NEW ATSNN GUIDELINES AND CONTENT QUALITY REQUIREMENTS

Submitting quality stories to ATSNN helps us gain the attention of the rest of the Internet world through concise formatting of interesting content. However, lately, especially with the fast-breaking news of this political season, we've seen a marked decrease in submission quality. Beginning now, we will become more strict with the quality of stories we upgrade to ATSNN. Headline You may not duplicate any headlines from existing source articles. Headlines must be in your own words and reflect an accurate ubiased presentation of the facts of your article. Grammatical Quality The vast majority of our audience is english-speaking nations. Therefore, we must insist on generally accepted style, syntax, grammar, and spelling of either American English or U.K. English. Submissions with poor writing quality will not be upgraded. Introduction Paragraph When you use the ATSNN submission form, the first paragraph must be ONE properly formatted full paragraph of your own words. This is the content seen on the front-page of the ATSNN website. If the format is incorrect, you've only submitted one or two short sentences, or you've copied material from the story, your submission will not be upgraded. This first paragraph should portray just the facts of the story in an objective and unbiased way and not your opinion. Reference URL No news submissions from members will be accepted without a reference URL. (On occasion, ATSNN staff reporters and editors may submit important news without a reference URL.) Op/Ed submissions are the only content that may be accepted from members without a reference URL. Story Snippet Generally, two to three paragraphs of the important points from the story should be pasted into this field in the submission form. Most often, the important points for ATS consideration are not the first paragraphs. Demonstrate that you understand the material by picking the salient points from deeper in the reference article. Additional comments When you use the ATSNN submission form, the next field is for your comments on the story where it is your chance to provide your spin and/or opinion on the reference news article. From this point forward, submissions that contain less than three sentences in this area will not be accepted for submission. Special Characters Please do not copy-and-paste your submissions from a word processing program without first removing special characters such as "curly quotes" and em-dashes. These special characters cause problems with our XML RSS feeds and submissions with these types of characters will not be upgraded. Because of the new, more strict guidelines, we've increased the points bonus for an accepted submission to 750 ATS Points. If your submission is not acceptable, but the topic is important, you will receive a (FIX) U2U that provides you with an opportunity to repair your submission. Our editors and reporters are busy, so in most cases, will not have a chance to help you make corrections. Please review the information above, and compare that to your submission. Finally, Duplicate Content Between ATSNN and ATS Given the desire for higher standards on ATSNN, there will be occasions where an ATSNN thread covers the same or similar topic as an ATS thread. Even if the topic is "covered first on ATS", we may still desire to have a more professionally authored post on ATSNN. This situation will be covered on a case-by-case basis, but generally, well-written stories with excellent points will be approved for ATSNN, even if the topic already exists in an ATS forum (with a link to the existing thread). ATSNN Experts Your material is subject to immediate status as a live ATSNN story. If you don't follow these guidelines, your "expert" status will be subject to cancelation. [edit on 6-8-2005 by SkepticOverlord]

Sweet

At least the quality of the submissions will increase.

Surf

I tried submitting one and it got rejected when I only had a one sentence opener. Which would have been fine, if the story I submitted wasn't only a paragraph long and was currently breaking. Regulations are getting a bit ridiculous around here...

[edit on 10-11-2004 by Thorfinn Skullsplitter]

It may then have been better for the general forums. We're not CNN, FoxNews, BBC, and the like. Our credibility is not yet established to the point where a brief statement without supporting links will be taken seriously. When a story is developing, and there are scant details, simply post it in the forums and allow details to develop -- but alert a ATS SuperMod or ATSNN Editor that you think you may have something. If the story develops to the point where there is enough meat for ATSNN, then you can edit your first post to conform to the above guidelines, and it will be moved to ATSNN. The effort is not to restrict what's on ATSNN, but to improve what is.

I strongly agree with this. Though this is a news submission thread, I must comment also on the discussion forums. Lately, I've noticed that more than half the posts have been politically-oriented and/or closely related to spam. I came and have been active on this site because of its variety of topics, and have seen this variety slowly dissipating. I have no wish to see ATS turn into a political cesspool.

I realize that it must be a difficult task for the moderators to sort through this onslaught of repeated topics...heck, some of the posts don't even fit into a topic. I have noticed that a lot of the posts begin as follows:

"What do you think of...."
"YOU NEED TO SEE THIS!"
"What would happen if..."
"Is this for real?"

Etc..etc..

Psycho-socially, these topics increase readers' curiosity, and that is why they keep repeating themselves in the "RECENT THREADS" section. It's really starting to bug me, because it doesn't take a brain surgeon to figure out that this is how spamming works.

Presently, I really have to look hard for genuine, heartfelt posts. From a sociological perspective, it could be our contributors are merely venting their political emotions in a medium that is not possible in the outside world. But THE ELECTIONS ARE OVER.

I advocate the immediate posting of accurate news, but with this comes my advocating of accurate views. Accurate discussions. Please find a way to stop this spam.

Dot.

I cease posting news stories on ATS several months ago because of the of the uneven standards of the moderators. It appears to me that this site rather than being about the posters is increasingly becoming about the moderators.

Just my opinion.

I think that this is a great idea, and all the bettre for it.

Im not a mod yet but I would like to become one. I love things like this where we all can speak our minds and not have the worry of being shut down.

I know people have certain views about issuses that a lot of us wont even think about discussing, but that is what and how ideas progress. Also the use of freedom of speech is not used enough, I say the more the merrier.

I also think that no view should be withheld, because if it is not regulated here in a place like ats, then that individual or group of people might express it somewhere else were they might be taken seriously or another extreme measure.

Just my thoughts, what do u guys think.?

Woa, there are so many do's and donts now you are going to chase more than half the people away.

Also, not everyone here is "writer" quality and some of us have a language barrier...does this mean that if there's a grammar error a post wont cut it?

I liked it when it was simple. I agree one liners dont contribute much, but sometimes a coment doesnt have to be a long one to drive the point across.

This only relates to submissions to the ATSNN News Portal. www.atsnn.com... Submit News

I appreciate the more stringent guidelines. They will ultimately increase the demand for someone to actually read the article before posting. If ATSNN is on some major search engines, then we definitely need to have a uniform method of posting news. Otherwise, our external credibility decreases. I think it is a good move from the standpoint of focused behavior change.



I agree. Also the titles that Dot quoted are misleading because their phrasing seduces you into clicking on them. I'm sure we all appreciate the quest for knowledge but also theory, and I occasionally appreciate the content of these more theoretical posts. However often I find that the post titles are so broad and general that the post turns into controlled chaos. This is disappointing from a theoretical standpoint because it jades the hypotheses that are generated.

They should at least include a SUBJECT in their title.

"Is this for real?"

This?? ATS? The Universe? Taco Hell? Your existence? Give us some direction please, Camus!

MK

"Additional comments"

Meaning we can give biased oppinions now?

It seems to me that some people are using anti-Bush and Kerry remarks in their stories and get upgraded too.

We allowed to do that?

Surf

We are still getting a lot of submissins with one sentence introductions, and minimal follow-up commentary. These types of submissions WILL NOT be upgraded to ATSNN. The "additional" comments section is for a well-written analysis of the story, by you. It can reflect your biased opinion... but the introduction paragraph must be balanced and unbiased.

Great move guys. ...When I joined I submitted stuff that I worked hard on - and was 'scooped' a few times by quickies. Then I started throwing out papcrap too (didn't fly) and finally, stopped submitting altogether.

But I know it's not easy to manage this board - so thanks for doing a great job!



.

We continue to receive improper sumissions with the following errors: - Incomplete sentences - extremely minimal first paragraph - multiple line breaks in first paragraph (intro) - brief and minimal follow-up comments - ALL CAPS in subject line The point of ATSNN is to integrate the efforts and news awareness of ATS members into a highly visible news commentary portal service. Only properly structured, well-written submissions will be accepted.

What is today? The date that is.

14th, right? Mark the time 8:57 a.m. (Central U.S.), 11/14/04.

It seems that submissions and articles have greatly decreased. I'm not sure why, as I have not been keeping up with ATSNN. But it seems something is not as it should be.

We haven't a single story with today's date. And in some cases (for instance TA) no article since the 10th.

I'm not griping or anything. I'm just pointing out the facts.

Edited in my timezone.

[edit on 11-14-2004 by Valhall]

Oh, we've had submissions... a few "fix" messages were sent out, some were trashed, others contained a decent idea but poorly written were moved to other forums. And overall, news has been somewhat "flat" these past two days... either that or "war fatigue" and "political fatigue" as set in so that people are tired of see news on those topics. Cycles.

Bumping this to the forefront, because the above still happens frequently.

Please make certain your ATSNN submissions follow the guidelines in SO's post at the beginning of this thread. We cannot upgrade submissions that do not meet these guidelines.

Thanks!

-B.

We continue to receive improper sumissions with the following errors:
- Incomplete sentences ....I will try to make a complete sentence!
- extremely minimal first paragraph

Today two people who have been in love for over 35 years have finally announced they will be married. Prince Charles will marry his long time love, Camilla Parker Bowles, but a date has not been set yet. The ceremony will not be one that will even come close to matching Diana's Marriage to Charles who then, needed Diana for her for Merovian (sp)bloodline..
Is that good.lol
- multiple line breaks in first paragraph (intro)
Okay I understand...that they will marry maybe in April but it may be sooner.

They have been in love long before Diana was on the scene.
Is that right?

I am testing here!lol
- brief and minimal follow-up comments
I think it is quite disgusting, dreadful and that Camilla may need that thing they do on photo covers, the air-brush thing!
- ALL CAPS in subject line
CAMILLA TO WED FROG!
hehe

[edit on 10-2-2005 by realorritt]