SoylentNews

martyb [soylentnews.org] writes:

The observant reader will notice that we have slightly reduced the number of stories we post on weekdays from about 15 stories per day to about 13 stories per day. We would certainly like to continue with the higher rate, but we have been struggling to do so with current staff and the demands on their time in real life.

What would help?

Submit a story! A well-written story that needs little editing takes a huge load off of the editorial staff. If just a few Soylentils submitted a story [soylentnews.org] each day it would make a world of difference. Ideally, a story submission would be grammatically correct, have no spelling errors, and be "publication ready". But even if your writing skills are not up to (or even far from) that level, we are experienced at "cleaning things up", so do not let that keep you from making a story submission! If you see something tech-related that you think would be of interest to the community? Send it in!

Volunteer! Have you ever thought about being an editor at SoylentNews?

You'll get to learn a super-sekret handshake, the passcode to enter our volcano-based lair, and the admiration of your fellow Soylentils!

Right from the start, let me point out that we aim to be impartial. If you have an agenda that you would like to push or advocate (or denigrate) then skip to the next story.

On the other hand, not a great deal of time is needed. Even if you have only an hour or two per week that you could contribute, that would be greatly appreciated!

Things that follow are ideas that need to be expanded.

See:

• Story editing guide/process [soylentnews.org]
• style guidelines [soylentnews.org]
• Editor's Team Page [soylentnews.org]

https://soylentnews.org/comments.pl?noupdate=1&sid=6466&cid=157116#commentwrap [soylentnews.org]:

Well we are all volunteers, so we contribute what we can, when we can, no one is expected to edit X stories/day (make your own hours). I would say a strong recommendation (maybe not requirement) is signing onto IRC once in a while (especially when editing) so one can communicate with the other editors. Editing a few stories a day, or even a few a week would be welcome. A typical submission takes me about 15-30 minutes to edit, usually on the longer side if I'm expanding or adding a balanced point of view without trying to put words into the mouth of the submitter. The rest is pretty much what you'd expect:

• Opening up a story
• Checking links
• Basic Grammar spelling
• Content wording corrections
• Possibly expanding on a weak submission (sometimes it's just a few links and a sentence or quote)
• etc.

One also needs to:

• Learn the editing interface [soylentnews.org] (not particularly hard but it has it's quirks like UTC 24 hour time and the interface could use a little polish)
• Learn the SN Style Guidelines [soylentnews.org]

Original Submission