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The Royals Review Guide: FanShots And FanPosts

Express yourself.

By Craig Brown
G. Newman Lowrance

As part of the SB Nation redesign, several throughout the network felt that FanPosts and FanShots became marginalized. With Version 2.0, they listened to feedback and made changes to make them central to the site once again. I realize that these sections haven't been as active as they have in the past, but I'm hopeful that over time we will see some more activity. With that in mind, here are some guidelines when posting.

FanPosts

  • These are user generated posts with some heft. It should be substantial with some thought behind it.
  • Make sure to write a compelling headline. I will use Farmhand's recent post as an example: A Royals Fan on Prime Time Japanese TV. Concise. Interesting. And it makes me wonder why this fan is on TV in Japan. Plus, I'm dying to see if there's a Trey Hillman mention. Because I love SABR Trey. That's going to get me to click the link.
  • Also, don't use profanity in your title or permalink. Your post will be deleted.
  • Personal stories like Farmhand's post are great. So are analytical posts. Or posts about lineups, pitching rotations or the time you got a Dan Reichert autograph at the Auto Tune and Tire in North Platte in 1999. If you have a thought about the Royals that can be expressed in detail, that can go into a FanPost.
  • It does not have to be Royals related. It can be general baseball. Or if you'd like to talk about movies, music or whatever, you can start your post with OT to signify "Off Topic." This is a community of Royals fans. FanPosts are a great way to communicate with each other.
  • Thankfully, with SBN V2.0 we can promote FanPosts to the top of the page. Write something great and it will find an audience beyond the sidebar.
  • Please proofread your posts. It's not like a spelling or grammatical error will sink your work. However, multiple goofs can make a post difficult to read. Take a moment to read through before submitting.
  • Content posted as FanPosts must be original. Do not cut and paste work you may have published on another website. It will be deleted. Serial offenders will be banned.
FanShots
  • FanShots are a great place to post something that is news of the day, but doesn't merit an expanded post.
  • They are links, quotes, videos or pictures. Quick hits that may be of interest to the community. Recent examples of quality FanShots are a link to Keith Law's top 100 prospect list at ESPN, a tweet from Bob Dutton about the Royals slogan for 2013 and a video of Alex Gordon lifting weights and planking (or something.)
  • Know that as of this writing, this is a current area of work by the designers. A revamped FanShot section will be rolled out soon, featuring a streamlined look, chronological order on the dedicated FanShot page, and a new format to highlight Tweets of interest. Overall functionality will be improved as well.
  • Sadly, we cannot promote FanShots to the top of the site. However, they can go into what we call the river. That's the area just below the photos. We frequently will promote FanShots of interest to the front page. In the past, these have generated some great discussion. Again, since the redesign, the discussion hasn't been there. I'm hopeful that we can get it going once again.
I'm collecting this post, along with the commenting guidelines and Jeff's post about sabermetrics into a "User's Guide" section. These (and future posts of this ilk) will be accessible via the "Sections" tab at the top of the page.

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