I wanted to provide some advice for users submitting stories to Thoof. Following these tips will help Thoof be more useful to our readers, and help your stories get higher ThoofRanks (and therefore more visitors).

When you choose a story title and summary, in effect you are speaking with the “voice of Thoof”. Our goal is that Thoof’s voice will be impartial and unbiased. This means that even if you are linking to something you have written yourself, you should write your story’s title and summary from the perspective of an impartial third party.

If the story expresses a particular opinion or point of view, then the title and/or summary should make this clear, along with relevant information about the author.

The purpose of the title and story summary should not be to persuade the user to read the story, rather it is to describe the linked story such that the user can make up their own mind. Stories which are excessively promotional in nature may be marked with the “spam” tag, which will remove them from the front page.

Tagging is especially important, as this is one of the ways Thoof uses to decide which stories will be of interest to particular users. More tags is generally better provided that they are relevant. They should range from general tags, such as “science” or “politics”, to very specific tags, such as the names of individual people or companies.

If you follow these guidelines, you will help to make Thoof a better place for all involved.

- Ian