Contributing Site Policies

HumorFeed.com was created with humor Webmasters in mind. We wanted to give the Webmaster as much control over when headlines are posted as we could. We also wanted to give everyone a fair chance to have their link seen on the website and on the feed. In trying to meet some of these goals we've built a system that is very open and, we hope, easy to understand. The system is so open, in fact, that it would be pretty easy to use it in an abusive way. We'll go over what is considered abuse and what can happen to guilty sites a little later. First, let's see how the system works.

How the system works

The system is easy. You, as a Webmaster log into a special section of the site to enter your headlines and the corresponding link. You tell the system what day to publish the link. You can work as far into the future as you like, but you only get one link per day. That's seven (7) in a week and should be enough for most sites. If you publish weekly, you will have to spread your links out over the week. If you publish more than seven (7) stories in a week, then choose your best seven.

The feed and the site will be created once per day (at Midnight, EST) and will be saved in a random order. It doesn't matter if you put your link in three months ago or three minutes ago, you have the same chance as everyone else to be near the top of the feed. If you come up with the greatest story ever and finish it at 12:03 AM EST, it'll have to wait a day (sorry). The only time the random order will be tweaked is if something goes wrong technically and the random order has to be recreated. It will still be random, but different. This should rarely, if ever, happen, but you should be aware of its possibility.

Acceptable Content

This section will list what is, and more importantly what is not, allowed to be linked on http://www.HumorFeed.com. Right now we are admitting only news satire websites and the content should be news satire in a story format. This excludes entries such as photo captions and photo only stories, cartoons, animations, and headline only offerings.

Additionally, material that:

• contains porn or nudity
• contains illegal files or links to illegal files
• promotes bigotry, racism or hatred

will not be acceptable.

Having said that, we understand that your site is a humor site. We have no aspirations to censor you or your site, but if you turn out to be a Nazi and it doesn't appear to be a joke, we might take your link down ;)

Headlines

To maximize the usability of the feed and to promote it more effectively there will now be a headline style guide. These are not guidelines for your site, these are rules for the headline you enter into HumorFeed.

• Headlines are limited to a 75 character maximum (including spaces).
• Headlines are to be capitalized using the following guidelines:
  • All principal words should be capitalized. This includes the first and last words of a headline, and all nouns, pronouns, adjectives, verbs, adverbs, and subordinating conjunctions (if, because, as, that, etc.).
  • Do capitalize the first word after a colon.
  • Articles (a, an, the), coordinating conjunctions (and, but, or, nor, for), and prepositions of any length, are to remain lowercased. However, if any of these are the first or last word of the headline, they should be capitalized.
  • If you have an abbreviation in your headline that is normally lowercase, it should be left lowercase, particularly abbreviations for units of measure.
  • Two part words separated by a hyphen should have both words capitalized.

• Headlines will contain no obscenities, explicitly vulgar or sexual language, no racial epithets or libelous content. Shoot for a "PG" rating in terms of the actual wordage. When in doubt, leave it out. Bear in mind that we all want this feed to be picked up by as many outlets as possible and toning down an occasional headline will go a long way towards world domination.
• Headline rejections will be at the discretion of HumorFeed editorial staff and are final.

Abuse

The fact that you can put in your own links and they may not get checked before publication allows for all sorts of abuse. Our abuse policy is going to be strict. If you do something that we feel degrades the system you will be eligible for dismissal from the system.

Here are a few things that won't be tolerated:

1. Redirecting to any site but your own -- This should never happen. HumorFeed.com was created to help get you traffic, not to help you broker traffic. In the same vein let's mention....
2. Redirecting to porn -- anyone caught redirecting to porn will be immediately removed from the system.
3. Redirecting to something that is only an ad -- of course you can have ads on your site, but if you link to something that doesn't have a story and is only an ad, you'll be booted.
4. Redirecting to your main page -- The system is built so that you can't link to your main page. Generally, linking to your main page is not acceptable. If you publish complete stories on your main page, see the section on URL reuse below.
5. Redirecting to or linking to illegal files
6. Linking to the same story more than once with a different URL
7. Figuring out a way to do these things without redirecting -- There will be no semantic loopholes. If you find ways to do this stuff without "redirecting" or think you've found some other loophole in how we've worded these rules and decide to try said loophole, it will still be considered abuse.

Here are a few things that won't be looked upon kindly:

1. Removing a link before it posts -- You might put a link in, and then a week later take it off of your site, but forget to take it out of your scheduled to be published links. We can understand how this would happen. If it happens too often, it'll be considered a degradation of the system and we may ask you to leave.
2. Linking to unfinished stories -- If you submit a link to an unfinished story and forget to finish it before it gets automatically published on HumorFeed.com, we all look bad.
3. Not updating regularly -- Yes, this is vague. We are not very concerned about your publishing schedule. However, if we see you updating only every other month or so, we may take down your "Partner" link but will not take down your old stories or limit your ability to post new stories.
4. Finding ways around the system -- If the system is not built as well as it should be and you find some way to post two stories per day or a way to circumvent the logic built into the system in some other way, do not exploit it. Tell us about it! Help us make the service stronger.
   
   To sum up:

   All programs/systems are living projects - they continue to expand and evolve. During the course of growth, errors or diversions from the standard paths of intended use develop. Making use of errors or diversions in the intended use of the system to exploit the system, degrade the integrity of the system, or otherwise perform an action that cannot be described as "originally intended purpose of the system" will be considered a breech of policy and will result in your removal from the system.

URL Reuse

The system, as it is built now, does not allow for URL reuse. We know that some sites reuse URL's to publish current content and that some sites use one URL for multiple full stories. These problems will be handled in the following ways:

1. Sites who reuse URL's regularly (that is, sites that use the same address for current content and archive older content to a differnt URL) are asked to use the permanent (or archive) address for linking from HumorFeed.com.
2. Sites who publish more than one complete story on the same URL will be allowed to use the same URL multiple times. Contact the management on how to do this in an acceptable way.

The main reason we do not want sites reusing URL's is so that the "Search" and "Archive" features of HumorFeed.com will remain accurate. Helping us use permanent addresses for all the links on HumorFeed.com will make for a much more enjoyable end-user experience.

HumorFeed Admission

We'd like to be a totally open system. That would be great. But to afford our viewers (site visitors and other sites that run the headline feed) the best shot at a laugh, we have devised some membership requirements and an admission review process.

The basic requirements to join HumorFeed are as follows:

1. Your site has news satire content
2. Your site has been in operation for six (6) months or more
3. Your site has at least thirty (30) stories already published on it at the time of application
4. Your site is not hosted on a free server (such as tripod, geocities, or freeserve)
5. Your site is brower compliant with at least the latest versions of Microsoft Internet Explorer and Netscape Navigator

More specifically:

1) An eligible site is defined as a news satire website with unique, proprietary creative content. At a minimum, this must consist of a distinct URL and content which consists primarily of news satire articles produced by or under the creative control of the webmaster. A webmaster is defined as a person with administrative control of a website, including disposition of the site's registration and hosting.

a) A single webmaster may submit more than one site under his/her creative control for consideration to HumorFeed, provided that the sites are not hosted on the same domain, that the content of the sites is creatively distinct, and that the material on each site meets minimum HF criteria as defined previously.

b) Multiple franchises of a common news satire brand on different URLs are permissible provided that each website is under demonstrably distinct and independent creative control (e.g. different editors/writers), that there is virtually no overlap of written content, that there is a reasonable effort to establish creatively, regionally, or culturally distinct variants of the brand, and that the material on each site meets minimum HF criteria as defined previously.

c) Membership is granted to sites based on the quality and originality of their creative content; an appropriate contact for HF must have creative control over the website. In the event that a HF member site is sold or otherwise transferred to the creative control of another individual or individuals, HF management reserves the right to make a determination as to whether or not HF membership is transferable to the new webmaster. If the content on the transferred website will be produced by a completely new set of writers/editors, the site's HF membership will be deactivated and the site will need to reapply for membership as a new site.

To get your site listed on HumorFeed.com, you need to submit your URL and three of your favorite stories. The editors of three (3) HumorFeed contributing sites will review your site anonymously. The review process will be professional and as objective as possible.

Obviously, this process may cause some ill will between applying sites and HumorFeed. That is not our goal. Our goal is to provide our customers with the best possible links to humor sites. Should you not be accepted to HumorFeed, you go away with a cache of quality feedback and the possibility of addressing any concerns the editors have and re-applying.

Yes, it's a lot of work for us and uncomfortable for you, but it's the best system. You'll get a response from us telling you when you are up for review and we'll try to get you the results in a timely manner. There will be no unreturned email or sudden exclusion from membership. Once you are in, as long as you are updating your site semi-regularly and following the conditions laid out in the policy, then you are in.

Once approved, we only ask that you link to the main page of HumorFeed.com.

Lastly

Have fun; it's humor after all.

Thanks for reading and abiding by the policies. We're confident that by working together we can create a great hub of humor websites. Please email us with any questions or concerns at sharky@unclesharky.com or editor@watleyreview.com.