Simple Rules: Writing Posts

As everyone knows, this site has become an experiment in just how big a group blog can get before it crashes into an iceberg and kills thousands of people. We love the enthusiasm that our 90+ authors bring to the site and we have absolutely no intention of limiting your ability to express your creativity.

That said, we’ve learned a few things over the past week and it’s necessary to make some subtle changes to ensure that the site keeps getting better.

• DO request an author account. If you don’t already have an author account, and would like one, email jfurfari -at- gmail.com to request one. If you’re brand new to the site, settle in and start contributing as a commenter. We’re much more likely to approve commenters who’ve already made a contribution to the site.

• DO pick a unique password. If you haven’t picked out a unique password yet, do it NOW. Failing to do that could compromise the site’s security, and with so many authors, this is a real concern.

• DO NOT hit publish. From now, authors will not actually be publishing their articles themselves. Instead, you’ll write the post and format it as normal in WordPress and save it as “PENDING REVIEW.”  An editor will look it over, make sure everything is ready to go, and schedule a time for it to be published. This will make it much easier for us to make sure everyone’s articles stay up top for longer without being bumped just because 8 other people posted at the same time you did. If you continually violate this rule, expect to lose your author account.

• DO NOT edit your post after it is moved to pending or is scheduled.

• DO NOT create new categories.  New tags are fine though.

• DO NOT select categories for your post. We’ll assign categories for you.

• DO add a blurb about yourself that appears at the bottom of your articles. To do that, go to your User page and add it to the About section there. Also, make sure you have an avatar loaded.

• DO NOT add a “Featured Image.”  Just place a photo at the top of the post that’s around 550 pixels wide.

• Do NOT start open threads. We’ll handle that. It gets crazy when there are five different open threads being started around the same time.

• DO submit your articles ahead of time. The further ahead we can schedule all the new posts, the better.

• DO NOT assume we’ll automatically publish your article just because you wrote it. We don’t plan to wield a heavy hand in terms of what you write about, but in some cases we may feel that your article is not a good fit for the site. Please try to either be cool about it and understand that your article just wasn’t quite the right fit… or cause a big pageview-generating public bitchfest in the comment section. We like spectacle.

• DO come up with ideas for weekly columns. If you have a great idea, pick out a day of the week and post your idea in the comments here so that the other authors know what you’re working on. We really want more liveblogs, recaps, reviews, etc.

• DO NOT make posts with just a single link/video and not much else. This isn’t Twitter. Put some time and effort into your posts. There are a LOT of eyeballs reading your articles so focus on presenting something unique and interesting.