From ticalc.org, "We're Hiring!":
Kevin of Omnimaga posted the following:
Thoughts and opinions? Who's applying?
Travis (tev) at ticalc.org wrote:
We're looking to fill a vacancy in the position of primary news editor—featuring programs and writing and posting news. You could be one of the people we're looking for.
The main thing required is time. News editing can be surprisingly time-consuming: talking to people, reading sites, testing out programs, writing and proofreading, and so on. A good familiarity of the current TI calculator scene is naturally also needed so you'll know how and where to find news to post. You'll also need to be reasonably fluent in the written English language, as English is the only language we use on our site.
We're also looking for a long-term commitment as well as high availability. You all know what our users think when there are weeks without updates. If you can work so many hours a day now, but expect not to be able to keep that up for more than a couple of months, this is not what we want. Expect it to be quite time-consuming, but certainly rewarding.
Finally, if you can increase the staff's demographical diversity, that's a plus, but not a requirement. We encourage people, both male and female, from all countries to apply.
The main thing required is time. News editing can be surprisingly time-consuming: talking to people, reading sites, testing out programs, writing and proofreading, and so on. A good familiarity of the current TI calculator scene is naturally also needed so you'll know how and where to find news to post. You'll also need to be reasonably fluent in the written English language, as English is the only language we use on our site.
We're also looking for a long-term commitment as well as high availability. You all know what our users think when there are weeks without updates. If you can work so many hours a day now, but expect not to be able to keep that up for more than a couple of months, this is not what we want. Expect it to be quite time-consuming, but certainly rewarding.
Finally, if you can increase the staff's demographical diversity, that's a plus, but not a requirement. We encourage people, both male and female, from all countries to apply.
Kevin of Omnimaga posted the following:
Kevin wrote:
One thing that might be good to reduce the task of the news editor is to maybe do something like Slashdot and allow user-submitted content, but then review it for grammar/spelling quality control (either correct the few mistakes or reject the news if it's too bad). The staff would still decide what is newsworthy, but this would save them a lot of time. While submitting a news the user could also upload a screenshot which is for example under 20 KB in size and a maximum of 10 frames per second if animated.
That way, while ticalc.org news wouldn't necessarily be your very own stuff, it would save a lot of time and effort from writing articles on your own and when there are several releases in a month, like last September, notable releases wouldn't take a month to get featured anymore. (I remember sending an e-mail to suggest features before, but if the news editors have to rewrite everything from scratch, in addition to do file archiving and dealing with real life, this doesn't help that much)
Unfortunately I am not too sure if I could apply, though, since I am still not that great in English, grammatically-wise.
I responded: That way, while ticalc.org news wouldn't necessarily be your very own stuff, it would save a lot of time and effort from writing articles on your own and when there are several releases in a month, like last September, notable releases wouldn't take a month to get featured anymore. (I remember sending an e-mail to suggest features before, but if the news editors have to rewrite everything from scratch, in addition to do file archiving and dealing with real life, this doesn't help that much)
Unfortunately I am not too sure if I could apply, though, since I am still not that great in English, grammatically-wise.
Kerm Martian wrote:
While I agree that there are many programs (and new concepts and hardware, for that matter 
) that have not been announced on ticalc.org because of the time necessary for news editors to write and copy-edit articles, I'll take the counterpoint and say that I don't think user-submitted content is a good idea. I think the news would then shy too close towards being a popularity contest, where whoever had the free time or resources to submit more articles, articles with more users voting for it (if you're suggesting voting), etc would have an advantage. One of the great things about ticalc.org is that the staff and editors are "impartial", so to speak; although ticalc.org is the unchallenged hub of the community, they are not of themselves one of the factions of the community. They house no ASM coding groups, no BASIC coding groups; no z80 or 68k groups. They don't favor any one language or calculator or platform (other than TI calculators, obviously), and I think that distinction is important.
) that have not been announced on ticalc.org because of the time necessary for news editors to write and copy-edit articles, I'll take the counterpoint and say that I don't think user-submitted content is a good idea. I think the news would then shy too close towards being a popularity contest, where whoever had the free time or resources to submit more articles, articles with more users voting for it (if you're suggesting voting), etc would have an advantage. One of the great things about ticalc.org is that the staff and editors are "impartial", so to speak; although ticalc.org is the unchallenged hub of the community, they are not of themselves one of the factions of the community. They house no ASM coding groups, no BASIC coding groups; no z80 or 68k groups. They don't favor any one language or calculator or platform (other than TI calculators, obviously), and I think that distinction is important. Thoughts and opinions? Who's applying?
