Hey Matthew! I'd love to see the site return to its former glory as well but that's been a much more difficult process than expected. When it first launched, Dazz and I handled all of the submissions and it was manageable when there weren't hundreds of them. As time went on though, they started stacking up and we had too much to do maintaining the network as a whole to really devote any time to the queue so we brought on a bunch of people. The problem is that the job is tedious and it's difficult to find people with both enough knowledge about video games to have at least an idea what to look for when fact checking and, almost more importantly, a strong grasp of the English language. This combination has made it nearly impossible to find a staff that can and will consistently manage incoming submissions.
You would appear to fit that bill though and while there is no formal application form, this post certainly works. If you're still interested after reading this and what comes below, please PM me and I'll get you set up.
Originally, I'd discuss the basics of the process one-on-one but I think, at this stage, it makes more sense to have it all out in the open so people who might be interested can know what they're getting into. Dazz wrote up a good overview in the staff forum which you can refer to for more details but basically, there are a few important points you need to address with each submission:
You would appear to fit that bill though and while there is no formal application form, this post certainly works. If you're still interested after reading this and what comes below, please PM me and I'll get you set up.
Originally, I'd discuss the basics of the process one-on-one but I think, at this stage, it makes more sense to have it all out in the open so people who might be interested can know what they're getting into. Dazz wrote up a good overview in the staff forum which you can refer to for more details but basically, there are a few important points you need to address with each submission:
- Does it make sense? You may need to edit or in some cases rewrite trivia. English is not everyone's first language and not everyone writes with the same factual style that we require.
- Does the source check out? There are a number of sources that automatically disqualify a submission - Wikipedia, Mobygames, a random and unsupported forum post, etc. Obviously, we can never be completely sure of a source but do your best to validate it.
- Are we making new pages? There's a color-coded system at play here but the other important thing to remember is to make sure a slight typo or lack of searching isn't going to create a duplicate entry on the site - always double-check.
- Attachments. Make sure the attachment is relevant. Sometimes, people submit random images just for the sake of attaching something. Remove them if they don't contribute to the trivia.
- Approval. If everything looks good, approve it. Doing so will place it into a queue of unpublished trivia. For the most part, there is never a reason to manually publish something form that list - the site takes care of that automatically at set intervals. If the trivia is no good, either edit it to make it good or reject it and explain why (with either the included reasons or a custom one using the "Other" option).
- Tagging. This is optional but preferred if you can do it. If a submission already has tags on it, make sure they're relevant. If it doesn't, feel free to add them but they're not required to approve and can be added later.
- Images. Game box art should be relatively easy to handle. Banners are a bit more involved and require Photoshop and a template we'll provide if you're feeling up to it. Banners require high-quality images though so slapping anything on the top of the page is worse than leaving it blank.