The top 10 things for contributors to know about Infobitt (that aren’t obvious)

So you’re interested in contributing to Infobitt.com, eh? Excellent! Here’s what you need to know.

1. You gotta understand our mission. If you don’t get it, you won’t be motivated. Read about our mission further down in the FAQ. Hint: our aim isn’t just to make “another citizen journalism site.” That would be boring. Our aim is to organize the news. This will take an enormous online community, a movement, like Wikipedia’s, if it’s going to work. What we have is already cool, but it will get cooler as our community and software grow.

2. Contributing is easy. Click + to add a bitt. Rank bitts by dragging and dropping them (on a computer, not a handheld, for now). Please add facts to undeveloped bitts: click in the “Add fact” field and start typing. You can do it!

3. The first fact should not be a title. It should be a complete, grammatical sentence. We’re writing summaries.

4. Be bold. Don’t be shy! You have the right to participate and we want you to!

5. Rank bitts in order of importance as serious news items, not “coolness” or perceived popularity.

6. Avoid duplicates. Use our snappy search feature if you aren’t sure we’ve included a story yet.

7. Leave comments! Voting/ranking is nice, adding facts is nice, but sometimes we need to coordinate and discuss stuff if we’re going to make this project work.

8. Participate a modest amount regularly rather than a whole bunch all at once. The news doesn’t happen all at once!

9. Please don’t start more than five bitts per edition (12-hour period). More than that discourages other contributors.

10. Don’t let the news get stale. If all the bitts on the site are over 6 hours old, and especially if they’re over 12 hours old, trust us: there’s a lot of newer news we aren’t covering. Our goal is to have well-developed bitts about all the latest developments, as soon as they happen! Please help! Also, see our help video.