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====== Blogging Guidelines and Resources ======

===== Introduction to Blogging =====

For the past few years now //**blogging**// has grown into a mainstream form of media for just about every sort of news coverage, personal journal, political commentary, consumer review etc. and gaming is no different. As it slowly begins to overcome magazines and gaming specific news websites as a popular and down to earth way for people to read news, it is important for a growing website, especially one that covers gaming in all it's forms, to change with the times and offer this exciting medium to our members.

We like to think of the front page blog here at RF Generation, as a portal into our community. A way for new members to find news, learn about the staff and our goals as well as share gaming opinions, reviews and history. All in a form that's more sociable and less encyclopedia.

//**Personal blogs**// are for both gaming and non-gaming related entries. Movies, books, hobbies, life, creative writing etc., the possibilities are endless. While only gaming entries will be posted or promoted to the front page, any member or staff can feel free to blog about anything they choose on their own blogs. Think of it as a way to expand on one's forum posts, where you can add pictures, split the entry into parts and make them as long or as short as you wish. Game and hardware reviews that are well written and more or less follow these guidelines could possibly make the front page as promoted content. 

Remember this is your site. That means members and staff have equal exposure to the front page, all you need to do is start blogging! It's free, it's easy and it's customizable! So take a look through these guidelines and contact any of the writers if you have questions, we'll be looking forward to reading your blogs!

===== A Few Pointers: =====

  - **Use common sense.** racism, discrimination, sexism, colorful language or anything else potentially hurtful to people, their beliefs etc and anything considered NSFW does not belong on the front page of RF Generation.
  - **Don't plagiarize or steal copyrighted images** and always **mention where** you got your information. If the information is not common knowledge, provide a link to where you first heard of the news at the end of your article.
  - **Any images used in the blog need to be hosted on this site using the image upload script under staff tools, or already are hosted on the site via our image archives.** In addition, if the image was originally not on our site provide a link to the original image location at the end of your article, using the format [IMAGE], where IMAGE is a url to the original image.
  - Although I want everyone to feel free to voice their opinions, what is posted on RF Generation is a **representation of all 1500+ members**. So **tone the fanboyism** down to a respectable level. 
  - Finally, if something is a **rumor** or you suspect it's **speculation**, make sure you **mention that in your entry.**

Just to clarify for those unaware, think of the RSS feeds as headline subscriptions. You can use apps called aggregators to get a quick summary of the content on the front page without actually being there. handy for mobile devices as well as news gathering. So make sure your 1 or 2 sentence description in your post represents your content.

//As far as posting entries themselves here's a few pointers://

  - **Grab the readers attention.** -  come up with a simple yet descriptive title for each post that will keep people from passing over it. The description which you fill out underneath is a simple 1 or 2 sentence item that people read with their RSS feed readers and will make or break whether they click the headline for more.
  - **Tags.** - tags are a way to sort out a site's content in categories, say your a classic gaming fan but not a modern one. well you can click the tag under the title of a classic gaming post and you'll single out all those type of posts together for your reading pleasure.
  - **Write like you're speaking it out loud.** - put news into your own words like you read it or heard about it and want to tell a friend. write longer posts like you want to share advice or offer insight or teach something.
  - **Feel free to start threads** - in the forum about your posts and refer to or link them in your posts as well.
  - **Don't worry about variety** - that's my job. as long as you don't repeat yourself don't feel that you need to write about something you care nothing about. also feel free to write followups to previous articles or to update information posted at an earlier time.
  -** Use site content** - feel free to use images and link to gamepages if your refer to a game we have in the database. it all helps towards promoting the site and it's capabilities to a potential member.
  - **Remember that there are dial-up users** - they browse the site too and excessive amounts of images in posts can be dissuading to them.

===== General Development Resources: =====

http://www.gamestyleguide...heVideogameStyleGuide.pdf

Login: **styleguide** Password: **gamestyle** - this is a PDF ebook approx. 1.26 meg in size with a lot of useful information about writing and resources about the industry. feel free to save this to your HDD it may come in handy and would be a pain to login every time.

http://dictionary.reference.com/

Has both a dictionary and a thesaurus along with an encyclopedia

===== Gaming Sites For News: =====

  * http://www.topix.net/videogame
  * http://biz.gamedaily.com/
  * http://www.kotaku.com/
  * http://www.joystiq.com/
  * http://www.ign.com/
  * http://www.1up.com/
  * http://sega-16.com/
  * http://www.majornelson.com/
  * http://www.twingalaxies.com/
  * http://www.gamasutra.com/
  * http://www.gamesindustry.biz/
  * http://games.slashdot.org/
  * http://arstechnica.com/gaming.ars

===== Tags: =====

You'll notice that when you read the front page blog or the community ones, underneath the time and author, there is a line called "Posted under". This is where you find the "tags". Tags are like keywords used to both describe a blog entry as well as group similar ones. For example in my last review I had done, I used "**Modern Gaming, Classic Gaming, PSP, Review**" as my tags. In another, I had used "**Modern Gaming, Review, RPG, X360, WRPG**".

It's also a way to sort your blog entries for people wanting to read specific things. I for example, use Classic Gaming and Modern Gaming as my two primary tags. They separate new game posts (Wii, X360, PS3 etc.) from old ones (SNES, SMS, Atari). Then for my secondary, I tend to use "Review" and then maybe a genre like "RPG" and/or the Company "Sony" or "Capcom". By clicking on these tags, you can filter out all the blogs entries that don't relate to the one you are reading. So clicking on say "Sony", will only show you Sony related posts. The search at the top of the blog pages allows you to search the tags based on those same keywords as well.

There are no formal rules for making your own tags. Take a look through the blogs and the front page to give yourself an idea of what others use. Sometimes we add funny one or two word phrases just for the fun of it, other times we make them specific and stick to it rigidly to keep things in order. Whatever works for our own styles of writing and our wanting to share them with the community at large.

===== Reserved / Critically Important Tags (Admins, Editors and specific Staff) =====

  * Site News (Always Primary Tag for non blogger)
  * Weekly Features
  * Weekly Poll
  * Weekly Chat
  * System Overview
  * Cynical Gamer
  * List 'em
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