by Flemming Funch
Attention, you other News Log Owners/Editors/Authors, notice that when you enter a new article, you can also optionally put it in a supplemental category in addition to the categories in your own news log. The additional categories are the categories that appear as special interests in the Subjects section. So, if you use those categories, when appropriate, your articles will also appear in the corresponding Subjects section. It will also appear in the News Log that you see in the Resources section, which is a combination of anything that has categories for the Subjects sections. Makes sense?
The articles that appear in that News Log are also those that are candidates for displaying in the main public News Log which people see directly at the front page at www.newciv.org. They only appear there if the Chief Editor (me) decides that they're appropriate for posting there. But you can help the process along by using those supplemental categories wherever it makes sense.
Don't use them frivolously, though. The idea is that you can write whatever you want in your own news log, and you don't really answer to anybody. But stuff that shows in the main news log and/or in the Subjects news logs is expected to be something that is of somewhat lasting value and of good quality and clearly understood, even taken out of the context of your personal news log. So, if you feel you've entered a quality article that can stand on its own and that can bear the public eye, and that is relevant to one of the Subjects categories, by all means assign it a category. And if the Chief Editor think it can be public outside the member area as well, he might put it there too.
The criteria for whether it is likely to end up in the public news log on the front page include:
- the subject line actually indicates what it is about. I.e. not just "Look at this!"
- the author says something about what the content is. I.e. it isn't just a link.
- there are no obvious copyright issues concerning the content. Within the member area we can more freely quote whole articles from copyrighted sources, but out in the open, where the content might be picked up by search engines, etc., we need to be more cautious
- there aren't too many typos and spelling errors
- the news log it comes from is already public. Normally I will never put anything in the main public newslog, unless the original newslog was also set to be publically visible.
Again, none of this is intended to insult what you put in your news logs. They're only concerns in deciding whether the content gets copied to other places where it is even more visible.
Also, be aware that for those of you who have your news log set to be publically visible, its content is already visible for people outside the member area. The direct address to it is displayed in the admin area of your news log. A listing of those public personal news logs can also be accessed from the public area of the site, but is less prominently displayed the main public news log.
Notice also that you can enter articles directly into the news log in the Resources section, even if you don't have a news log of your own, and even if the article doesn't appear in your news log. So, if you intend for your own news log to have a certain type of content, like your ideas or thoughts or dreams, and you run into an item you want to share, but which doesn't fit in your own news log, you might post it in that news log in the Resources section. E.g. if it is a pure news item, not relating to you personally.
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