User Contribution

Updated 1st January 2009

uTimes.org at the moment receives an average of 350 unique visitors per day. Being published by uTimes will expose you to criticism not only from the elite ranks of utopia, but also subject you to scrutiny by new players of Utopia. Therefore, before submitting each article please ensure that your facts are fully researched, that you have checked out all claims with both primary parties/ sources. While we accept contributions from any freelance writers, the management at uTimes may choose not to publish the article especially if it is not up to our standard. Such articles will either be rejected, or rewritten (by the original guest writer, or after an elapsed deadline - the regular staff at uTimes will pick it up).

After a number of published articles, if you feel that you may be counted upon as a regular contributor (1 article bi-weekly), you will receive the status of Regular Reporter.

If you would like to contribute material towards an article, please approach an Executive board member (&) on #utimes at irc.utonet.org:+6667.

Article Submission Requirements

• Articles are to be written in English.
• Original work by you, and uniquely written for uTimes
• You may not play for either of the primary kingdoms involved in the article you wish to submit.
• Concise and Short is nice. A comprehensive and well researched article is nicer.
• It needs to follow our Reporting Policy (refer below)
• Your named sources will need to agree with our content contribution policy (refer below)

Content Contribution Policy

uTimes management welcomes contributions to any content category - War articles, Special Feature Articles, Interviews, Comics, Videos and so forth. As a freelance contributor or partner, when you make the active decision to contributing your work and information to uTimes, it grants us an irrevocable and non-exclusive right to use, reproduce, modify, publish, display or delete aforementioned content. Said content may also be incorporated in other works in any form (videoblog, articles, comics) that uTimes may choose to produce now or in the future.

Reporting Policy

1. Research
• You may ask both sides for their stories, but format papers yourself for each wave, check out whether they failed (or forgot) to mention certain bits of info. Who did they chain? Ask for reasons?

2. Kingdom Tags

• Kingdoms in hiding are kingdoms in hiding. Endeavour to use their ingame tag as much as possible (even if their location seems to be 'known'). Approach via ingame messages and/or an email contact.

3. Reporters should do their best to get the same depth of story from both sides.

• Understandably, there may be one kingdom that may be less likely to 'share all'. This does not mean that you write a small cutesy story if one kingdom is not as cooperative as the other.
  • Reporters should be able to demonstrate that they have attempted / approached both kingdoms fairly and in the same manner.

4. Use of sources

• Your sources should be informed that for the sake of quality control, conversation logs about facts presented in the article may be made known to uTimes editorial staff.
  • Anonymous and off-record sources are just that - anonymous and off-the-record. You may use their information to better educate yourself about the situation at hand or seek a named secondary source to support the claim of the anonymous source. Credence cannot be given to these sources hence their information may not be used directly in the article.
  • Always make it known if one primary party refused to provide any information.

5. Write a clear and concise article

• Reading out loud may help - check whether things may be rephrased differently, does the article flow?
• Avoid slang - spell out ceasefire the first mention, before abbreviating CF throughout the rest of the article, for example.
• Paragraphs and Punctuation. Learn to use them.
• If you feel that including particular information goes against your journalists' integrity or you are unsure of what you are writing about, DON'T WRITE IT.

6. Formatting

• Articles to be formatted in BBCode
• Kingdom names to be bolded together with location (first mention only)
• Paper excerpts bolded, colored and indented

7. Remain Professional

• Treating people with respect earns you future respect. Keep your cool. This is not a monkey see-monkey do affair.
• Take pride in your articles. Well-written pieces are a reflection of your hard work and effort.
• "I'm not paid to do this, this is stress relief" is not an acceptable excuse. If you make a boo-boo, be mature enough to discuss it and see it through.

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