Anyone wanna be a newshound?

[Morrus]

[news]Anyone wanna be a newshound?[/news]
Are there any volunteers? Basically, it means searching for news on the web and posting it in the new "Newsroom" forum.


A few basic requirements, though:

1) Good grasp of English language. I'm not trying to discriminate against those who use English as a second or third language, but there will be pretty high editorial standards in that forum.

2) A certain (as yet undefined) committment to the job - it's pretty much a 7-days per week gig. Depending on how many people volunteer and how/if the responsibilities for different areas of news are divided up, the amount of work could vary.

I'll choose a "newshound of the month" every month (depends both on quality and quantity), and that person will get a little gift from me (a game book or some such). Plus you'll get a cool user title and be the envy of millions! Well, the envy of 3 or 4 people at least.

The forum is just for posting single news items - no replies to threads, no discussion etc. Each one needs to be self contained - i.e. contain all the info someone needs to understand what the news item is about. Only factual stuff and quotes.

 

[Furn_Darkside]

Tempting, but I know I would be likely to editorialize.

It is a good idea- though you may give common posters less reason to check the front page. haha.

FD

 

[chatdemon]

Where do I sign up/apply?

I've been doing the weekly newsletter for the Canonfire greyhawk site, you can take a look here to see examples of it.
Though the 'gifts' and 'envy of the masses' are tempting, I basically enjoy this kind of footwork (being a veteran of high school journalism/student newspaper and a english major in college) and like to give back to the community in small ways, since god knows Im not cut out for being a normal admin or community leader type.
Anyway, I'm your man if you'll have me, let me know!

thanks,
Rich

(edit) btw: Youll notice a lack of updates to the greyhawk newsletter for the last two months, well, a death in the family caused an unexpected hiatus from internet life, but the newsletter is back in force and will have a improved new issue this wednesday!

 

[Morrus]

Cool. I'm looking for 5-6 people in total (not a set number, just an approximate one).

If you don't want the "gifts" you can always give 'em to someone else.

For those interested, I'm thinking of making use of this rather cool vB addon:

http://www.vbulletin.org/forum/showthread.php?s=&threadid=39278

 

[Piratecat]

For those interested, I'm thinking of making use of this rather cool vB addon:

http://www.vbulletin.org/forum/showthread.php?s=&threadid=39278

A "you are not logged in" screen?

 

[Morrus]

A "you are not logged in" screen?

Uhh... yeah. I thought that could replace the main news page. Cool, huh?

Here's a quick copy/paste of the thread in question:

Logician NEWS: Drag Any Message to Your Main Page (post #1)

This is a news script which will drag vb forum messages from your vb db to your non-vb main page/news page. There are a lot of good news script around but I needed a highly customizable main page news script with some special features and wrote it myself. I'm using it in my site's main page for a long time, but I was just too lazy to write installation/help documents to share it here, sorry!

FEATURES:

* This script simply pulls forum messages which you marked as "news" from your vb database and post them in your non-vbulletin (main/other) page.
* You can mark messages as "NEWS" in any forum you want (including private forums). You dont need to restrict your news to a specific forum.
* You can drag any message to your main page, regardless of its date. So news is NOT supposed to be the most recent messages in your board.
* You do NOT have to carry the whole message to your main page as news. You can import it all or simply take some part of it. So eg. you can drag a message's the first paragraph to your news page and link the thread for "Read More".
* Moreover you can insert invisible custom NEWS text which will be dragged to your main page to your board messages, but not shown in the original forum thread. So your original thread message and news text on your main page can be different than eachother.
* You can have sticky news in your main page (even if they are not sticky in your forum).
* News does NOT need to be the first message in the thread. You can tag any reply message as news and pull it to your main page either.
* Script parses ALL of your message icons/smilies (including your custom add-ons) and some of the important vBCode like: [email] [img] [b] [i] [u] * You ca...p://www.turkhukuksitesi.com/newsdemo/news.php

Sites using this script:

Sites using this script:
* My Site's main page (Non-English, but you'll see it in real action): http://www.turkhukuksitesi.com/
* Wildthinks' Site (German): http://www.swishzone.net/
* http://www.terrapinsgonewild.com/

One final comment: the graphical design of "news" in these pages are not mandatory by the script. You can design it as you like with plain HTML, so the script is flexible for design of the news. As you may already noticed, I and Wildthinks use it in different designs.

---

HOW TO USE
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
After you install the script, all you have to do is to mark some messages as "news" to drag them yo your main page. To tag messages you will use tag in your message body. The text you insert between, will be your news title in the main page.
eg.

The [news] tag alone is enough (and the only required tag) to mark any message as news and it will drag the whole message to your main page.

If you dont want to drag the entire message, but pull only some part from the begining(or else), use that part in [intro] [/intro].(And of course still [news] tag is required since it tags the message as news). For example you can use [intro] tag to take the first paragraph of your message to your main page and the script will link your original thread with a "Read More" remark.
eg.

[intro]my introduction that will be dragged to news page[/intro]
Other paragraphs which will NOT be dragged to news page..

If you want to use an entirely different text as your news body, use it in [summary] [/summary] tags. So for example in a hot thread you can send a reply to one of the members and in your message you can use hidden '[summary]We are discussing subject X in our forum.. Join![/summary]' tag, to post this text to your main page as news and link the original thread. Forum viewers will only see your original forum reply in the forum but main page visitors will be notified by your custom text.
eg.

[summary]my news paragraph that will be dragged to news page but hidden in the original thread[/summary]
Other paragraphs which will NOT be dragged to news page and visible to thread readers..

And finally we have an optional [options] [/options] tag, which helps you to customize your news. For all of your news, you can individually disable these options: Send a Friend Link(sendfriendoff), Thread view number(viewsoff), News Poster's name(posteroff), News Date(dateoff), News Comments&Add a Comment Link(commentsoff), News' last commenter's name(lastcommenteroff), whether news shown on the main page increases thread's view number or not (countoff), whether news is sticky (sticky) and whether you want to crunch (removes newlines) news text (crunch) in your main page. Use the tags in paranthesis to disable relevant option like [options]sendfriendoff lastcommenteroff countoff[/options] (Exceptions= (sticky) and (crunch). They enable the option.)

 

[pensiv]

I'd be interested in being a newshound, but as this is one of the few sites I ever go to for D&D/d20 information, I wouldn't know where to look for scoops.

Would you mind providing a list of good sources?

 

[Morrus]

I'd be interested in being a newshound, but as this is one of the few sites I ever go to for D&D/d20 information, I wouldn't know where to look for scoops.

Would you mind providing a list of good sources?

Well, I was thinking that the different areas could be divided up to make it a little easier. That way each person only needs to worry about a portion of the available sources.

For example - maybe one person handles community news, another concentrates on d20 publisher news, another on software news, another on (maybe) tangential news (LotR DVD released, new Robert Jordan book, that sort of thing).

I'll be happy to put together a list of good places to check for info when I get a moment.

 

[Darkness]

Heh. This basically the same thing I did for Eric way back when, only that I'd post the info instead of mailing it!

So where do I sign up (assuming super moderators are eligible)?

 

[Tsyr]

I'll take the "extra" stuff... LotR DVD, books, non-D20 games that might be of interest (Board games based on LotR for example ), etc.