Oh! Sorry I didn't see this! It's kiiiinda like that. I think it's more like news threads if they actually followed the rules of no plagerism hahaha.

I got 2 (although I dont remember the obvious one (how do I get it then!?)). I can so hear the last sentence with Matt Smith's voice.

Hint: 9, 10, and 11. I think you got 9 and 11. 10's is more obsure because it's not a catch-phrase.

its time for a poll...

I wonder what difference would it be if we adopted this idea and what would be the benefit?

It would seem to me it would be just more work for people to post news for perhaps the same or less of a payoff than just copy/pasting news.

And what would happen to people who posted news before? Would their submissions be rejected then?

I dunno if people would be interested in having to do more work just to post news. I think the reason we see people post news with very little original text from the poster is that it seems like a rat race to post news first and get the benefit of points. All the extra effort of arranging it as your own is pointless as someone will likely beat you to the punch.

I think it could or could not be a good idea, as it could just discourage people from posting news in general. Though it could mean we would get higher quality posts, haha.

Well what the Editor admins are doing isn't what Machina does at all. There job would be to look for good articles, not edit everything. They'd be the middle man between a poster and Machina. They'd pick the first well-done news article on a specific subject, edit what they think needs to be edited for final review, and submit that.

Machina himself wouldn't be reading through all of the user submitted content. He'd just be reading the editor-approved content. If they are doing their job correctly, it should be no different for him on his end than it currently is now. By the time the article reaches him, all of the curation and 99% of the editing will have already done.

As for the articles being written, there would be strict guidelines being placed on how the article should be done. Users would go in knowing that the more stictly they adhere to these guidelines, the more likely their articles will be chosen by an editor for publishing. If you're a user wanting to break news before anyone else, you're insentivised to write your article with the utmost quality, because if you don't someone elses article will be selected over yours. I use the word "editors," but what they really are are curators. Their job is primerily to chose the best articles and discard the others - It's not to edit everything. That would be unreasonable.

If there are a dozen really badly done articles submitted about some division news, none of them will get picked. It's quality over quantity. The "editors" are just their to sift through the nonsense and find the quality. The easy to understand guidelines on top of the inate competition formed from wanting your article to actually get chosen would be what naturally raises the general quality of these user submitted article.

One could say that being a mod or Game DB admit are "thankless jobs" too, but people are still happy to do it.

To the first point, I understand all of that. What I'm proposing is that anyone submitting a news article to the site be equipped with guidelines fully detailing just how these news articles must be done, with the warning that no articles that fail to adhere to these guidelines would be selected. I'm not suggesting that users copy-paste news articles and submit that. I'm suggesting that more passionate users would go to this terminal, submit a news article that adheres to the guidelines, and then have these editors sort through that. I'm definitely not trying to imply that writing a news article doesn't take time and effort, I just think that it would be much easier to have news posted in a more timely manner if it were done this way. Maybe I'm just an idealist, but I have faith that, when presented with a clear set of rules and guidelines, most of the content submitted will be of a high quality.

To the point about editors, maybe editors was a poor choice of word. They are primerily curators. They are meant to be a middle-man between the users and you. Their primery job would be to select good articles in the first place. Their job is to read through the articles, select the first one of a high quality that adhere to the rules and guidelines effectively, edit that, and then submit the curated articles to you for the more rudementary edit. Again, I'm not trying to say that anyone isn't doing their job correctly, but I understand why the writing staff can't feasibly be awake 24/7 to write an article on every single piece of breaking news as it happens when they are freelance, and I think it's clear to most of us that many of the news articles written here are done one after the other in quick succession as a means of catching up with what was missed for the day. This is just a proposition to alleviate that. The idea is that if 20 members each submit one good article as soon as it breaks, each of those articles will be posted faster than the way it's being done now and there will be less articles to make up for at the end of the day.

To the third point, that is my biggest concern. Like I said, I can only speak for myself here. My idea came from how active the Game DB was, and specifically how Trucks (this is Will, right?) said that the reason this was so successful was because users would rush to post and update game information on their favorite games/games they were interested in as soon as it came out. My thought process was pretty much the same for this. The articles submitted would therefore come from a user's want to post news about a game they're excited for or a console they have an affinity for, but as for the longevity of such a system, I don't know. I do think that it should award badges and Gamrpoints as an incentive, but again, I'm basing much of the potential success of such a system on heresay from the days of the Game DB.

And to the final point, I also don't know. I didn't really consider that the approved editors might not actually be active in doing the job they applied for, so that would obviously be an issue. The three-tier system I outlined would help alleviate some of that workload, as well as the guidelines for the writers, but I really don't have a concrete answer for that, as it would really depend on everyone doing what they're supposed to. Again, ideally the mod approved editor-curators would pick the articles they need to do the least work editing, edit that, and then submit those to you or any other "real" editors for final approval. But as for how reasonable of work that would be, I can't say.

But it would mean that they would be posted faster than they are now, which is my point. The point isn't to get news articles up the second news breaks, it's to end the end of the day waterfall of catch up news articles we often get. Posting news an hour or two late is better than having news posted 12 hours late like is sometimes the case.

Well of course there would be low quality articles submitted. Those articles would just be denied approval. I also think it must feel pretty good merely being a user and seeing an article you wrote posted to the site being credited to you, so that would be an incentivisor as well. It's a big reason Buzzfeed is a big as it is.

I'm not expecting the same 5 people to write every user news article. Someone might only post a few. Some others might post a lot. That's why you don't make them writers. They might not want to be. They might just want to post a few articles. I post a lot of threads, but I don't want to be an Ambassador. It's the same line of thinking.

Well people post news on a forum for much different reasons than why they would be posting actual news articles. You post news articles to alert. You post news on a forum to discuss. I think the accolades of having your news article posted on the site far surpasses the little recognition you'd get for being the one to copy-paste a news article in a thread, so the difference isn't really comparable. You'd get points for this too, likely more, so there'd be that too.

I mean, the burn would be similar to making a news thread that is beaten by someone and locked after a bunch of people posted on it. I feel like that's a really weird, loser's-mentality way of looking at it though. The other way to look at it, the way I see it, is that if I write this news article as quickly as I can with the best quality that I can, I'm confident enough in myself and my ability to comprehend and adhere to the guidelines presented to me to know that mine will be the one selected.

I don't think it will discourage people from posting the news at all though, since forum posts are done for a different reason and are held less accountable.

No, we already have threads for that. I really don't see this idea working out, the time needed to check the articles and publish them makes it worthless.

You can just copy the news, post it and let people discuss in a thread. You also win points that way.