Editorial Policy for BuzzFlash.net

BuzzFlash.net has adopted a policy consistent with Digg.com in terms of its right to block individuals abusing BuzzFlash.net or posting stories deemed questionable, misleading or otherwise inappropriate for posting on BuzzFlash.net. As Digg.com notes, "Digg may remove any Content and Digg accounts at any time for any reason (including, but not limited to, upon receipt of claims or allegations from third parties or authorities relating to such Content), or for no reason at all." The same holds true for BuzzFlash.net.

In addition, BuzzFlash.net can and will examine individual users and their voting patterns for suspicious behavior. Any behavior deemed to be abusive towards the system, as judged by BuzzFlash.net editors, will be grounds for suspension of the offending user's account. Criteria for abuse include maintaining duplicate accounts, and posting spam (ie, repeated or off-topic messages) to the comment section of stories.

What is BuzzFlash.net?

It is a user driven progressive political news website that allows you to submit a story that may be reviewed by all visitors and may or may not be promoted to the front page. When you submit a story, it remains in the pending Buzz queue until it receives enough votes to be promoted to the main page.

Do I need to register?

It is only necessary to register if you want to submit stories or add comments.

How do I promote recent stories?

Select the option Create Buzz and the recent stories will be listed for you, sorted by date of submission. You can then "buzz" the stories you like or consider important. Once the stories have surpassed the threshold of buzzes and karma, they will be promoted to the main page.

What is the "Problems?" button that that appears when I am about to Buzz a pending story?

It is a feature that allows you to indicate that the story is irrelevant, old, spam, duplicate, offensive or simply garbage. These complaints are negative votes given to the story and are not taken lightly. Once a story has received a certain number of such votes, it will be rejected and moved to the "Rejected" queue in the pending stories section. This is your opportunity to help the site maintain the highest quality stories for your fellow buzzers.

Do you only count the number of votes?

No, we also count karma, and the number of problems reported, which are similar to negative votes. The algorithm is rather complex.

How do I submit a story?

You must first register, then it's very easy and fast. Click on Submit Buzz. In a simple three-step process, the story will be sent to the pending stories queue. First, Enter the URL of the story you would like to submit. Then choose a title, write a description, and select a category for the story. Should you encounter a potential duplicate, please buzz the original story and do not submit a duplicate entry.

What types of stories should I submit?

Those that you like, but keep reading. Submitted stories will be subject to the review of readers that may or may not vote on them. The main objective is to post news articles and blog entries. What you shouldn't submit is spam, that is, articles with many links to your own blog or that of your friends. We know that whatever you write in your blog is relevant to you, but it may not be relevant to the larger BuzzFlash.net community. Besides, if we all were to submit our blog entries, there would be thousands of stories to vote on, which would make a user driven site impossible to function. Try to submit news of interest to a lot of people. Just use common sense and a minimum of collaborative spirit and respect for others.

How do votes and karma work?

Karma is a delicate and complex quantity. Your personal karma level is based on your positive contributions to the BuzzFlash.net community. This means, when you perform actions (such as buzzing a story, or submitting a story) that is in line with most other buzzer's opinions you will receive positive karma. If you perform actions that are counter to most other buzzer's opinions you will lose karma. Karma is adjusted nightly through an automatic process. Beware that even if you have earned karma in the past, inactivity will cause you to slowly lose that karma, so keep buzzing!

Every buzzer has a level of karma, and that level of karma is considered when they buzz a story. Stories gain (and lose) karma in relation to the buzzers who register their opinion with that story. Keep in mind, if your karma level is high then your vote will essentially 'count' more. The level of karma you see assocatied with stories is an indication of the quality of the story as determined by buzzers with varying levels of karma.

• The following increase karma:
  • Positive votes to your submitted stories.
  • Positive votes to stories that have been published on the main page, the votes always having occurred prior to the story's publication.
  • Negative votes to stories that have been rejected, the votes always having occurred within one hour of the story's submission.
• The following decrease karma:
  • Negative votes to your submitted stories.
  • Positive votes to stories that did not get published to the main page within 24 hours of your vote.
  • Negative votes to stories that did not get rejected from 6 to 30 hours of your vote.
  • Five days having gone by without your having voted on at least 4 stories.
  • Your having voted negatively on more than 3 stories in less than a minute.
• The following does not affect karma:
  • Postive votes to stories that have already been published to the main page.
  • Negative votes to stories that were discarded within one hour of their submission.

How are stories chosen to be published on the main page?

The selection process occurs every five minutes. First, the system calculates the minimum karma a story will need to match the quality of the stories on the front page. This value depends on the average karma needed to promote stories in the previous two weeks, plus a coefficient that depends on the amount of time transpired from the publication of the last story. This coefficient decreases as time passes and becomes one (1) when an hour has transpired, at which time any story will be published whose karma equals or exceeds the average. This has two objectives. On the one hand, if the quality of stories remains consistent, an average of one story per hour will be promoted, but on the other hand, those that receive more votes (hopefully incrementally) will be published earlier. The system calculates the karma of each story by multiplying the number of votes the story receives by the karma of the voter. Finally, there is an additional restriction to reduce abuses by registered voters: only those stories that receive at least N votes will be published. At this point, N is set at 5.

What is the highlighted "Recommended" label in the Pending Stories section?

The system highlights those stories submitted by users who are closest to the profile of the person who is voting. The system uses social network algorithms (in particular, those of affiliation on two-part graphs) to signal stories that best approximate the tastes of each user. This way, you don't have to identify "friends" manually. This algorithm is subject to constant improvements and adjustments. Its efficiency depends on the quantity and quality of each buzzer's votes.

What are gravatars?

Gravatars are "Globally Recognized Avatars". With this service, provided by gravatar.com, you can add an image of your choosing to appear next to your BuzzFlash.net comments and stories. Not only that, but your chosen gravatar will also work on any other sites where gravatars are supported. To set your gravatar for use on buzzflash.net (and anywhere else gravatars are supported), visit gravatar.com and sign up for a free account. Instructions and more details are available on the Gravatar site.

What is the highlighted "Discarded" label in the Pending Stories section?

When a story receives more Problem reports than positive votes, it is moved to this queue. Users may continue voting and if it receives enough votes, it will return to the normal Pending Stories queue. This is an automatic process.

Who is behind BuzzFlash.net?

The people who bring you BuzzFlash.com created BuzzFlash.net. The site joins BuzzFlash.com, BuzzFlash.org, BuzzFlashMarketplace.com, GOPHypocrites.com, WingsofJustice.com, LastChanceDemocracyCafe.com, and LibbyDefenseFund.com. They are all part of the BuzzFlash Internet News Network.

BuzzFlash.net was made possible through the ongoing financial donations and support of BuzzFlash.com readers.

Why was BuzzFlash.net created and for what purpose?

As a pro-democracy news and commentary network, the staff of BuzzFlash.com felt it was important to offer a website where readers decide and vote on what news stories and commentaries are most important to them.

BuzzFlash.net is open 24 hours a day and registered readers can add new Internet stories that they want to share, and vote on what they think are the most important submitted pieces currently on the site.

Of course, consistent with BuzzFlash's mission of making information accessible without regard to a reader's economic status, registration and participation in BuzzFlash.net is completely free.

In short, readers control the content of BuzzFlash.net through adding and voting on stories (the top vote-getters at any given time get promoted to the front page). It is the ultimate in a reader-driven news and commentary site that offers a progressive, pro-democracy environment.

What kind of software do you use?

BuzzFlash.net is based on the open source software of menéame.net.