Newsvine Code of Honor - Up For Review

«Although full internationalization is important to Newsvine, please keep all posts and seeds in English until the system can properly sort multiple languages. Stories of international interest are still highly encouraged, of course.»

Why? I just don't understood why seeding and writing in other languages is a bad thing.

It's bad for us, the guys who write in other languages (for example in spanish since I'm Peruvian), because we can't reach as many people... and that's waht we want to do, right? Reach as many people as possible with our news/seeds...

And it's bad for the rest, because they would love to read our stuff, but we make it difficult when we could make it easy...

Let's face it... posting in english is no big deal for us and everyone in newsvine can read it...

I do not mind other languages. Diversity. Not everybody can read English. If I needed to aim at a community...

I know you've tried to be both clear and brief but I have to admit that I don't get the distinction in number four.

From what I've read hear and elsewhere, it sounds like your intention is that participants use the column feature of newsvine to post articles rather than seeding a link to their personal blog. I am not sure this is clear from the honor code.

Maybe I'm over thinking it.

One point that is hugely important but not listed there is that others on Newsvine would very much appreciate it if seeders would include a summary/comment on each article seeded. At the very least just copy and paste out of the article, as the seed headline only allows for so much information

I'm entirely new here, so I might have gotten it wrong.

Bullet point 15 in the help section says

I already have a blog and would like to continue using it to write. Can I Seed Newsvine with articles from it?

Yes. Newsvine will eventually support the automated syndication of blog content, but in the meantime, feel free to seed your own articles using the "Seed Newsvine" button.

, which is pretty much the opposite of what point four above states.

Strangnet: This issue was covered in the comments of another recent post by Gibarian.

Mike D., one of the co-founders of Newsvine, said in this comment:

The current Newsvine policy on seeding your own stuff is going to be changed when we release the Code of Honor (this week). We''ve sort of come to the conclusion that while crossposting full articles from your blog is ok, seeding your own stuff can easily be abused and can come off as a bit self-promotional.

Very nice, very clear. Good job.

I just hope the international support can come in the next few months.

Prompt and Mike D: okidoki. Pretty obvious when one thinks about it for a while.

How about (for point 6):

Seed articles as close to the source as possible -- one click is all that should be required by readers.

Let me suggest:

Be accretive. Endeavour to make newsvine a more interesting, more informative, more engaging and more diverse community as a consequence of YOUR participation. Encourage others who you believe would be accretive to join.

Well put together. I think they sound reasonable and acceptable.

What about something saying that if you quote someone (or an article) in a blog post, you must give credit via a link (if available) or at the very least attributing the info to the author.

While I understand the need to stop self promotion - I think that disallowing seeds to your own blog is unfair. If my blog is the original source of the article I should be able to seed it, the problem I think comes in when you have someone talking about a news article on their blog and then seeding their blog instead of the original article.

I think that it should have been worded as seed as close the source as possible - in other words don't make your blog a middle man. If I write original content on my site or I break a news story on my blog I should be able to seed that.

Would it be acceptable for me to write an article on newsvine holding say the first paragraph of my article and then linking within it back to my blog?

Side note: Some people have experienced a bug with the new editor whereby text was getting cut off from time to time. This issue has been resolved. Please alert us to any other issues, if any, you notice. Apologies for any inconvenience.

It's not fixed! Please go here. I've been posting the full thing for a day now and it's not appearing! People are calling me "laconic"! I don't even know what that means!

Thanks Mike D., you guys are the best.

Eventually, and with the foreseen placement and extraction of language-specific content via specific homepage icons, anyone will be openly exposed to varied, multicultural viewpoints and inputs.

This widespread news and data sourcing will run counter to inclusive and restrictive forms of information dissemination, so common in the daily style of most media nowadays.

The key here will be to realize that a greater understanding and mental effort will be required in order to separate and assimilate the true and valid global "offers" versus the rundown and biased tools engaged in by the deplorable members of the tactically well-adept at deceit and misrepresentation local society members.

In this gentle and responsible way, we all learn more interesting facts and share more valuable stories.

And that, in itself, will make this site the undisputable world leader in news presentation and delivery.

I submitted this on the contact page, but I may as well put it here too in case there is people willing to comment on it.

"I listed a couple good idea's below regarding the whole language thing. I hope this helps :)

Why not make an ip2country(or so its usually called) setup like google has? So the default language would be whatever their countries language is, and there would be a little button saying something like "Newsvine in English." .. Then if clicked, it would set a cookie so it would be english by default.. Lets say they chose a different language from a drop down menu, and they would select a language.. It would reload the page to that language and display the flag next to the drop down menu.. so, http://www.newsvine.com/_cms/?setlang=en would set the language to english and it would display the site and content in english, as well as setting a cookie so that it would show the site in en for now on.. Another way of doing it besides the cookie could be to just reload the page to http://www.newsvine.com/_cms/fr/ for french.. http://www.newsvine.com/_cms/ would be default english.

In the drop down menu, it shouldn't say "Spanish" but rather "español" "

Remember, Dude, that the issue isn't the implementation of different languages on the site; given what the Newsvine crew has already done I'm sure they're capable of integrating other languages without too much trouble. The issue, like Mike mentioned, is policing the other languages. They can easily tell when an English-language user is posting hate speech or flaming, but the crew may not be as multilingual as the rest of the world just yet.

Aside from the content of the Code of Honor I really like the way it is written and this is something people don't seem to have picked up on. While it's not so informal it could be misconstrued, misinterpreted or any other form of "mis"; it certainly makes the point.

It's important to write not only in a language that is almost universal, but also with language that is almost universal. Providing loose examples, real world word usage and a tone of polite reality is important as it makes these important statements accessible to as many people as humanly possible. Without accessibility there is no understanding or implementation.

I think the team has done a fantastic job with these points (I urge not to use the term rules as it is not in keeping with the nature of Newsvine and thus the title Code of Honor) and I hope we can utilize them in every day usage. I will endeavor to consider this topic more over the coming days and share any alternative/addhesive thoughts that I have in a separate comment.

I actually posted guidelines I thought I should follow (and I'd like others to follow) here [vinay.newsvine.com]. The Newsvine Code of Honor either emphasizes some of those points or adds on to the list (a list certainly that my post just adds to as well). I am very happy to see this, but I am wary that when we open the doors that they might be followed.

I love the things that people have mentioned here and the team has indeed done a fantastic job coming up with a shortlist to make it easy for people to remember. We should also make it a point to read similar posts by some of the more famous names around who have posted on such topics. It will only help to raise the level of discussion, and what more could we ask for?

Personally, I feel that the approach to seeding blogs to Newsvine should (keyword should: this is my opinion so let go of your inhibitions for disparaging remarks and thoughts) be as such:

If it's a blog entry about a news topic, don't seed it; seed the article the blog was written from. If it's a blog entry of original content or pulls small amounts of data from several sources with a substantial amount of original content, then it should be acceptable to seed even though such articles (even those I write) would be more like commentary than hard 'news' perse.

And here's another idea for a beta ethic code. Stop comparing us to other sites (cough)digg(cough) (^_-)V

I agree with this code and I try to abide by it on all sites that I post on. I think though, that telling people to not seed their blogs here is not necessarily good. I know for myself that I do write original content sometimes and I guess I could copy and paste the same post into my column, but I don't think that seeding things on your own blog that are ORIGINAL is a bad thing, there is a fine line though i know. I think that the proposed auto post feature would solve this problem entirely. Good work guys.