Write For Us!
Putting the massive WhatNotToSing.com database online has been our biggest challenge to date, but now that that rock has been rolled out, we're turning our attention from numbers to letters.
As you've undoubtedly noticed, we have database articles in place for Season Two through Season Six, many AI7 episodes, plus a few scattered articles here and there that highlight song selection points we consider important (we keep a running list of the newest entries here.) At our current rate of writing, we'll have our "encyclopedia" complete by the legendary musical year of 2525.
That's where you come in. We invite readers to submit intelligent, objective, well-written summaries and analyses for any "blank" page in our database. Write us at . We'll review and evaluate your article, work with you until we're both happy with the finished product, and immortalize it forever in the database (and of course, give you proper attribution.) No, we're not going to set up WNTS.com as a wiki, for reasons we hope are obvious if you read the many Idol message boards across the Internet. We're aiming for more urbane and sophisticated commentary than "I hate Carly luv DavidA <3 <3 (5 animated smilies) !!!!"
Before you send us anything, please read carefully our Style Guide below plus our Privacy Policy. You'll need to confirm that you're 18 or over (or 13 to 17 with a parent or guardian's permission), and that you understand that you're donating your prose on a purely volunteer basis. (We'd love to pay you from our site's lucrative and torrential revenue stream but...um, yeah. Not happening any time soon.) All accepted contributions become the property of WhatNotToSing.com.
The WNTS.com Style Guide
If you've read some of our current database summaries, you already have a pretty good idea what we're looking for.
- Be thorough, be witty, be entertaining, be intelligent, and keep things to a reasonable length. This is a research and encyclopedic site, so go easy on the snark. It's also a family site, so keep it PG-rated.
- Remain reasonably objective in the main body of the article. Do a Google search to find a representative sample of Web opinions about a performance or a contestant. Save your opinions for the "What We Thought" section, where you have free rein.
- Refer to contestants by their full names the first time you reference them, and by only their last names thereafter (or first initial plus last name if need be; e.g. "D. Cook and K. Cook.") Refer to judges by their first names.
- If you're writing a Performance summary, include a synopsis of the judges' comments. You can skip Paula's if she was drunk that night. Posterity will cope without it.
- If you're writing a Contestant summary, concentrate on their Idol experience, with perhaps a couple of sentences on their lives before and since. Readers who need more information can consult Wikipedia.
- If you're writing a Contestant, Song, Artist, or Episode summary, include a brief synopsis of the most significant Idol performances. If there are many, then just touch upon the most significant ones.
- Don't worry about including database hyperlinks, italicizing American Idol, boldfacing rating numbers, etc. That's why we pay our editors the big bucks. (*chortle*)
- Plagiarism of any form will not be tolerated. Cite your sources, and quote any text you copy from elsewhere with full attribution. If you violate this rule, we'll hunt you down and inflict upon you a fate worse than death. We'll take you into the deepest woods, tie you to a tree, and place a TV just out of your reach with the AI3 Group Two Semifinal episode playing on infinite loop. We're not kidding.
- Bigotry of any form, rampant favoritism for or against a contestant, an obvious political agenda, slanderous or commercial speech, or anything similar will not make it past our editors and is also subject to the Tree Treatment.
- Last but not least: Have fun!
-- The staff of WNTS.com
