that’s why ‘All’ is the default view. If you like one of the other views, simply bookmark it.
Ok, so consider this a Beta phase. I have no idea how robust Hotaru is or isn’t. I intentionally announced this on the weekend when traffic is low. Cryptogon.net is running on its own hosting account, so it can’t impact the operation of cryptogon.com in any way.
Head on over there and try it out.
So I guess this replaces the subreddit. Off topic, but oh noes, is the chat room no more?
Re: chat room:
Hmm. I think it averaged one message every three or four days.
There was virtually no interest from Cryptogon users.
I can enable it again if necessary during breaking news/emergency situation, for example.