PC Daily: How to Contribute!

Types of Content

We're looking for all sorts of content to post to the Daily. These are examples of the sorts of articles we are looking for, but it is by no means an exhaustive list!

• Pokémon News - news info about the games/anime/etc. For example, if a new announcement or trailer about a Pokémon game is revealed, a short post can be made featuring said trailer.
  
• Ask PC - Content from threads. This can at times complement the above. For example, a follow-up article to the new game trailer can be a roundup of opinions people expressed about the trailer and what it showed, made in a discussion thread within the appropriate forum section. Other examples include articles about thoughts on features or aspects of a game, or say the newest manga/anime/movie release.
  
• Fan Work Showcase - feature Pokemon fanworks in some form, simply - ROMs, RPs, fics, art, LPs, etc. Fanworks can come from within PC and sometimes on other sites as well. These can include, for example, interviews with members, showcasing new/favourite tools available in rom hacking and why they are important, an article on the Mafia games on PokéCommunity, featuring winners of contests such as ROM Hack of the ___, a guide on an aspect of creating art or writing stories... there is a lot of room for ideas here.
  
• Forum Feature - an article that talks about a section of PokéCommunity and why people should check it out.
  
• Original content - Articles that are more separate from PokéCommunity or existing works. It could be a creative piece (e.g. a mock interview with a Pokémon character), an analysis of a Pokemon species line (from any perspective!), top ten lists, a piece on a little-known aspect of the games, and so forth.
  
• ???

Images are also extremely welcome! If you're handy with art, feel free to offer up your contributions anytime.

Content can come from, and be posted to, other websites as well. However, credit must be given both ways (e.g. link to the Daily article from there, and a link to the other source within the Daily article). Please be sure to let us know if either case is applicable to your article contributions so we can update accordingly. We also do not want the majority of Daily content to be cross-posted, and so may delay/deny any article submissions of this sort if they start to dominate.

Do not submit articles not done by yourself. The plagiarism infraction exists.

Contributing

Anyone can contribute to PokéCommunity Daily. You can both pitch ideas for articles and write them yourself, pitch ideas for articles for someone else can write (if, say, you don't want to write it yourself but would like to read such an article), and you can give your thoughts and input to other people's ideas.

The latter is simple to do - just post to any thread that exists! People who contribute with feedback such as suggesting ways for the article to be written, pointing out typos, etc will be credited in the Credits thread. Just remember to be constructive in giving feedback. Try to avoid just saying 'I like it' or 'I hate it', as it's not useful for anyone and won't get you credited for helping edit the article.

Writing articles is a multi-step process. THE SHORT VERSION - pitch the idea for the article in the main forum section, get approval from Daily Staff, write the article draft, apply edits suggested from the proofreading process, article gets approved and posted by the Daily Staff team.

The first step in writing an article is not to write the article, but to share the idea for it. You do this by making a thread (via the New Thread button) within this section.

Give a general outline about your article idea - what will you write about? What will be the style of it - like an interview, or an analysis? Serious, or comedic? Maybe a balance between those? And so forth. The reason we request this information is so we - and everyone else - can offer advice and feedback for the idea. We want to keep the focus to Pokemon-related information, and in case the idea doesn't get through, you wouldn't have wasted all that time and effort writing the article in the first place. You can also suggest a series of articles, but individual articles will get their own threads even if part of a larger series.

On that note, please be flexible about your idea. Be open to suggestions from others, and maybe take some things out if they don't really fit in or take it in a different direction. After all, we may need to limit the scope of the subject to avoid the article becoming a full-blown novel, or on the other side of the spectrum add a wider scope to avoid the article being too brief or limited. Even those who may have contributed many articles in the past or those on the Daily Staff team are expected to follow this procedure, except for articles that require quick output (e.g. Pokemon news updates such as new game announcements).

Thread bumping (e.g. if your idea thread is for a series of posts, or if you want more contributions to your idea, or to inform others a draft is completed) is allowable, as long as it is within reason. It's actually encouraged in the Workshop section as well when a draft is completed or when you have applied suggested edits to a draft.

Once an idea has been approved by the Daily Staff team, we will set you up with a Daily account (unless you already have one!) We need your email and username/nickname (nickname being what you will be acknowledged by). If you wish for a different name to your forum username to be used, or to not be mentioned, let us know in the relevant thread or through PM to the Daily Staff team.

You will then be able to draft your article on Daily, and simply have to let us know when it is read to be proofread by Daily Staff, who will point out typos and make suggestions for changes. The article must go through some feedback before someone on the Daily Staff team can approve the article for submission.

Articles are published on the WordPress site with a cover image and excerpt (a short single sentence describing the article along with the title). Please supply suggestions, or request that others help provide these. Cover images must have permission to be used! These have limits of 640x480 as a minimum size, JPG (or PNG where best), and aim for 100 KB as a file size limit. If you know aspect ratios, aim for images to be 4:3, 16:9 or 1:1.

Please refer to this thread for tips on how to write your draft, including formatting guidelines.

The rest is done for you! Someone on the Daily Staff team with access/posting rights to the WordPress site will post your article.

Last updated by bobandbill; css by Achromatic