Cream of the Crop 26/Cream of the Crop 26.iso/bbs/artspec.zip/ARTSPEC.DOC

Text File | 1997-07-01 | 12KB | 312 lines

FidoNews Article Submission Guidelines

FidoNet address 1:1/23

Updated 1 Jul 1997 by Christopher Baker
Updated 29 May 1991 by Tom Jennings
Based on the original work by Thom Henderson

| denotes a change since the last update |.

"Fido" and "FidoNet" are registered trademarks of Tom Jennings,
Box 410923, San Francisco CA 94141, USA and are used with
permission.

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SYNOPSIS:

FidoNews is the newsletter of the FidoNet computer network, its
Sysops and users.  It is passed to its readers electronically via
the FidoNet and other computer networks and to non-network
readers as well.

This document intends to tell you how to write and submit
articles for publication in FidoNews. Much of it describes the
technical specifications which an article must meet in order to
be included in the newsletter, as well as broad (very) guidelines
on content. (Of course you realize articles can be submitted only
electronically.) Please read it carefully. The article you save
might be your own.


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INTRODUCTION:

FidoNews was originally founded in early 1984 to include all
parts of the lives of its member Sysops and users, which of
course means not just technical matters. We do not have fixed
goals of maximum distribution or maximum readership (i.e. lowest
common denominator) but only to meet the needs of our individual
network members. The success of this venture has always been
contentious at best (ahem).

In any case the grand experiment continues. Twelve years later
(at this writing) and over 30,000 Nodes in the network, the
editorial policy, or lack of one, of FidoNews has shown to
best fit our ever-changing and unpredictable needs.


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SUBJECT MATTER:

Articles on any subject of interest to FidoNet members and users
are welcome and encouraged, not necessarily of a technical
nature, though priority may be, but not necessarily, given to
articles of importance to the FidoNet, its technology and its
uses; other networks such as uucp and the Internet; social
aspects of communications; ethical issues; other related matters.


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ARTICLE LENGTH:

Try to keep articles short. The longer it is, the less likely
people are to read it. Consider splitting long articles (more
than five pages) into smaller articles to be run serially.
Exceptions will be made at the whim of the editors.

For practical reasons, we will attempt to keep FidoNews to a
"reasonable size", which is of course a highly subjective and
variable thing. As of May 1991, the goal is under 100,000 bytes.
Decisions regarding content may be made based upon this, though
in general it shouldn't be an issue.


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WRITING GUIDELINES:

We are not all professional writers, nor is that even a goal for
the FidoNews -- we want real communication to and from real
people; even at the expense of so-called "good writing", which is
frequently a tool to exclude. There are a few minimum
requirements though for any successful writing, even for the
lowly FidoNews:

* The subject discussed must be clear to people other than the
  author! Don't assume that people will pick up the context from
  your writing. Tell them explicitly.

* Why are you writing this? It may seem obvious -- "Review of the
  new Acme 75-baud Modem" -- but it's not. Are you the
  manufacturer? An irate customer? Let us know your point of
  view.

* Who are you? A good question! Anonymity is acceptable, though
  most people want to take credit for their work. Include full
  contact information including electronic mail addresses.

* Articles submitted via Netmail or email must contain all the
  technically required lines and delimiters in the BODY of the
  message.  This includes the *[title] line and the 70 character
  width requirement. To indicate the filename type for one of
  these message submissions, place the FILENAME.TYP in the Subj:
  line of your email, Netmail, or Echomail. Those that require
  extra editing may be delayed from appearing in FidoNews.

* Articles will appear when space becomes available, not
  necessarily the "next" issue. If your article is of a time-
  critical nature, please say so when you submit it; the editor
  still has final say.

* The editor reserves the right to request changes from an author
  to meet these "standards", which you have to admit are pretty
  loose. It is not the intent for this to be a mechanism to
  refuse articles the editor does not like, but simply to keep
  the contents intelligible.

* If we have a backlog of articles, we may get fussier about
  things. Historically, this has not been a serious problem.


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SUBMITTING AN ARTICLE

TECHNICAL REQUIREMENTS:

If all that hasn't scared you away, the next step is to create a
text file which contains the text of your article. The resulting
file should be sent or uploaded to "Editor", FidoNet
address 1:1/23. The "physical" location (and phone number) of
FidoNews varies, and hence must be found elsewhere, such as
within a recent copy of FidoNews itself.


Filenames must follow the MSDOS standard:

    FILENAME.TYP

    a 1 to 8 character file name (A - Z, 0 - 9)
    a period,
    a 0 to 3 character file type (A - Z, 0 - 9)


File types are used to distinguish types of submissions, as
follows:

    .LET Letters to the Editor.
    .ART An article, commentary, open letter, or general news
         item.
    .GUE Want to write a Guest Editorial? [*Name & Node on line 1]
    .RTX Need to make a Retraction of a previous article or notice?
    .COL Want to become a regular contributor with your own column?
    .ANS Answers to the Question of the Week.
    .BIO FidoNet biographies - tell us your | personal | story.
|   .TRU True stories of FidoNet. |
    .HIS FidoNet history - got an anecdote to share?
    .REV Reviews of related product, services, or programs.
    .JOK Net humor in print.
|   .FIC FidoNet (computer related) short fiction. |
    .CMX Comics in ASCII. [watch those lines at 70 columns!]
|        [.CMX that are political will be renamed to .GUE] |
    .PRF Want to Proofread? Get a cookie for spotting errors.
    .AD  Advertising FREE services or events.
    .SAL "For Sale"
    .WAN "Wanted"
    .NOT A notice for the back of the issue. Keep them short.
    .INT Internet addresses for FidoNet webpages of general interest.

If your file doesn't have one of the above extensions, then it
will lay around taking up disk space until someone takes a look
at it and realizes what it is. Maybe.

The name of the file is up to you, though you should use a name
which is not likely to be "stepped on" by someone else -- the
system will not guarantee file names are unique. For example,
FNEWS.ART is probably not a good name for an article.


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CHARACTER SETS:

The character by character contents of the file itself must meet
the following standards or it cannot be published in FidoNews.
The FidoNews staff WILL NOT be responsible for making file
contents conform to these standards.

* FLUSH LEFT MARGIN: Please do not put a "left margin" on your
  articles. Have the text start at the very first column.

* RIGHT MARGIN AT COLUMN 70 OR LESS: Less is tolerable, more is
  definitely not.  If your cursor is resting at column 71 when
  your line is ended, you're okay.  One character past that even
  with trailing spaces and MAKENEWS will barf on your submission.
  If your submission is physically rejected, the Editor will have
  to fix it manually or send it back for reformatting.

* RAGGED-RIGHT TEXT: Word-Star style "justification" (inserting
  spaces into sentences so that a paragraph is perfectly rec-
  tangular) is extremely hard to read, and consumes needless space.
  Please don't use it!

* NO FUNNY CHARACTERS: This includes formfeeds, returns without
  linefeeds, linefeeds without returns, tabs and other oddities.
  The only control codes (character codes 0 through 31 decimal)
  allowed are carriage return (CR) and linefeed (LF). The only
  exception is: Control-Z "end of file" terminator characters are
  tolerated. Not required.

* NO GRAPHICS CHARACTERS: Believe it or not, not everyone in the
  world has an IBM PC. Please restrict yourself to printable
  ASCII characters in the range 20 hex to 7E hex (space to
  tilde).

* LINES TERMINATED: Each line in the article should be terminated
  with a 'newline' -- either the MSDOS standard (CR/LF) or the
  unix standard (LF only).


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SUBMISSION FORMAT:

Below is a sample article properly formatted. Features of it are
discussed further below.

--article file example begins below this line--
*A Sample Article [this is in LINE 1 starting at COLUMN 1]

This is My Title
by Joe Schmoe, [Netmail/email address]

And here is my article. Note that it is flush left (zero indent).
Also note that the right margin is at column seventy so that it
won't overflow "most" text windows. Each line has a newline. Note
the *'ed first line. My article will be listed in the table of
contents exactly as it appears after the * above.

Figure 1.                       Table 1.
        +-------+               ========
        | A Box |                  Alpha
        +-------+                 Bravo

Note that we am not using any funny-o characters. This ensures
that the final article will look the same to every user, no
matter what sort of hardware he has.

This is the last sentence of our article.

--article file example ends above this line--


The FIRST line of text is the Table of Contents line. It MUST
begin with an asterisk * as shown above.  NO BLANK lines above
title line are permitted. If you do not follow this instruction
exactly, the article will not be listed in the Table of Contents.
This Table of Contents listing method works for all submission
file types.

* Everything that follows the *'ed line will appear in the body
  of the newsletter.  The *'ed line will be stripped out of your
  article text so if you want it repeated as your title in the
  article BE SURE to | REPEAT | it on a second line without the *.

* Next should be the title or name of your article, your name,
  and contact information (network address(es), Postal Service
  address, etc) Try to keep it to one or two lines each.

* Put a blank line between paragraphs. Paragraphs that all run
  together are very difficult to read, and may be rejected.

* If you want to put in a table or a figure, go right ahead.
  We do not rearrange text, so your table or figure will
  remain exactly as you entered it. Try to limit them to ones
  that make the communication CLEARER.

* Don't put a lot of blank space at the top or bottom. The
  FidoNews-generator programs will visually separate articles
  automatically.

* Please check for basic errors in spelling, grammar, and
  punctuation. We're not publishing a textbook, but you don't
  want it to embarrass yourself do you?

* Don't use FidoNews to grind your personal axes against other
  FidoNet members. An article presenting a side of an internal
  dispute is one thing. An article defaming or perseverating over
  several Issues is another. Articles that merely quote endlessly
  from other sources to no particular effect are also not a good
  idea.

* Don't republish copyrighted material from other sources WITHOUT
  the permission of those sources. Include the permission in such
  articles.

* Remember that FidoNews is no better or worse than the articles
  submitted to it. If you want FidoNews to be a useful newsletter,
  get involved and submit useful articles. It's up to YOU to make
  it work.

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SUBMISSION DEADLINES:

FidoNews is published on Monday of every week.  Deadline for file
submissions to the FidoNews Editor via file-attach is 2300 ET
[0300 UTC/GMT] the previous Saturday.  Deadline for submissions via
Netmail, email, or in the FIDONEWS Echo is 2300 ET [0300 UTC/GMT]
the previous Friday.  Submissions which miss the deadlines will be
processed the following week.  Submission by deadline is not a
guarantee of appearance in that week's FidoNews but it is likely
depending on volume of submissions.


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