Are you ready to be the Voice of the Day?

Are you ready to make your voice heard? As the US elections approach, many of us here in the US are having to make some tough decisions. One of the things we here at allvoices hope to do is to help you think about and talk about all the issues. Everyone needs a place where they can hear all the voices – not just on the big issues, but on the small ones too. There is a great saying, “think globally, act locally”.

As you prepare to vote, the big issues will be the ones that everyone is talking about – that’s the “think  globally” part. I know that the coverage of the nominees for president and vice president takes up most of the time and effort of the traditional news sources.

So far, here at allvoices, that has been the case as well. But, there are many more issues and offices you need to decide on when you go to vote in November. I am hoping to hear your voices on those issues as well. After all, the local elections are the ones that impact your day to day life – that’s the “act locally” part.

To help encourage you to share you voice, allvoices is announcing the Voice of the Day. If your voice is chosen as the “Voice of the Day”, we will help you get heard. We will publicize your piece here on the blog and elsewhere around the web. We will work with you to make sure that what is in that piece gets heard.  We will be bi-partisan. We are not pushing any specific agenda. Instead we are going to push well thought out, well communicated ideas.

Share the ballot initiatives that are up for consideration in your town. Share the issues that are influencing your choice in the local and state offices.  Share how you have come to decide what spots you will mark on the ballot. Share which local elections were easy for you to decide on and which you haven’t been able to decide on. Share what matters to you in the election. Ask for input from others around you.

Voice of the Day Criteria

1. To be considered, you must attach at least one story, image, video, and blog entry to your piece. The items must all relate to the issue you are discussing. Make them interesting and insightful.
2. Content submitted must be original. While the links may be to items that exist elsewhere and have been written by others, the main content and all images must be yours alone. We want your voice, so that means give us your words and your images. 
3. Videos can be links to YouTube videos or videos uploaded to the site. However, if the video is not your video be sure to add value to it by putting information in the description that says why people should watch it. Original videos will get you extra credit!
4. The items must be clear and well written. Spelling counts. If you want to change the world with your words, your words must be understandable.
5. Conversation improves your odds. Get people talking and commenting on your news – expressions of both sides of the issue will help keep the conversation going and enhance the chance your piece is selected for promotion.
6. You must provide a link to the story on allvoices by Private Message  or email to Kathy Jacobs, allvoices community guru.
7.  You must tag your stories with Election2008  so that they can be found easily.
8. Stories will be considered on a daily news cycle. The story to be promoted will be picked based on stories submitted before 4:00 pm California time each day. One story a day will be picked from now through the 5th of November. Once the story of the day has been picked, it will be promoted by the allvoices team. You will be informed if your story is chosen.
9. Your news item must pertain to an issue or election that will be directly voted on during the elections on November 4, 2008.

 What do I get besides views?

Each allvoices member who has a story picked as a daily story will receive an allvoices t-shirt. These shirts are being designed and created now. After the election, we will choose one of the daily winners to receive a $50 gift card.

Any other hints?

When you create your pieces, be sure to tag them with “Election2008″ so that they are picked up for any special system wide promotion we may do.  Other good tags include your location, the election issue, the people involoved, etc.

If people voice up your piece as a well written and insightful piece, that might influence the judges. Therefore, if you want us to pick your piece, you might consider having people vote it up. Remember – if  20  people register so they can voice up and comment on your piece – you could receive one of the Flips!

Meet the community: OnlineBusinessWoman

Community member Roxanne Weber - Someone you should know!

Roxanne Weber, OnlineBusinessWoman, is an allvoices member you should fan. Her news is always valid, timely, and well worth reading. She not only posts her own take on the news, she also has been actively commenting on other news items around the site. I asked Roxanne to answer a few short questions so that you could get to know her better.

Who is OnlineBusinessWoman?

I’m an enigmatic voice for the millions of middle-aged women of the world who have always wanted to publicly complain about politics and world events, but were to shy to try .

(Let me add that OnlineBusinessWoman also is the third highest person in the incentive at time of this writing. She is very close to getting her first check!)

 

Where do you report news from?

I’m located in the lonely state of South Dakota (we are bigger than Alaska, though)

 

What news matters to you?

Politics gets me riled, but I love to learn about new developments in technology, and what we’re doing right in the world.

 

What news would you like to see reported on the site?

I would love to see a section dedicated to “strange news” or “news for the happy”, or wannabe happy

 

What tips would you be willing to share with other allvoices community members?

Ah sometimes I get carried away and submit way too much stuff in one day and I hear about how they got an inbox full of “onlinebusinesswoman” stuff and wondered what I did all day. I’m trying to work on a 2-3 a day limit! (maybe I should start an allvoices.com anonymous group?)

(If you do, warn me first – your news matters to me!)

 

What else would you like to tell the world?

Today we all have the opportunity, young or old, big or small, important or insignificant, to share our thoughts, ideas, opinions with the world. We have an obligation to be part of the conversation so that the world does not end up in the hands of complete raving psychopaths who throw our money into the sewer and then ask us for more money to fix the problem. But that’s just my unbiased opinion, of course.

 

Roxanne also let me in on a new venture she starts this week: She is writing her first political column for SquareRootz. She is hoping to use this New York based site to reach today’s youth and get them to understand how and why they should be involved in todar’s political events and activities.

 

Roxanne’s news makes me think. It makes me wonder. It makes me dig deep into what I believe. AND that is just the political stuff. She and I share a desire to help others see that they can make a difference in the world.

 

She and I also share a frustration about getting page views for well reported news. Many times, we have discussed the frustration that happens at seeing controversial news get lots of hits, but better written pieces getting ignored. If you share this frustration, get out there and join us in reporting what is important to you!

 

Thanks Roxanne for providing your voice and your opinions! We appreciate you!

 

PS: Want to follow Roxanne on Twitter? You can find here there as @OnlineWoman

Flagging stories…

One of the “hidden” features on allvoices.com is the ability to submit an abuse report on an item reported on the site. Since the system doesn’t have “editors”, we depend on the community to help us out. To that end, I thought it might help if we had a blog post about what is abusive content and how you flag something.

Flagging is our way of learning from you what doesn’t belong on the site. Underneath the picture, you will find three actions you can take for the item:

• Voice up: Clicking this shows that you think this is a good contribution to the site and that more people should see it. It doesn’t mean you agree with the content, it means that you think more people should see it.
• Voice down: Clicking this shows you aren’t impressed with this contribution. Just as with the voice up link, it doesn’t mean you don’t agree with the content – it means you think it shouldn’t be getting as much visibility on the site.
• Flag: Clicking here allows you to report content that should not be on the site in the way it currently is.

We are going to look closely at flagging content today. A future blog post will go more into the details on voicing up and down.

Flags you can apply

The allvoices site allows you to flag content in one of 6 ways:

• Sexual content
• Violent or repulsive content
• Hateful or Abusive content
• Harmful dangerous acts
• Infringes my rights
• Spam

The first four are fairly self-explanatory. You are reporting content that you don’t belive should be on the site because it is something that is harmful to someone who views it. Flagging an article with these flags doesn’t mean that it will be removed from the system, but does let us know that it might need to be buried or given less visiblity.

The last one, SPAM, is a story that isn’t news. It is an advertisement or a link to something off the site that isn’t news. When allvoices looks at these reports, we verify whether the story is spam and then address it from there. (If it is determined to be spam, it usually falls on my plate to contact the reporter and ask them to provide news, views, information, etc. instead of just a link.)

The other option, infringes my rights, means that this is content that you wrote or own and which someone has stolen and reported as thier own news. This could be a picture from your site, a story from your blog, or a video you took which has been placed on the system as original content instead of linked to from a views story.

If you are reporting news, we want your views- your photos – your videos – your words – your voice. We dont’ want you to “borrow” someone else’s content. After all, what is borrowing to you is stealing to someone else. We need the community to tell us when the content on the site is not attributed correctly.

If you are posting a new story that is based on someone else’s reporting, then provide attribution to the original source. Tell people, “I saw on xyz site an article about abc. This is my take on it”

If your content has been placed on our site by someone else, please join us and flag the item as “Infringes”. Provide some details (including a link) so we can verify it and take care of the problem.

Need to know how to flag something? Check out this screencast! (May take two clicks to start.)
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