Hey guys!
As you may have noticed, the news section is more active than ever before since a certain character has departed, and more and more users are able to contribute their findings without any disruption or intimidation. With more contributors than ever, we each have our own writing style; some of us simply copy and paste band announcements and then translate them - whether by machine or on our own - to the best of our ability, and some of us take a more journalistic approach by adding more details rather than the standard news format of the past.
To keep our status as one of the leading J-rock news sites/forums, we've decided to add in some rules and regulations to keep the forum in order and to help future contributors post without any issue:
REQUIREMENTS:
- intelligible English - As English is the default language of this forum, all topics and posts should be in English, excluding the International Lounge. Also, by posting and translating into English, it is possible for Monochrome Heaven to gain more exposure and recognition worldwide as an overseas news source to sites like JROCK NEWS and Shattered Tranquility as English is one of the most common languages in the world. With this in mind, think about how you'll make your post: make sure to proofread spelling, grammar, etc., so that it can be more coherent and understandable to the reader.
- Translations to romaji are required mainly for band and release names, since most of our users are not proficient in Japanese (Google Translate is fine, but you are free to request/suggest alternate translations for the sake of accuracy, especially since song titles are a bit more challenging) As elaborated further down below, vkdb or Google can help decipher any names if you need to double-check.
*If there's any issues with making translations using Google Translate, I suggest using RomajiDesu! Not only will it romanize the kanji you want to translate, but also show an English translation for each character used (if you're interested ^^).
- Please be sure to update the title of the post after a significant update has been announced. For example, if you start off with the topic, "MERRY new single" and the name is announced later on, please change the title to that of the release itself, ex. "MERRY new single, "Kasa to Ame" release". This gives the threads more variety and it's better than skimming thru topics that all have "MERRY new single" in the title.
**Highly recommended for topics whose releases are announced after the creation of a thread. Ex. "Plastic Tree to perform OP" turns into "Plastic Tree new single, "Inside Out". This prevents any confusion, skimming through extra info, and especially unnecessary duplicate threads.
- Please Please PLEASE use the report button if there's a double-post or issues in the thread. (the first thing I do when I get up in the morning is to check up the news and try to find some things that are out of order. Some days, I won't be around, nor will the rest of the staff, to do that as we do focus on our own lives too. Reporting a post is a much easier way of getting our attention rather than simply posting in the thread about the error, or even worse, unnecessary drama...)
- Speaking of cooperation, this is NOT a competition. If someone else posts what you originally left out/posted seconds ago, or the reverse (some info is left out because they didn't see/understand it), don't make a big fuss (unless it's a double-post of course) ; after all, providing news is a team effort, so it's better to work together and to help each other out! ♥
- Please refrain from making any offtopic posts. This could clog up the thread with more unnecessary posts and less valuable information, especially when that escalates to drama. Any posts that have nothing to do with the aforementioned artist or release, etc., will be removed from the thread. Repeat offenses may warrant a warning for spam or misbehavior.
- Make a new topic if necessary, especially if the band's previous thread hasn't been updated in a long period of time. In other words, don't necro long-dead topics, especially if you're only doing so to request an old release. That's what the Requests section is for btw.
RECOMMENDATIONS:
- Band/release names in kanji and romaji are recommended (makes it easier for hardcore/casual/non-Japanese speaking fans to search up their faves; may have to extend this to the download forum as well) If there's any problems trying to figure out a band/member's name, especially in romaji, google them or check out their webpage/social media/vkdb page, which can all be very helpful.
- BEFORE posting, use the search function to check if anything has been posted yet. This can prevent double-posts of topics (such as accidentally making 2 threads about a band's new single), and confusion/competition between users.
- When making a new topic, please don't copypaste the original Japanese text onto your post, as it looks out of place and completely lazy. At least make an effort to translate it into English so that everyone can understand it. (2019.3.19)
- If you want to make any posts about an artist in general, please do so in their appropriate thread in the Artists section (or make one if necessary). This will prevent any clogging of release threads and saving some of us the trouble to going through page after page to find more relevant information about the actual release.
- Put some effort in how you actually research and post news. If a band is disbanding at the beginning of 2018, and the actual date of their last live has been posted, please post that date instead of "so&so will disband in January/February 2018". Most news topics don't need a lot of digging, but for posts like these, it'll totally save up a lot of time and stress.
**Also, not everyone can keep up with a certain band/release (and understandably so), so threads often tend to go dead even though new stuff is being announced via the official source. It's highly recommended that you follow a band's twitter or check their webpage ever so often for new updates so they well, won't be forgotten or fall off the face of the earth. xD
- When embedding a video/tweet/social media post, make sure you also add some context even when the information is displayed in the embed itself, as bands tend to delete everything once they disband/disable social media sites, etc. If you link to a tweet for example, and it gets deleted, your post will be completely blank and worse off, valuable information/history could be easily lost over time (which makes some of us archivists have a hard time with band histories), or your post will be left completely blank. This is extremely important if you choose to start off a new topic with just an embedded post!! New threads that start off like this are considered low effort, which makes the rest of us have to do the hard work, so please put some effort into your post!
- Don't go overboard on making your news look pretty or overexaggerated. We've had some issues with certain users putting in too much formatting on their text, posting too many Youtube/Twitter/etc. embeds all on one post, and it's tiresome to actually go through everything, especially when dealing with a slow internet connection or other factors. Extra formatting such as big text, abusing the bold italic formats, or puking rainbows is completely unnecessary and distracting when all we want to read is the news. If you want to proceed with posting lots of tweets/picspams/videos that are relevant to the topic, fine, but put all that shit under a spoiler.
