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FidoNews Article Submission Guidelines

FidoNet address 5:5/23

Updated 16 August 1998 by Henk Wolsink
Updated 1 Mar 1998 by Zorch Frezberg
Updated 1 Jan 1998 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 |. [Red text denotes changes for this HTML version. jb]

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

SYNOPSIS:

FidoNews is the newsletter of the FidoNet computer network, for both 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 as to the InterNet.

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 this document carefully.

The article you save might be your own.

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.

Over fifteen years later and roughly 20,000 Nodes in the network, the editorial policy, or lack of one, of FidoNews has shown to best fit our ever-changing and unpredictable needs.

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.

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 Mar 1998, the goal is to keep each issue under 100,000 bytes. Decisions regarding content may be made based upon this, though in general it shouldn't be an issue.

As above, exceptions will be made at the whim of the editors.

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, however, a few minimum requirements 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 NetMail and E-Mail addresses, where such is feasible.
• Articles submitted via Netmail or E-Mail 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 E-Mail, 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.

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 5:5/23, or to "editor@fidonews.org".

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?
Place [*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-related Web Pages 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.

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. But, 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 rectangular) 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).

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 if you follow these submission guidelines, so your table or figure should 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.

SUBMISSION DEADLINES:

FidoNews is published on Monday of every week.

To assure the best possible chance of being published in this week's issue, the deadline for file submission to the FidoNews Editor via FILE-ATTACH is at 0800 UTC/GMT on the previous Saturday.

The deadline for submissions via NetMail, E-Mail, or in the FIDONEWS Echo is 1800 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.

As well, submissions may be missed due to changes in the personal schedule of the FidoNews Editor, but should be published in the following issue.

ECHOLADE - refreshing echomail

. -- -- -- -- --  ECHOLADE  - -- -- -- -- .
| A refreshing extract from Fido's echoes |
| Purloined without permission by D Myers |
` -- -- -- -- -- --  -  -- -- -- -- -- -- '

Todd Cochrane on the subject of supporting the OBO:

Give the man a chance. Personally I think it is time a lot of us started pushing our way into roles within this organization the old guard has sat on there ass for years and accomplished nothing.

They are arguing over the exact same issues now as they were 6-7 years ago. I have been at this as long as anyone probably longer than most yet the same people same idiotic ideals keep pulsating thru and personally it is way beyond time to move forward

Maybe you ought to get on the bandwagon and help this thing move forward instead of bitching all the time. There was a time when Sysops helped one another and it was like a unwritten oath that you were to help your fellow sysop.

Today all i here is me me me me me me etc... Get a grip instead of bitching ask butch if he needs any help and offer assistance instead of criticizing him..

I am very glad he put John in his place it was time that John get knocked around a bit he is to big for his own britches..

Dave Hamilton on the subject of sysop-level elections:

DS> The best thing he could do is to return Fidonet to the sysops by
DS> trashing P4, breaking up the "inner circle", and immediately
DS> calling for a ZC election.

Who would vote? 30% of R12 sysops?

I don't disagree with a lot of what you say, but I think you are one step ahead of what needs to be done. What is the point of Satti turning Fido over to the sysops when they don't even know who he is? Or who their RC is? Or their NC?

Fidonet needs to be promoted INSIDE of Fidonet before it is promoted outside. Then we can know if there is anything left to salvage.

It may be that all that will survive is the IP-listed nodes and the WWB; I don't know. What I DO know is that rigor mortis has set in to the vast majority of sysops, and even the active ones are leaving.

Sure, let's have sysop-level participation. But first, let's find a way to wake the sysops up.

Mail

Hello Henk,

As a point of interest, the Zone 1 Nodelist Segment now contains a special section listing IP Nodes. This segment is using the 1:1/3xxx series of numbers and appeared first in NODELIST.331 Zone 1 is using the flags proposed by Lothar Behet (2:2406/301) in his recent FTSC submission to designate the IP protocols in use by those nodes.

I have been designated as the IP Segment Coordinator for Zone 1 and will be accepting further listings upon notification from nodes that wish to be added to this segment.

Best Regards,

-=David=-
RC13

david@wnybbs.net
TCP/IP Node from 0715GMT to 0900GMT at kraut.dynip.com using Argus v3.162

... Well begun is half done.
--- ProBoard v2.15 [Reg]
--
e-mail : david@kraut.xg.com | files: files@kraut.xg.com
david@wnybbs.net
sysop@kraut.xg.com
root@kraut.xg.com
Fidonet: 1:2613/404 and 1:13/0