Blog and User Review Criteria

What follows are our (N4G, NewsBoiler) Guidelines for User Reviews and User Blogs. You can find the original forum post here: http://forums.n4g.com/Guide...

At the end I will also discuss some of the "invisible rules" and contest criteria.

Hope this helps! :)

USER REVIEWS
Topics
All your User Reviews should be related to the topic of the NewsBoiler site where your review is hosted. Reviews should be well written and of interest to the community.

Language and Writing Style
We suggest you put some effort into your user reviews to make them as entertaining or useful as possible. User reviews with immature language and low quality posts will be deactivated from the User Review Channel, which basically means that you no longer will get any traffic to your reviews.

Where the Content Comes From
It is okay to post review content you have authored on your personal blog, so long as you post the content in full. Do not include links to your blog. Do not sign up and post your entire blog archive. Basically, feel free to share your writing, but don't spam!

USER BLOGS
Topics
All your blog posts should in some way be related to the topic of the NewsBoiler site where your blog is hosted. This is not the place to talk about your personal life, so try instead to post interesting thoughts or information that will interest other members. Blogs should be well written and of interest to the community.

Language and Writing Style
We suggest you put some effort into your blog posts to make them as entertaining or useful as possible. User blogs with immature language and low quality posts will be deactivated from the Blog Channel, which basically means that you no longer will get any traffic to your blog.

Where the Content Comes From
It is okay to post content from your personal blog, so long as you post the content in full. Do not include links to your blog. Do not sign up and post your entire blog archive or really old posts. Basically, feel free to share your writing, but don't spam!
_____________________________ ____________
That's it. Pretty straightforward, right? Beyond these Guidelines, many user reports and requests fall under N4G culture, or the user-driven aspect of our user-driven site. While some statements like "low quality" and "well written" seem vague to some and tough to others, the idea is to weed out undeveloped ideas (one paragraph rant that's better suited to the forums) and have something enjoyable to read (as in, you can read it instead of needing to run it through a spell check translator).

To the last point, we have a large international community yet we do require submissions, including user content, to be in English. Reporters: be helpful in your reports. Don't strangle gnats. Bloggers: If you are unsure of your English, take advantage of some of the blog regulars and ask them to give your blog a read-through before posting. That's not a requirement, just a suggestion. :)

Above all, if you have any questions let me or another staff member know. I really love our Blog and Review section, and look forward to reading what you guys submit (even when I don't always have time to comment :)).

Contests! Having a "perfect post" isn't required to win our User Review or Blog Contests, we look a lot at the "of interest to the community" criteria. Coolbeans loves to proofread my posts. :) However...it does hurt your chances if your post is riddled with incorrect capitalization, spelling or similar. Paying attention to things like grammar and spelling shows that you care about the content you're putting out there, that you took the time to proofread (even if you missed a few things). We're not professors looking to reward the tidiest post, but interesting blogs and reviews do suffer if you don't use punctuation.

The End.

[iamnsuperman]

I feel like we are getting told off...... Sorry Cat
http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-I...

[zerocrossing]

Lol! not quite.

I made a suggestion to Cat the other day, for a community blog post explaining how to properly construct blogs and user reviews, in order to help newcomers and the like get their submissions approved.

[coolbeans]

Not quite. Adding to zerocrossing's portion, there were many posters--me included until a short while ago--who didn't know unoriginal content in user section was not strictly prohibited. It wasn't technically our fault 100% of the way because the "Where the Content Comes From" part mentioned above isn't in the guidelines you click at the bottom of the page but rather tucked away in the forums' dedicated page about this particular topic.

[Cat]

Sorry, super, my tone was pretty bland on this one (what can I say, I'm tired!). The only one ever in trouble is LostDjinn.

;)

[coolbeans]

-
http://stream1.gifsoup.com/...

Good, good.

[CaptainYesterday]

This is exactly what I've been looking for thank you! :)

[DragonKnight]

There was a user that would post an entire transcript of their youtube video as a blog post here and then at the end link to the youtube video. What about something like that? Does that fall under Spam or the aforementioned blog re-post?

[zerocrossing]

I'm not actually sure if that's allowed either. But given the fact you'd essentially be providing a link to another site, probably not would be my guess :/

[coolbeans]

Good question. I know which user you're bringing up and asked a similar question the last time I saw him posting stuff. most of cgood's response (changed a bit to fit your questions:

"IF it's just the YouTube video, report it. If it's an actual blog with a video attached? It's fine. Originality isn't an issue as items that are not only on N4G are not eligible for winning our monthly contests."

Naturally, if he sneaks in the direct link to his video/channel/etc. it should still be reported as spam. And hopefully he's smart enough to erase it on his own.

[DragonKnight]

Ah ok. Thanks for clarifying. Yeah, the user posted a literal, word for word, transcript of his/her Youtube video and then put a direct link to said video at the end of the blog. Every time I saw that I reported it for Spam and now I know that that was the right thing to do.

[SilentNegotiator]

The blog rules were pretty vague for a while, so this is a positive step.

[zerocrossing]

Agreed, for many (especially newcomers) getting a blog or user review approved is a matter of trial and error.

Hopefully this blog should help a good bit.

[Jurat]

Thanks for the clarity; I’ve got a stack of titles I need to review over the coming weeks.

I’m also happy to volunteer my proof-reading services to the community.

Any bloggers who would like me to cast my peepers over their content before submission, feel free to PM me.

[Number-Nine]

same people always win so whats the point

[zerocrossing]

Not true, I won for the first time last month.

Just do your best, a good review should be the priority not the prize.