Meet Michael Madlock, the developmental editor behind the whole thing

"There is no algorithm on the submissions page," Madlock says, about ten minutes into a conversation that was supposed to be about scheduling. "There's me, and now a second editor, and a very long spreadsheet."

That's the founding constraint of Slingshot! Daily: every submission is read by a person, and every submitter gets a real answer with a real reason. It scales badly on purpose.

"The rejection email is the most important thing we send. If someone reads it and submits again in six months having fixed the thing we named, the whole system worked."