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Good morning,
The board has now moved to 'date order' format, as announced in this discussion
www.bbc.co.uk/dna/mb...
* All new discussions should contain a link to a story about today's news.
Discussions that do not clearly discuss a current UK news story, or appear to be general political discussion or campaigning, may be closed, and off-topic posts may be removed.
Although we recognise that blogs and other individual/personal sources of information (sometimes called "citizen journalists") are an important part of today's media, we'd like you to keep your initial links to the more traditional news sources. Subsequent posts can of course then link
to other sources, including blogs - provided those links don't break the House Rules.
This is so that all users get a chance to read the new and original story before seeing how others begin to discuss it in context. Links to blogs on newspaper sites such as the UK's Guardian and Telegraph, and the BBC's own Blog Network (www.bbc.co.uk/blogs ), will also not beallowed as the basis for an initial post when starting a new discussion.
* Please don't start new threads on a news article if one already exists; duplicate/repeat threads will be closed, so please have a quick check to see if there's an existing conversation on the news story already. There's always a certain rush to report a breaking story, or alert other users to an update to an existing - if someone else beats you to it please don't repeat the update.
* Discussions about TV and radio documentaries/programmes, etc. are not considered to be "News" unless those issues are also being reported in the regular news outlets.
* Links to 'comment' or the editorial pages of online newspaper sites are not considered to be today's news. If you think they are about today's news then just find and link to the leading front page news story instead, you can add links to editorial pages later on in the discussion
if relevant to the news story.
* These rules will apply even in the event of breaking news stories - if you see or hear a news flash on TV or radio, please wait until one of the news web sites has updated their pages and provide the link. This shouldn't hold things up too much - in most UK newsrooms today, new
stories are generally available pretty much simultaneously on air and online, and many of our users already use newsreaders, RSS feeds and SMS alerts to keep up to date with the news.
Example:
"Life forms discovered on planet Mars" - the story would be allowed as an initial post if backed up by a link to a news report in a traditional news outlet. It would not be allowed as an initial post if the *only* link provided is to a blog (we don't want to promote the web rumours and
conspiracy theories that crop up everyday, in various guises). A Channel 4 documentary about extraterrestrial life forms could be referenced in a subsequent post to the same discussion - but not as an initial post - for example, "Last night's C4 programme said there was increasing evidence of life on Mars" - would *not* be counted as news.
In general then the rule for all board members to keep in mind when starting a new discussion is "Is my message about today's news - and can I link to where it's being reported on the Web?"
Hopefully sticking to these guidelines will help to keep the forum on topic.
And please, *Everyone* on here deserves to be treated with due respect, please be polite to other board users.
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