The Editorial Process

Ladies! Gentlemen! Members of the jury!

Oops. Wait. Forget that last part.

I am really happy with the turnout and excitement surrounding the articles. It is awesome. Keeps me out of trouble. Keep it up! Anyway, just wanted to hammer down the process, know what I mean? Here is how to make it on the front page:

1. Write an article

Seems simple, right? Doesn't really matter what it is about. "The Sexiest Golden Girl: An In Depth Study", "5 of the Weirdest Flavors of Soda", whatever.

Try to steer away from things you think would start a flame war, but otherwise we're cool. We're looking at an accepted format for articles, and we'd prefer articles to be submitted in a PM on the forum. This is the simplest and easiest way for us to take your draft, repost it for editing, and then send it straight to this content list.

If you write in word, or whatever, please add BBcode tags ( [img] etc) so when you repost your text in the PM it'll show up as you intended.

2. Pictures, etc.

If you are going to use pictures, try to get them from wikicommons, or somewhere you know is free. That is important. We don't want to get taken down.

Please provide links for all your images. We can't host images without them, and being able to see them in your document isn't any good unless we can repost it in your article. Either host the images yourself (in photobucket, imgur or whatever) or host them on the forum by using the attachment "in-line".

3. Jokes

Try to be funny! It isnt that big of a deal. If you don't want to try to be funny, that's cool too! We love you anyway. I am gonna joke it up. That is kinda what we do here. If you want to keep it serious, let me know. But I feel like even the heaviest of topics should have jokes.

4. Sources

If you are doing anything technical, or something that needs to be backed up, source it if you can. Wikipedia is ok.

5. Check for Plagiarism

Run your article through here, because we will anyway.

http://www.dustball.com/cs/plagiarism.checker/

6. Submit

Submit! Submit! Submit! Err...I mean, send in the article. Send it either to me, or OrangeEyebrows, through PM. It doesn't matter which, because if one of us is too busy, we will send it off to the other. If you want, you can try to format it just like you would want it to appear on the front page. Once we have it, we will proofread, add videos, joke it up, do whatever is necessary to make your article even more awesome. We'll keep you informed the whole way. If you don't like something, tell us. You are involved the whole time.

7. Get A Banner

Get a banner from JamesT! His banners are awesome. However, we need to clear up something. Your first few articles are going to have banners which relate to the subject of the article. After about 3 articles, we'll ask you if you want to become a regular columnist. Then you can get a columnist banner. We just want to see a level of commitment. Our columnists try for at least 2 articles a month.


Get a Banner Here

8. Promote

Got a blog or a Facebook or anything you want promoted after the article? Let us know and we will put in links at the bottom. People already know to just PM you with hate-mail.

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Well, I think that is about it. Have fun, you crazy kids!