Editorial

Article submissions

In a guest editorial this week, Frank Vest vents some thoughts about articles not appearing in time in the Snooze. In particular that call for an FTSC election in last week's edition. Well, Frank, and everyone else, with hindsight vision 20/20 and all that, it's obvious it was a mistake to let that article wait another week (it had already waited two weeks from the call for the election was made in en open echo, until the submission was sent in). Let me just point out the importance to clearly state in the submission mail, if an article is "time critical". The editor doesn't always have the time to carefully read through an article until it is picked out to be published, you should not rely on a special sentence in the article to trigger an emergency procedure.

When I'm at it, some more words of caution. Sending articles via internet e-mail is perfectly OK. But be aware that the editor's mailbox is constantly bombarded with hundreds of junkmail each week. To select the few proper e-mail from all this garbage, is a really hard task, and there's always the risk that real contributions get lost between penis enlargers and Nigeria letters, unless you make sure the header looks really, really OK (proper information in all the fields of the header).

If you really want to help the editor, don't import the text into the e-mail, send it as an attached text file (the good ol' DOS-like *.TXT type, not some other format). If you also try to enter a header in the article (as lined out in the end of each Snooze), it saves the editor some ten to twenty minutes, and also makes it more probable, that the article appears the way you wanted it, and not reformatted the way the software, used by the editor, makes it.

The most safe way to send a contribution, still is via fidonet. For 100% safety, send it as a crash file attach to 2:2/2, then you can be absolutely sure it will get through. But even a routed, fidonet netmail is more safe than an internet e-mail.