KDE Dot News: Community FAQ

By popular demand, we are answering some of the most frequently asked questions at the dot. Read the following FAQ if you are interested in understanding how the dot operates, how best to contribute articles, and how to help improve the dot in general. Nothing is really set in stone here. The FAQ will be updated as required and as per your comments, and may eventually be moved to a different final location. With your help, KDE Dot News can hopefully improve and serve your needs better in the future.

KDE Dot News Community FAQ

Why do I care?

Understanding how the dot works will help improve article submission quality and allow us to approve submissions faster. Ideally, there will be less work for us and less frustration for you, our contributers.

How does the dot work?

Anyone can and is encouraged to submit articles to the dot. Articles are reviewed by the editors for content and presentation, edited if necessary, and then possibly approved.

Why are more stories not posted?

You can help us in this department by submitting the news! The whole idea of the KDE news site is that it is community-supported. We can't do everything ourselves all the time...

Why was my article not approved?

Read this FAQ carefully. If this FAQ hasn't answered your question, then you should definitely write us and ask us what went wrong. Perhaps you forgot to leave an email address so that we couldn't get back to you? Perhaps we had a failing on our side, such as lack of time, and need further prompting.

Why do you not approve all submissions? Other sites do it.

Most successful sites do not in fact approve all submissions. We are convinced we can provide a better service to our readers by maintaining a minimal level of quality and professionalism! For example, if we posted every application announcement, we would soon take over the role of KDE-apps.org and ultimately drown out general news.

At the same time, we want the best compromise between serving as the official news site for KDE and providing content that is of interest to you.

How should I format my submission to get it accepted?

All article submissions should begin with a 1-paragraph summary that will be displayed on the front page of the dot. In most cases, this 1-paragraph summary will be the whole article. The summary is never more than one paragraph for reasons of consistency. The summary should ideally be complete and contain the important core information of the article: In other words, the reader should in general not be forced to "click through" or "read on" to get to the essential information.

Helpful hyperlinks should almost always be provided in the summary itself so that the user can seek more information or follow references. If necessary, the rest of the body of the article will consist of a full announcement, or an original content article.

Article titles should be capitalised in book-title style. Additionally, when linking to a KDE news item on an external site, we generally like to include the site name in the Title of the article, for example: "External Site Name: Title of External Article". Furthermore, it would be nice to include a small interesting quote from the external article.

Submissions should ideally be typo-proof and grammatically-correct, although we realise this is not always possible.

Whenever in doubt, ask, or simply heed the pattern that we've followed over the course of the 500 articles and more that we've posted in the past!

What type of content is generally accepted?

Most legitimate KDE news is worthy, and almost every category of news will be considered.

Application announcements, however, present a special problem. In general we do not publish these, they are passed on to kde-apps.org which is currently the official KDE application site. In special circumstances, such as a new stable release of an important app, or the achievement of an important milestone, we will be open to publishing a dot article. Thoughtful reviews of applications are also welcome.

Commercial announcements are a bit iffy and have caused controversy in the past. We are serving the community, and want to avoid getting entangled in commercial interests. And if we do publish commercial announcements, we would like to maintain some form of fairness for all concerned. That being said, news items of import will certainly be considered particularly if they significantly increase KDE usability or desirability to KDE users or potential KDE users.

Finally, random calls for help in vaporware projects or random requests for user support will under no circumstances be published and, in all likelihood, will not be acknowledged. Sorry, but we get busy at the dot.

Who is allowed to post and comment?

Anyone is, within reasonable confines. Abuse is not acceptable. Repeat offenders demonstrating malicious intent are not welcome and may be banned indefinitely. If you think you have been unfairly treated, you are welcome to write us.

I would like to contribute a regular column to the dot, am I welcome?

Absolutely, we would love that! Please write us and we will be happy to get an arrangement going.

I have ideas for improving the dot or this FAQ...

Write us!

I'm still not satisfied, how can I join the KDE Dot News editorial team?

Write us and tell us why you think you are qualified and what you think you can contribute to the dot as an editor.

I'm bored, this site is not enough!

There are tons of other sites you can visit. Our favorites are KDE-Look.org, KDE Traffic, KDE-CVS-Digest or any in the KDE Family of websites. There are also lively usenet and email discussion forums. The KDE Cafe may be of particular interest.

[Let me know if you are aware of any other frequently updated sites with a KDE focus.]

Known Bugs

HTML comments are not yet allowed. The year and timezone is often not included in article dates.

Last Modified: 2005/03/31