Authors’ Guidelines

Members who authors Posts at PlanetPOV, with their unique voices and opinions, are what drive this site. In order to present those voices in a professional way to our visitors, we have put together the following quality guidelines which we ask all Post authors to follow:

1. Feel free to write about any issue that matters to you and on which you have an opinion to share. PlanetPOV is all about articles and discussions about matters of substance. Articles should not focus on exploitative or trivial personal issues. Articles that attempt to enlighten and share a perspective on important issues are highly sought.

2. All articles should be opinion pieces or an analysis of an issue or situation, articles should not be a cut and paste of news articles with a brief intro or tag as your post. The place for these comments are in the Comments section of Time Out For Off Topic where comments on any issue and sharing of news items are welcome. Click the Comments button at the top of the right hand column to go there. In a Post, it is fine to provide a cut and paste of a news or other article as long as you also include a thoughtful opinion or perspective on them of decent length. Posts that are submitted that are brief or sharing news items will be converted into a comment at TO/OT.

3. Articles may not express prejudice towards other people including on the basis of their race, religion, nationality, sexuality or sexual identity or any other such defining aspect of a person. Authors are of course free to criticize the actions of a group of people voluntarily involved together such as a government, a political party, a company, an organization, etc..

4. When writing an article, please assume that readers are not as well informed as you are on the specifics of an issue. If you’re not including a news or feature from another source with your post, recap the key facts about an incident or situation if you’re writing about it.

5. Please select as many Category checkboxes as apply to your article.

6. Please make sure to type in as many appropriate and pertinent Post Tags as possible on every article you write, at least 3 – 5 descriptive tags per article would be fine.

7. Always include a graphic as a Featured Image so it will appear on the Home Page and at the top of your Post (see the FAQ page for quick and easy instructions on including images with your post).

8. Each author should be a gracious host of their articles as well as their primary moderators, checking for comments and replying to them along the way. It’s also a good policy to comment on other members’ posts, they’ll do the same for you on your posts and keep them busy with reads and comments.

9. Authors at PlanetPOV are representative of the site. The way you respond to other members,  the wit, patience, consideration and diplomacy you show will help to enhance the identity for this site that is unique. Authors need to be diplomats, no flaming exchanges with those who comment no matter what they write. Trolling or abusive comments will be removed by Admin, let us remove them from causing conflict, don’t participate in it.

Again, all members who author Posts are required to follow these policies to the best of their abilities. If a member repeatedly violates our guidelines and/or Terms of Use, as uch as we prefer not to be in such a position, a member may be restricted from posting.

For instructions on how to do any of the things described here (moderating, adding images and previews, etc.), please consult “FAQ and “Authors’ FAQ”

Now, quit yer lollygaggin’ around here and get crackin’ on your next killer column!