[Chad Arnow]

As a Moderator, I read each and every post on this board. Often, I come across very well-though out topics that took a great deal of time to craft. Often these are either reviews of products or about visits to museums/castles. I really appreciate the effort that goes into these topics, but I often feel badly knowing that, over time, they'll drop farther and farther back in the forum's pages, fading from view.

With a minimal amount of extra effort and some handy tools from our Contributor Center, these museum visits and mini-reviews could be part of our published reviews or articles. These stay easily accessible on the appropriate pages, and don't fade into the internet ether. They benefit from our editing and production processes. On top of this, they reach the many people who never visit the forums (our forums are not the most heavily trafficked part of this site), increasing their impact.

Here's the kicker, though: once something has been posted on the forum, we'll likely never turn it into an official article or review. Its "newsworthiness" is largely gone once its posted. Before posting, I'd urge people to consider how lasting an impact they want the writing to have and contact us if they want to give it a longer and more public lifespan.

You're putting the effort into the writing anyway. Why not make something with a wider impact and longer lifespan? We'd love to help you do it and look forward to hearing from you.

[Chad Arnow]

There's been some confusion about this issue. I apologize for that. Hopefully I can clear things up by quoting myself from another thread:

People are always encouraged to post their thoughts on their purchases. This is valuable to the forum community and always has been. However, there are people that take our standard review format and post it on the forums, and/or include large amounts of text about an item. This post targets these alone. Text resulting from that much effort deserves a longer lifespan than a forum post. All it would need to turn it into a formal review are some pics and a little extra work. In that case, a formal review isn't much harder to do than the afore-mentioned post and impacts a wider audience for a longer period of time.

Regarding newsworthiness, I believe I may have been unclear on that as well. Once someone posts a large amount of text on the forum, we won't take that text and make it a formal review. If that poster wants to rework it and submit something with substantive changes, we'll consider publishing it. Anyone not intending to do a formal review (for whatever reason) is free, as always, to post as much as they want to.