Let's discuss the articles rules for this site.

We all know that the article editors are the coolest people on the site because our Homebase says so. ::file:

Anyway, the article section of the Knowledge Base can be found here. Despite that link, I'm going to be discussing the main things articles get sent back for and how you can avoid having your article sent back to you.

First things first: Who are the Article Editors?

There's me and the wonderful Maddi! Katie and Nicole are part-time article editors now that they're Admin but Maddi and I are the ones to deal with the articles for the majority of time. We're found here under the members section of the site if you ever need to contact us for any reason!

Now on to the main reasons articles are sent back.

1. Your article has less than 200 words.

Unlike the blogs, we are very strict with this word count so articles must be 200 words or over, no less. The 200 words must be of original content because quotes don't count towards the word count neither do the story stats that are found at the top of reviews for the Magazine. So if you submit an article that contains 198 words of original content and 100 words that are in quotes then it'll be sent back to you with a PM explaining why it hasn't been published to the site.

2. Your article is incorrectly formatted.

This is one that I come across quite a bit. Indenting in articles is a no-go and they get sent back so that the users can correct it. When it comes to lists, they cannot be manually done. This basically means you can't type out the numbers yourself - they have to be formatted using the listing button on the editor toolbar. If you want to submit an article, I'd suggest that you become familiar with that editor toolbar. This also counts for bullet-points as well.

Another way they can be incorrectly formatted is with headings. Headings should only be used when there is a need for them, such as a heading for a section of the article. They are not to be used to emphasise a word or phrase - that's what the bold or highlight options are for.

Formatting titles of songs, albums, stories and such are also frequent reasons why articles get sent back. In articles, users are required to put the titles of books, films, TV shows, plays, magazines, newspapers, poems and stories with long titles in italics, and the titles of articles, speeches, TV episodes, songs, poems and stories with short titles in quotation marks. Song lyrics also have to be in both italics and quotation marks to make them more distinguishable in the content. If they're not formatted correctly, the article will be sent back to you.

Your article also must have paragraphs otherwise it'll be sent back to you. The category that it's submitted under must also be correct and a description of each category can be found in the KB! Please Note: Non-Magazine members are not allowed to submit articles under the magazine categories other than the Recc and Review category.

These are all found in the Knowledge Base if you ever need reminding!

3. Your article has bad grammar or spelling.

As articles editors, we're not here to be spell-checkers for users. We're here to check over articles and make sure they abide by Mibba's rules. However, we can correct minor mistakes that are accidental and easily overlooked. We don't correct articles that have multiply spelling mistakes in but rather we send them back to the author and let them know what they have to do to be able to resubmit their article for publishing. So if you're thinking of submitting an article, make sure you've run it through spell-check first otherwise it'll just be sent back to you.

4. Your article contains BBcode.

Mibba uses BBcode in the forums and stories to link, bold, italicise and underline words or phrases. In the article editor, the toolbar contains buttons to do all of these which makes BBcode useless in articles. There's also a button to hyperlink a word. If you don't know how to hyperlink, it's easy! You highlight the word you want hyperlinked, click on the hyperlink button and paste the address in and press okay. When we receive articles with BBcode in - even if they're magazine articles, too! - we send them back to the user and will only publish the article once all the BBcode is removed.

5. Your article is too personal.

Normally when your article has been sent back because it's too personal it belongs in the blogs section. What we define as too personal is when the content of the article isn't formal, which basically means if there's excessive use of "I" in the article, it's personal. However, personal experiences are allowed in the article but the article cannot be about that experience itself. Articles have to be informative as well as formal so your article must have a purpose. Opinions are allowed in articles as well but not excessively otherwise it's too personal.

6. Your article contains profanity.

Articles don't allow profanity unless it's in a quotation because there's no need for vulgar words in a formal piece of work. However, a recent rule has just been added to the Knowledge Base that states that profanity must be censored if it's to be included in the article at all. This rule has been brought in as the front page of the site gives visitors a general impression of the site, and if they happen to see "whore" in an article on the first page then it doesn't give a good impression of the site. The words that cannot be used in articles unless they're censored are bitch, fuck, ass, dick, cunt, pussy, shit, cock, slut and whore.

7. Your article contains plagiarised content.

This should be a given. Plagiarism isn't accepted on any part of this site so it's not going to accepted in articles. This includes content from Wikipedia as well. We do copy and paste sections of articles into a search engine just to double check and if it comes up on another site, we'll send it back to you. Some things we've come across is users saying they've posted an article on another site before posting it on here which is why we found it. We then have to make sure that you are that user before it's published on the site.

You can, however, use content that is from websites or books by putting it in quotes to show that it's not your original content. References are also brilliant alongside these quotes because it shows us where you got your content from and shows that it's not yours.

These are basically it, but one thing I'd like to just mention is the font, colouring and size of the text in articles. These cannot be changed so if you decide to colour your text, change your font to something nice or make the text smaller, your article will have its formatting erased so that it's the standard formatting. So if you find you've copied your article into the article editor and it's a different colour or font, you can also use the eraser tool button to remove the formatting so that it's ready for publishing.

So these are a few reasons why an article is sent back to its author. If you have any questions, feel free to post them in the comments or PM me if it's not something you want other to see. Also, if you have any worries about the site or need help over anything, you can contact us even if it's nothing to do with the article section. We know a lot of the rules of the different sections of the site and will help you as much as possible!
May 5th, 2013 at 01:08am