Writing 1200 stories over two and a half years is a huge amount of personal time to have dedicated to trying to create a new self-sustaining online community. I’m in awe that you perservered for so long — nobody can say you didn’t give it your best shot, that’s for sure. I completely understand your reasons for wanting to move on to new things. Hopefully someone will take up the reins, but if not, it’s still been an enjoyable experience for all of us at SciScoop, and we all thank you.

I entirely agree. While I very much enjoy your writing style and content, I can understand that it’s a huge amount of work. Thanks very very much for all your articles over the past couple of years, I’ve learnt a huge amount.

not that I didn’t know this was coming, and not that you aren’t exhausted from demands of work and the site… but what fun it’s been to find such a range of topics and watch how the site’s evolved.

Can’t wait to see where the dream leads you :-)

Like another reader above, SciScoop *IS* my main source of science news. A former physics major turned computer programmer, I still like peeking in daily to see what’s going on in the world that still fascinates me. Can’t tell you the number of times I’ve discovered something on SciScoop that caused me to forward the link to a friend.

For my own part, I’m more of a science news consumer than content provider, so I apologize for being a non-contributor. It will come as no surprise that I also don’t post on Slashdot, or just about any other news aggregation service.

Your efforts are appreciated and SciScoop’s absense will be noted in my daily reading. Thanks for your efforts!

I always had the feeling it was coming. Thanks Ricky. I tried off and on to add content since the submission queue opened. I wish more others had too.

I’m sorry to see this thread. I feel partially to blame, I’m a LONG TIME lurker on your website, I’ve been coming here on my lunch hour for a long time now (maybe a year or so?). I’m sure there are alot of people like me.

I’ve never posted or never really done anything, but that doesn’t mean I don’t appreciate what you’ve done. IN fact, I had to create an account to post this!

Like the others, I respect your decision, Hopefully you will rethink. Sciscoop is a great site, we need more like what you’ve done, not less!

Like another user said, and which applies to me as well, SciScoop IS my source of science news and I check it out almost daily through my Slashdot box and actually read the site about once or twice a week. I’d try to convince you to stick with it, but you seem serious about moving along; I write about 3/4 of the stories for Mathforge.net and I know how you feel, about wishing it would take off on its own into something self-perpetuating, like Slashdot, because its a BIG commitment even to write a story a day to keep the site up-to-date, and I know you usually write more than that.

I hope someone else will carry on the torch as wonderfully as you’ve done. I think the value of your efforts is in having all of the top stories from those websites you mentioned compressed into one space (not to mention freely available and updated daily) alongside your insightful and entertaining commentary. Good luck on your future endeavors.

And thanks for all your efforts.

I am one of those who browse over from slashdot. Your site is a great read. I vist regularly. And would miss the site it if were to disappear.

Btw: your site has to have the most eye grabbing headlines for each story you post. That’s a great writing skill you have.

Your finding me here and getting back in touch after so very long has been one of the most satisfying moments this site has given me.  You will always have a special place in my heart, mei-mei.  No matter how far apart we are, I’ll be thinking of you as the lights go down.  

I can’t say that I can help by paying the bills / posting all that much science news, but i sure can offer my webspace to anybody that is still wanting something like this to be around. I currently am starting a forums website, for lots of differnt topics, and science was one of the original intentions. It won’t be sciscoop (which I know we all will miss), but hopefully it will be somewhere for refugees to hang around discuss the latest science news. Its not brand new, it might have been around for a week :P

I’m not going to post the link unless you people give me pemission to do so… spam < * So if you people are interested, just say so (in here)

..and thanks for all the fish.

It has been a great 2.5 years Ricky, I’m sorry to see you go, I guess I am like most others that visit your site, a science consumer, not much of a provider.

It was not until I read this headline on my site that I realised how much I depended on this site for the good science headlines.

I am not sure I could commit to taking over completely but I would be willing to head up a consortium of some kind.

I can generally be found at http://mad-den.co.uk if anyone wants to talk about this.

This has been a surprisingly emotional situation for me.  I truly appreciate all of the comments here, more than I can express to all of you.  I love this website and what it stands for – ongoing highlighting of the most intriguing and wonderous items of all the science news out there.  
At the same time, folks, I just can’t go on being the Sole Contributor Forever; it’s just not in the cards and it’s gotta end sometime, someday.  Unfortunately, that day has come.  I’m not going on some kind of a protest strike and I’m not trying to throw a temper tantrum, I’m just trying to face the the reality of the situation here.  And if somehow something good could come of this turmoil to continue the site, and perhaps even improve it, nobody would be happier than me…

So here’s where things stand as of Wed. morning.  There have been three tentative expressions of interest about taking over SciScoop by A. and M. and W (no, not THAT W).  Of the three A. seems extremely well qualified with the other two as reasonably strong possibilities as well.  To sweeten the pot I have offered to A. that I would continue to write 5 of 15 stories per week on a scheduled basis for a year provided he or a team of his choosing would do the other 10 per week at a level of depth of my current routine stories.  Plus, they get total creative control of the site.  

For the record, I hereby make the same offer to anybody else out there thinking about taking the plunge to take over SciScoop – I’ll stay on as a “part-time” scheduled writer at a one-third total submission level to lighten the start up burden while you get your act and team together, and you get total creative control.

Folks, anybody that’s out there that wants to step up to the plate and sign up for a scheduled-once-a-week-for-a-year submission to save this site, now is the time to do it and your generosity might very well make the difference in continuation or folding.  For those who think you can’t write a SciScoop article, you’re wrong.  You can.  Here’s the Seven Step Plan to write a SciScoop article in 15 or 20 minutes that I outlined in one of the letters to the people considering taking over this site:

1. Go to Eurekalert and Science Daily and get the most interesting
press release stories that had been posted there since my
last visit, usually the day before.  Because they’re press releases,
they’re not copyrighted and can thus be cut-and-pasted verbatim.  If
possible I’d follow the link in the EA or SD story back to the
original press release on some particular university or national lab
site just to avoid linking directly back to EA and SD for story
credit any more than I had to.

2. Copy the press release into the SciScoop submit story form, with
four or five paragraphs max in the top part and the rest in the
bottom part.  I’d try to pick a logical story break point between the
two blocks and sometimes reshuffle the paragraphs to get the more
interesting paragrahs or quotes up front early in the story.

3. Those press releases are big on boring long titles and university
affiliations and I’d frequently cut those out or put them towards the
end of the story.  I’d find the first time the story mentions a short
name like * “blah blah blah”, Smith said *  and insert
“researcher John” in front of the Smith to keep the story tight.  
Tight and punchy, juicy quote just before the break to the rest of
the story.  You never go wrong with that approach.

4. At the bottom of the story, add “From a XYZ press release” and
throw in a link to the press release itself on the XYZ text.  ALWAYS
CREDIT OTHER PEOPLE’S WORDS.

5. Add links.  THis is the value-added part of SciSCoop.  I would
find three or four key phrases in the front end story part like the
researcher’s name, a specific important noun or phrase, some silly
little add on phrase in the quote … and plug them into google.  
Usually in the first ten google references would be something
worthwhile that would be an appropriate “click here for more info”
kind of link that could be woven into the story – the researcher’s
lab home page, another news source for the story being reported with
additional info, similar work by others, key background info.  
Wikipedia was antother good source for links like this along with
google.

6. Optionally, add a sentence or two up front in your own words
that’s some kind of lead in to the main story – humorous, thoughtful,
off the wall, free association – preferably with links of your own.  
Local color, you see.

7. Always put in the wackiest title you can think of that’s still
true to the story.  This is very important because that title is
what’s going to draw hundreds of people to SciSCoop from Slashdot and
K5 and elsewhere when the see it in the RSS feed.

Voila.  Instant SciScoop story.  Me doing 15 of these a week chews up around eight to ten hours of my week I can no longer afford to spend in this way. A pool of volunteers signing up to do one of these a week could keep the site going.  Even better, I could have some “free” time to write original essays and stories instead of grinding out these pre-fab press release stories which are OK but are the equivalent of science fast food instead of steak.

Well, we’ll see what happens.  I’ll keep everybody posted.  And again, thanks for all your support and kind words.

I didnt know most of the work was from only one person. I have to tell that SCISCOOP is my Homepage, and that if it dissapears, I will certainly miss it. But I wish you the best in your new enterprises.

I have to tell that if English was my first language, I would have liked to continue your work!

I will definitely commit to contributing one a week. I don’t think I’ve managed quite that rate. But if the new administrators will have me. I’ll commit.

now that is the best news I’ve heard all day. I’ll happily sign up to submit at least one news item a week. I’ll learn stuff, and get to help keep SciScoop going too. What could be better :-)

Not sure how we’re going to organise this. My email’s thefish…at…wandwaver.co.uk (don’t ask) if any of the takeover candidates want to get in touch…

Are there enough of us to let you make it at least a part time job so you don’t have to do it in your “free” time?

The issue is not so much number of members or number of readers or even number of comment posters. The issue is how to spread around the non-trivial burden of continuous ongoing story submissions. See my other “big” post on this subject entitled Upon Reflection…An Update. There is a path that can lead to a happy ending here. I hope we can come together as a (gasp) community to take it.

Hmm, it turns out I’ve averaged about 1 a week the last 2 years here. More than 1 a day some weeks, and some long gaps (recent gap mainly caused by a long vacation in California…)

Anyway, as long as averaging 1 a week is ok, I’ll certainly keep it up. I’m not sure why Ricky insists on us all adding up to about 2/day – on the other hand, we ARE missing a few of the major science stories (did we cover the T-Rex soft-tissue discovery the other day?) so more would make this place a bit more complete…

Three story volunteers in three hours…stuff like that touches a Tennessean like me from The Volunteer State.  

Tell you what.  Six more volunteers at one-story-per-week-for-a-year would make nine volunteers total.  Add in my willingness to do 5 stories per week max, that would make a total of 14 per week total.  At that point, I’ll reconsider abandoning the site and we’ll just organize and go from there as always.  A., you still get dibs on ownership tho if you want it.  

Note that to volunteer doesn’t mean you have to wait until a particular assigned day to actually sit down and WRITE your story.  You can write it ANYTIME and keep it in the submission queue in “EDIT” status until your day comes up to submit.  On that day, it goes into voting.  We’ll organize the details later.  

To me, posting a total of two stories per day to the RSS feed is a big deal.  Once it becomes routine, I believe people will take SciScoop as a true active news source that they know is always going to have new content every single day for them to come and see.  With two stories, hopefully at least one will be on a topic they care about.  Erratic story posting, or irrelevant story posting, to me are the two biggest dangers about losing a reader’s attention.  IMHO.

Anyway, look at this sweet little kid up here on the stage with the big brown puppy dog eyes!!!  Who’s next to ease his terrible suffering?  How about you???  

I’ll write a story a week.

— Graham Cowan, former hydrogen fan
boron: how individual mobility gains nuclear cachet

I presumed you were the A that R had alluded to. I guess not. Now I’m curious who the mysterious A is.

Not I! Ricky’s included all of us “superusers” in his discussions with potential supporters though, but I think we’ll let him explain what’s up…

Yeah, turns out that D. suddenly showed up and carried the day.  IMHO we could not possibly ask for a more qualified person to take over SciScoop and I am very very pleased.  Unfortunately I didn’t make several million dollars on this deal (ha- not even 10 cents!) like when Taco sold Slashdot but those heady days are long gone.  I’m giving D. a crash course in everything I know about how to run a Scoop community site – THAT won’t take very long!  Then he’ll undoubtedly start easing out of the shadows, and I’ll walk off into the sunset.  And we’ll all live happily ever after.

That’s MY hope, anyway.  

I would be sad to see Sciscoop go, and will try to do my best to submit new stories (say, realistically, one or two per week). Just submitted one.

You’re just trying to get out of your promise to make a follow up story to The Making of a Fingerprint or Flower.

OK… just kidding. I’d be seriously sorry to see the site go, and almost as sorry to see rickyjames go. I don’t contribute a lot, mostly because I don’t have the time. I do try to make time to vote on stories in the queue.

Of course, from the comments already here, it’s a moot point. SciScoop will go on. Just wanted to put my two cents in.

Hey! Feel free to post, if our editors feel it necessary they can always polish up your English (I know mine needs it on occasion and I am English!)