Ok, this one grew much, much longer than I anticipated. The short of this is that I’m in the process of creating an editorial policy and I would like suggestions on how to make a good one. An hour later is what follows below.

Now for those who crave the blood and guts, keep reading …

As this blog continues to grow (thank you to all new and existing reader and subscribers, BTW, yesterday was a record non-spike traffic day!), and especially because I’d like to start accepting some more articles from others and thus am seeing the need to develop and publish a more formal editorial policy for MakeYouGoHmm. We already implement a loose editorial policy and pieces of this unofficial policy have been distributed in prior blog entries since the day the site was launched. However, there is nothing official published here yet and I’d like to change that at some point in the future.

In general my objectives for this weblog have been and continue to be as follows:

Review and/or report on events, happenings, and news from the writer’s experiences, interest and point of view as well as limited research/development. Typically I do not spend copious amounts of time (some stuff is literally published within five minutes of reading) researching or reworking the material published on MakeYouGoHmm. In fact, it’s usually very rough draft material as is evidenced by some of the markup I’ve had to do after the fact. Furthermore, I’ve used the words “rough draft” several times when describing this published material.

My underlying writing-related goal for most of this material is to shape, reshape and formulate content so that I can write better and more polished first drafts. It is a form of writing exercise, and usually the kind of content I wouldn’t feel comfortable publishing professionally, but part of the allure and excitement of blogging is the sense of immediacy and raw, reactionary publishing. It most cases this content is not meant to be taken as serious journalism. I know that some people treat their weblog writing as serious journalism, but usually I don’t. I won’t say never, because some of the writing I’ve published here has been edited and polished. But most of the time, I see this material as my first effort — and sometimes a very unpolished, flawed first effort. This isn’t to say that when I’m writing passionately about something that I don’t feel passionate about it, no, it’s saying that how these feelings are cultivated into text in the weblog could be technically flawed. It could be in the ears, eyes and hands, not the heart. Perspective is important.

In the publishing industry — the real publishing world, as some like to call it — rough drafts are *never published. Usually these rough drafts go through various stages of editing before and/or if ever being published. There is also a stage known as copy editing that takes care of all the little annoying things that can be found in so many different weblogs — including this one. Things like spelling mistakes, misused terms, missing words, proper capitalization, improper English and/or the types of things one would find in The Elements of Style by William Strunk Jr. and E.B White (”Omit needless words!”). There is admittedly very little copy editing in my published posts at MakeYouGoHmm. BTW, that asterisk on “never” above is to leave myself an out for some fringe professional publication out there and since I learned long ago that one should never say never. Never.

Now for the subject of editorial and publisher bias.

In my specific case, and since I currently write and publish the vast majority of articles on MakeYouGoHmm (something like 98%+ of the nearly 1,700 articles here to date have been written by me), that means someone who has been on the web for 10+ years and doing business for most of this time, has engaged in — and currently engage in — various different web-based businesses and is a published writer (online and offline articles in print, but unpublished print fiction writer) also a webmaster and programmer of several different websites for years. This experience gives me a distinct point of view on many issues surrounding the topics I’m writing about. I do try and stay away from certain topics where my level of research and knowledge is limited (like politics and religion). However, this isn’t to say that as a publication I wouldn’t like to see MakeYouGoHmm explore more politics and religion related topics, but most likely these pieces will be written by others more informed and educated on these topics.

Furthermore, I will usually check with several third party sources before declaring something as a ‘fact’, but sometimes in the interest of immediacy I may use only one source as the basis for developing a piece. Hopefully the source(s) I’ve trusted have been responsible and accurate, but especially with online sources I’ve found that this is not always the case. It’s important to highlight this fact:

It is not my goal for this publication to create a totally unbiased source of news and information.

Frankly I don’t believe there is such a thing as being “totally unbiased” anyway — however in the interest of educating new readers as to author bias, I do try my best to reference historical, related pieces published on similar topics/issues/news for consistency purposes. In the event that I make a significant error and/or misrepresentation of facts, then I will publish a retraction and an apology. Not on some buried page, either, but in its own piece and labeled as “retraction” in the title. An example of a prior, public retraction is here. Needless to say, I’m human and bound to make mistakes — as I suspect others will do as they contribute to this publication. I do strive to keep the wreckless driving to a minimum.

In creating this official editorial policy, I would naturally like to be dilligent and thorough, so if anybody has to share any good links, tools, general advice, etc, in putting together a sound, sensible editorial policy, than please use the comments section below (or trackback from your blog and link here) and tell me about it.

The following is a probably incomplete list of things I would like to cover in the editorial policy:

• Versioning - specifically how changes to the original post after publishing will be denoted. Example, word additions/subtractions, spelling errors, mistakes, altered language, etc.
• Content - what types of content will be — and won’t be — published. The use of first person and third person. Dealing with reporting facts, delivering an opinion, rumour and/or reporting of events. How can readers report errors and/or omissions in articles?
• Author byline - how/where will authors of posts be published
• Attribution - policy of linking to and/or identifying sources: what, where, when, how, and why. In particular, how will content from other sites be edited and/or summarized (also spelling and minor edits for space).
• Comments - what type of public comments will be allowed, edited or removed. When will the use of rel=’nofollow’, if ever be used.
• Trackbacks - how will both inbound and outbound trackbacks be handled. Handling of one-way trackbacks as well as two-way trackbacks. When will the use of rel=’nofollow’, if ever be used.
• tags and tagging - how will tags be handled for Technorati, del.icio.us, Flickr, etc.
• Advertising - when and where advertising will be used in the actual body of posts and how it will be identifiable to readers. Advertising outside the body of posts will be handled under disclosing conflicts and copyright
• Changes to Editorial Policy - how changes to the editorial policy will be made and whether or not changes will be retroactive to the content already published or going forward

I believe that those are the main components of a solid editiorial policy but since I’ve never written/created one, I’m drawing on the advice and expertise of others (especially readers, so please chime in). I do not want to make — or change — things too drastically or constraining as I still write for this blog primarily for entertainment and enlightment and don’t want the pressure of having to over edit every blog entry before publishing them, but at the same time as the amount of readership for MakeYouGoHmm continues to grow, I’m seeing/feeling the need to be more transparent about the procss (sorry to those who hate that buzzword) before hitting the publishing button (yowsa, majore run-on sentence).

Perhaps this need is totally unjustified as MakeYouGoHmm is not The New York Times. Also, this doesn’t necessarily mean I’ll be sanitizing what I have to say or who I say it about — no way — but this does mean that I feel like the basic process just needs to be refined and tweaked somewhat. Evolve. And then made public in the interest of all readers.

In summary, a structure is good for myself and others who will continue to be published here. I guess you could say we are starting to make the transition from blog to … publisher. Subtle transition, hopefully. And ideally the quality and raw edge is not lost during the transition. That would be against the premise behind Things That … Make You Go Hmm. I don’t want to change the style or tone of writing, I just want to make sure that people realize what axes are being grinded, by whom, and the history, if any of the blades being wielded. More responsibility. MakeYouGoHmm is growing up. It’s time for middle school.

So what do you know about writing/creating a good editorial policy? What suggestions/recommendations can you offer?

• About MakeYouGoHmm and authors
• Answering the 10 conflict of interest questions
• Authors in different colors and official editorial guidelines [site news]
• How to contribute to MakeYouGoHmm [site news]
• 100 reasons MakeYouGoHmm should make CNET’s Blog 100
• Comments and Trackback Policy