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Poster Guidance
| This is not a space blog. Thank you. |
The other Steve expands the policy:
This is not a space blog. Military/WoT uses of space are okay. General space topics are not, unless it's really hot on the news. We had news on the Mars explorers when they first landed because it was in the news and really cool, but we don't have that now.
This is not a hurricane blog. We've blogged on the Katrina disaster because it was the #1 item in the news, but as NO/Mississippi clean up we'll be cutting back on that. I certainly have. Many times a natural disaster somewhere in the world, especially the Islamic world, gets two sentences under the rubric of 'Signs and Portents, part xxx'. That's okay, but we don't need ten paragraphs and nine posts on it.
This is not a domestic news blog. We blog WoT related items, and some politics always creeps into that. But we don't cover the usual 'inside baseball' stuff on health care policy or the highway bill. There are other good blogs for that.
An extension to that is that we're not a domestic news blog for Britain, Australia or Liberia. We want to hear about Tony when it matters to the WoT (his survival in parliament is included in that). We hear about the German election and Chirac's stroke because it matters, in some way, to the WoT. But what Dominique DeVillepin (who is alleged to be a man) does with domestic policy in France is something we generally don't cover.
Health and tech stories that don't relate to the WoT generally shouldn't be posted. The flu story was fine, because a flu pandemic is germane to the WoT.
Stupid animal stories, of course, are always welcome.
When news is slow, the moderators tend to let more stuff through. When we have 100+ posts staring at us, it gets tough for Fred, me, Steve, Emily, Robin, Dan, etc to keep up, let alone filter and snark away. So we start lopping off stuff that isn't central to the WoT. I don't have enough hours in the day to wade through 200+ posts.
Don't take it personal. |
(Gonna get in trouble for this, I just know it...)
Page 1 is for hardcore WoT stories. They'll usually include dead bodies, guns, lawyers, large amounts of money, major breakthroughs, major setbacks, and major investigations.
Page 2 is what you might call background noise WoT stories. That's the place for negotiations, maneuvering, diplomatic initiatives, Arab and Muslim lies and perfidy, elections on Islam's bloody borders, regime change, efforts of the moonbats to impede the war effort, military technological developments, economic warfare — including oil and other forms energy, the peculiar people who ally themselves with international Islamism, like David Duke and the neo-Nazis. There are occasional dead bodies on Page 2, usually associated with whoever's rioting that day in Karachi or Quetta.
Page 3 is for non-WoT stories that are of interest to us all, or at least to a large number of us. That's fire, flood, earthquakes, people doing terrible things to each other that aren't associated with terrorism or international Islamism (Congo, Burundi, death cults in whatever country), and, of course, stoopid animal stories and Darwin award candidates. Many Fifth Column stories will also fit on Page 3, because they have the habit of creeping onto Page 2 as they grow — think Michael Moore, George Soros and Code Pink — even though their immediate target might not be the war effort. Page 3 is the background noise to the WoT, what would be of interest if there were no Islamists. That does include the occasional space story, but only when it's something big, like arriving on Mars, discovering a new planet, or the occasional asteroid on a collision course with the earth.
Page 4 is available for opinion, your own or somebody else's, preferably on Page 1 or 2 topics, but occasionally on Big Story Page 3 topics.
I remind everyone periodically to keep stories short where possible. My original intention when I started Rantburg was to have a series of easily digestible nuggets that would summarize the day's WoT. When the AP or Rooters starts to repeat themselves, or to tell you things you learned in nursery school, cut it there or chop that paragraph if there's actually more news to follow. If a single story covers multiple topics, take each topic and make it a post, putting it on the appropriate page. See today's Leb stories, for example, three of which lead back to a single Beirut Daily Star article. You can cut the original text as long as you don't change its meaning — Maureen Dowd doesn't post here. Anything you add goes into hilited comments.
You can also post just a headline if it's descriptive, or you can post just a headline with your comments. If you're on the spot and the news is breaking, feel free to write it up and post it. |
Posted by: Steve 2005-09-09 |
| http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=129114 |
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