Preparing 1st time ATSNN Article Submission

We all get or got stories voted down. Its part of being a reporter. Don't be discouraged and keep posting up stories, even if the do not make ATSNN they will end up in whatever forum they fit and often generate great discussions.

Also my article got voted down and moved to BTS. I am over complaining but I have a question. Do I get BTS points for it? You defintely should if you don't already. Cause that took me some effort. Also I have negative BTS points so I want to get as many as I can.

Originally posted by FredT
When you hit expret status, your stories get to go straight through.

Not true. I'm a 'spert and mine still go thru the voting process. I think the threshold for auto-upgrades is 100 submissions. In fact, I think it was you who told me this FredT.

A reminder to the thread starter regarding editing: don't edit your stories after upgrade. It messes with the code and will actually downgrade your article back to being a submission, I think, unless SO has altered the code to fix this.

i vote on every article that passes my eyes, I rarely miss one.

I have and will vote it down if the intro is not up to scratch. Usually I send a notice for a fix.

I send these for most one or two sentence intros. The article you are sourcing may be newsworthy for ATSNN but not until you have written a good article about it. ATSNN requires a high standard of submissions as it is a NEWS FEED.

It clearly state a paragraph two to three sentences. I actually go more if it needs it but never near the minimum.

"A bombing in Iraq today killed 50 people. Two cows died as well."
the above will get a notice or no vote straight away.

You have to care and nourish your submission. Take a look at Loams submissions. First time submitter, he got voted up quickly.

www.abovetopsecret.com...
www.abovetopsecret.com...

On both submissions he summed the article up well in a neat paragraph. Note the intro structure and the multiple sentences summing the articles up. He supplied related links and overall took care with the article. Also note these submssions were voted up quicker than many others sitting there. I think thats a quality thing.

Now we look at these submissions

www.abovetopsecret.com...
good submissions fits all requirements. Yes vote

www.abovetopsecret.com...
Needed one or two more sentences on the intro and unfortunately was a repeat story as DJ pointed out. Repeats stories are only ok if they contain lots of new info and even then I try and tag it to the original where possible. People reading that story months or years later through say google search will be interested in the updates tagged to the article.

www.abovetopsecret.com...
This one gets an intro fix notice. This is exactly what i mean by the lower standard on the intro. It does not fit the requirements of two to three sentences in a paragraph summing the story up. It does have two basic short sentences but it does not sum up the article well enough. It needs more info.

www.abovetopsecret.com...
This one just scrapes through but I would still like to see one or two more sentences in the intro to sum up the article.

www.abovetopsecret.com...
Now lets look at this one. Too light on the intro and the writer is presuming the reader already knows about the riots. No background is given at all in the intro. This one is debatable whether it needs a new article submissions or whether it should have been tagged to shot's paris riots thread on atsnn. If you got no repeat votes this would be why.

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Its all well and good to pick up a story and say it would be great on ATSNN and it would be great to get the points, but you have to earn them by care and responsibility.

If you are not sure on the quality of your submission intro, meesage an expert who is online or a mod like Fred or Nerdling if they are online. Asala and Sanctum are great at helping too. In fact all the mods are.

Instead of complaining when you get a no vote or a fix, look at your article and see how it can be improved. Be self critical and try see the reasons why. Was the story strong enough, was your intro well written, did you provide comment, did you provide links. Did you care or was it slaphappy.

This all is my own honest opinion and does not nessessarily reflect the opinions of other members mods or experts. I am just showing you by the use of the above submissions of what I would vote persoanlly and why. Its nothing personal, its about ATSNN and the quality standard it requires.

When submitting you are the journalist, you are the reporter, if you were in paid employment as that and you submitted second rate writing to your editor he would veto it too. ON ATSNN its all done for love but the same quality standard comes into play. It still requires the highest standard and pride in your work.


[edit on 14-11-2005 by Mayet]

Originally posted by Conspiracy Theorist06
Also my article got voted down and moved to BTS. I am over complaining but I have a question. Do I get BTS points for it? You defintely should if you don't already. Cause that took me some effort. Also I have negative BTS points so I want to get as many as I can.

You got points for submitting but now its downgraded and moved you will get standard BTS points for it not ATSNN points.

Whih article was it that got voted down?

Thanks again for your support getting me through my first submission (still pending). I'm astounded at the volume of assist and you have my profound gratitude.

Just received a 3rd NO vote due to source - nothing I can do about the source. Oh well. I guess it's taking a while to accumulate the 10 No votes or 15 Yes votes (whichever comes first) - I guess that's the way it works.

Just submitted a 2nd article (5 worst foods) in order to gain more ATS experience. I accidently ran across the article, and it seems like it might be important (although the votes will determine that). I put it together in a hurry, so if I get beat up, it'll be a good learning experience.

May I ask?

Is it possible to author and submit an original work for which there are no URL references?

Thanks again,
Adonsa

by Adonsa:
Is it possible to author and submit an original work for which there are no URL references?

I believe that would be considered an Op/Ed.

If it's entirely your thoughts/opinion, with no supportive published literature, and is conspirital in nature why not try Skunk Works!?

Peace2All

It was the one about the U.S torturing prisoners. Too lazy to put link but if you really want it I'l put it up here.

I thought submitting the news was for fun kind of. I mean I thought the article was interesting so I posted it and I didn't know how serious these guys are.

from Mayet Its all well and good to pick up a story and say it would be great on ATSNN and it would be great to get the points, but you have to earn them by care and responsibility.

Mayet, you give us a lot of guidance and advice, which is very welcome to us that are newbies at this. Thank you.

But it is rarely possible to spend the time constructing a quality submission when there is a breaking news story, because of all the competition you have. There can be only one submission per story, correct? So it is the person with the fastest fingers that usually wins.

Originally posted by jsobecky

There can be only one submission per story, correct? .

To answer the second question first.

Yes - You should take a look on the ATSNN page.

If the story already exists, there is no need to submit the same news again.

Originally posted by jsobecky

when there is a breaking news story

IMHO

Hot breaking Alert News like

" Terror Bombings in Amman - several hotels"

always can be sent as one-liner

(you do not have much more information within the first 5 - 15 minutes)

- but they have to be improved, as soon as there is more information avaliable



[edit on 22-11-2005 by Riwka]

Originally posted by jsobecky

from Mayet Its all well and good to pick up a story and say it would be great on ATSNN and it would be great to get the points, but you have to earn them by care and responsibility.

Mayet, you give us a lot of guidance and advice, which is very welcome to us that are newbies at this. Thank you.

But it is rarely possible to spend the time constructing a quality submission when there is a breaking news story, because of all the competition you have. There can be only one submission per story, correct? So it is the person with the fastest fingers that usually wins.

Not a matter of winning. In the last two days I have hardly posted any stories. I can see already that there is quite a few articles I could post up there. The article I wrote yesterday about the Iraqi family was posted to the news feeds at midnight my time, the night before last. I sat on it and in the morning got up, got breakfast for the tribe, cleaned the yard and mowed the lawn. I came inside saw it still hadn't been posted so i posted it around 9 am my time. That was nine hours later than I could have posted it. I often leave stories, they don't get picked up so I then post the story. Doesn't matter who's name is on the article, as long as it is a good well written quality story for ATSNN.

I noticed about five submissions on Zarqawi being dead again and his nine lives. I hadn't posted any of them and had passed over that story myself earlier knowing someone else would like it.

I never rush my submissions and quite often I post and find someones just beaten me to it. Even if it is a one liner, that person has the priority and right of way so I edit my submission and put please delete in the title. Nerdling TC or another mod soon enough trash it for me, giving the person who was first complete right of way. Nothing worse than getting a no repeat on a story you did first. I know what frustrated me as an earlier contributer so i try and avoid that happening now to others.

Someone replied in a post the other day after posting news that they didn't realise ATSNN was so serious. It is, its a newsfeed. Not just the members here are ging to read it, but many many many who search the story out through search engines and for many years to come.

There are plenty of good stories to go around. I pick a few good news sources and scan them often, when I find a story I paste it all into my submission form, write my new title and then paste the link. I then go to google news and pull up more stories on that item and read them all.. I sum the story up from the source article, sometime if it is important, write something from another source as well, if it shows a different point of view. I then hunt a couple of pictures to add. When I finish my intro, which I will not be happy with unless the scroll bar in the intro section of the submission can be moved, then I wipe most of the story that I pasted in, leaving if possible points that I hadn't covered in my intro. I add my secondary sources and ats links If they exist.

Now for a little clue. American newsfeeds get the news last. Even reuters will not immediately put up good news. Australian and British news feeds and quite often Russian and Chinese can beat the American newsfeeds by a few hours for news. So have a good supply of news sources from a varied lot of places. BBC news and abc news aus, xinhua from China and others.

As i have often said, after you post a submisison and you are not sure how it stands up, U2U an expert who is online or Nerdling and TC. and ask them to check your submission and suggest ways to see it get voted up quicker. I know I am always happy to help someone who needs a hand with anything and the other experts are the same.

Then mostly Vote Vote Vote, I know how frustrating it can be seeing a story sitting down there for ages. I and all the other experts have been through this. The more people who read an article and actually clicky that vote box, then the more valued articles ATSNN will have up there, and faster while it is still news.

It is important for voters to be impartial, if it covers criteria but you dont agree with it that is NO reason to vote it down. You have a reply button to air your view, you view in that way should not be considered when voting. If it covers criteria then vote it up, no matter how you feel. If it is a secnd rate inro, then send a fix.

.



[edit on 22-11-2005 by Mayet]

Boy oh boy I could have USED this thread advise when I submitted my one and only so far ATSNN submission.

I ended up just doing my best (wich was not so GREAT) Then finding Nerdling in chat and he edited for me and fixed it up more ATSNN worthy. Thanks Nerd your a pal! I have NO IDEA if my one submission was ever voted up.....that was not what I was really after, I was just sharing some news and trying to be part of the process.

LOVE YOUR AV DJ! Happy Turkeyday to U! Hi Weeeeeeeeee ya cute SPERT u!

[edit on 22-11-2005 by theRiverGoddess]

Riwka, Mayet - thanks to both of you for your input.

You're right, Mayet, it's not about winning, esp. when we're new at this. It should be more about learning how to put up a quality piece of work. But hey, what can I say? We're Americans!

Mayet,

Thanks for the very useful advice.

I did in fact get a post upgraded yesterday - after having to rewrite it twice. I was a bit down in the mouth when I got the first no votes but after reading this thread - rewrote it and then again and finally it was upgraded.

Thanks for the support - via the thread.

(BTW when do you get the points - as my account doesn't seem to have been updated yet....) Thanks

I tried submitting an article again, here goes nothing,www.abovetopsecret.com...

Hope this one gets voted up. I will just keep trying. I am going to do this evrryday until one gets voted yes. Yep, thats exactly what I am going to do.

voted down again. Yep for things that aren't even true. Repeat??? Nope, I checked whole site, there was not repeat. Bias. Okay What? Was not. I guess it was agianst? uhmmm? Uh? File-sharing? Not really against, just sort of telling you info. Only one vote down I approve of, and that was the not appropriate for ATSNN. Cause it wasn't a conspiracy. But other peeps don't post conspiratorials. Not fair. I think noobs should get an automatic vote up cause its like, noobs can nver get to expert cause they're voted down for things that aren't even on their page.

I am very very pissed off at ATS members. Wayyyyyyyyyy too critical. Its like I am talking to a craby old lady when I submit news. Not fun.

Your last post was great Mayet. It saved me a lot of typing, because I was primed to say more than a few words along the same lines just now. Way

I wanted to bump this thread because in just the last 24-48 hours I've seen about half a dozen ATSNN stories with one sentence opening and closing remarks. I figured some people could use a reminder about the submission guidelines. So here it is. Please, for the sake of your readers and yourselves, follow the submission guidelines.