Truemors
The Eyewitness Flag
I just wanted to submit a separate forum post about the eyewitness flag, just to clear up any confusion about the use of it.
Here is our existing description:
Did you witness something first-hand in your own backyard? Were you on the scene at a newsworthy event? Did you document what was happening around you?
The "Eyewitness" flag identifies a first-person account — a story, photo, video, or voice report — that was taken by someone who was present as an event unfolded.
Eyewitness content should be:
- first-person
- original
- authentic
- current
Who can use it? Staff Editors, Editors
So the eyewitness flag is for a story that is a news event that the author actually attended and reported on first hand.
It is not necessary for stories that are about travel for example or about an event that happened near you but you didn't see personally.
I hope this helps clear up some confusion, and if you aren't sure if something should be eyewitness, then just drop one of the staff members a line, thanks!
at 08:55 on March 22nd, 2009
I haven't used the flag yet, but I appreciate these notes and directional pointers. Can you tell me what 'make it sticky' means? I've been tempted to click it just to see, but thought that it might follow me home. Cheers, Barbara
at 10:12 on March 23rd, 2009
Hi Barbara
Guest editors and staff editors are the only people who can see the "make sticky" link within the forum. Clicking that link on a forum topic means that that topic will go to the top of the relevant forum section (in this case "Discuss the News").
We use it in order to enable people easily to see what we consider to be pertinent, or often debated, forum topics (a good example would be the Flaming Policy). If you have any questions about whether a forum topic should be sticky, please feel free to ask one of us.
Thanks, Rachel
Quote from #1: Barbara McPherson at 08:55 on March 22nd, 2009
at 04:59 on March 24th, 2009
Thank you Amy for the post here and Rachel for the comment.
I am glad we have this cleared up and as Johnny said in his comment it does confirm what most of us believed it to be.
The complaint by some Authors though was that their news story was Eye witness report and not flagged as such. This came up in Johnny his forum post about GE, I did reply to that comment since I some times am not certain if the post is or is not an eye witness account.
Why I would suggest we have a tag or some thing that can help make that decision. I usually PM the Author for clarification and yet the feed back can take some time.
at 15:44 on March 24th, 2009
Thanks everyone for your comments here - I hope this piece helped.
I think if you are wondering if a piece is eyewitness or not it is best to private message the member to ask them so that they can let you know and then that way that will cut down on confusion.
:)
at 21:48 on March 24th, 2009
Thank you for the clarification, Amy.
at 06:28 on May 30th, 2012
Until now I've never landed in a situation in which I need to use the eyewitness flag but I would really appreciate if you could just show an example of it through a post where it has been used. Just curious to have a detailed info. Thanks for the information.