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GungnirSniper (1671)
Journal of GungnirSniper (1671)
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Tuesday March 11, 14
11:24 PM
Our community of Slashdot 'audience' exiles is thriving, but we still need more quality submissions.
There are some general things I try to do when submitting that may be helpful to others:
There are some general things I try to do when submitting that may be helpful to others:
- Be neutral and factual in both Subject and Summary. You can wait until the article is posted, or if you must, include your opinion at the end of the Summary.
- Provide OC - original content. Don't just copy/paste other people's work.
- Avoid paywalled articles if possible. This is also true for sites that show an advertisement before loading the article.
- Use primary sources if possible. If a statement is made to NBC News, link to NBC News, not another site that is quoting NBC News.
- Use at least two source links if possible. This gives readers options and helps insulate against other sites' outages or page removals.
- For controversial issues, use source links from sites with opposing biases. If a wolf says he wants sheep for dinner, don't ask another wolf if that's a good idea, ask a sheep.
- If there is a study or deeper link listed in one of articles you are linking to, you should also include that direct link. Some news sites link to study abstracts, and they are primary source material.
- If the new articles you are linking to reference old articles, you may link those as well to provide background or quotes.
- Explain acronyms for most things. The first time you name something, spell it out. Then on subsequent uses, use the acronym. With our goal of being a global site, things like the US FAA or British OfCom may not be obvious to those outside those countries.
- Wikipedia links are a good source of background info and statistics.
- Check your links are timely. Nothing is worse than warning about something Snopes disproved 5 years ago.
- When quoting a sentence or less, use quotes. When using more than a sentence, use blockquotes, as this makes the text stand out more.
- Double-check your story in preview prior to submission, including opening all links. The less an editor has to edit, the more likely your submission is to being approved.
There are also some things to avoid:
- Don't grumble about rejection of your submission As the site grows, more people will submit the same story. I've also heard there is a 'reason for rejection' system in the works.
- Avoid unauthorized copying. Don't copy/pasta from Slashdot, that's setting up your editor for failure. Or a mocking on IRC.
- Avoid links to non-English sources unless you provide a Google Translate link along with the direct, native link.
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
You're dead, Jim.
-- McCoy, "Amok Time", stardate 3372.7
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Open4D on Friday March 14 2014, @03:53PM
Change that to ...
(Score: 2) by evilviper on Wednesday March 19 2014, @04:24AM
I submitted 7 stories one day... Over half rejected. The editors seem to dislike harder physics/science type stories.
I was thinking of doing a study on it, watching/copying submissions, and figuring out which good ones are being rejected. Possibly posting good rejections to my journal.
http://soylentnews.org/submit.pl?op=list [soylentnews.org]
Instead, I stumbled upon a SN bug... logged-in users aren't even seeing many front-page stories:
http://github.com/SoylentNews/slashcode/issues/78 [github.com]
So I decided it's pointless to worry about submissions, when a big chunk of the user base may think there hasn't been a story posted in the last week... I'm holding my breath until the show-stopping bug is fixed. The reduction in comments on stories seems to suggest this might well be a widespread issue.
Hydrogen cyanide is a delicious and necessary part of the human diet.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 05 2017, @04:34PM
Just came across your comment here and thought I would reply. I would like to encourage you to give story submissions another try. As you may have noticed, there are a number of new editors and a lot more "hard" science stories are being run every day. Personally I would love to see even more articles with some depth.
As always, thanks again for being part of the SN community!
(Score: 2) by GungnirSniper on Friday August 29 2014, @08:47PM
Odd that the Bold tags seem to mess up all the text on the page now. Wonder what caused it?
Tips for better submissions to help our site grow. [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 06 2014, @10:02PM
These are good suggestions but unless some effort is made to automate the process I don't hold out much hope.
As submitters are required to "preview" at least once I'd suggest that preview should include automated checks, even if it was only something as simple as a crude spellcheck.
As a matter of good writing style and good web design I'd like if submissions avoided the phrase "Click here" and instead wrote something like for example: read the article on [link the main subject of the article]better submission guidelines[/that's what should be the link text].
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 05 2015, @08:33AM
If you have the choice, prefer to link pages that don't require JavaScript.