Topic reservation system.

There seem to be some issues over how the topic reservation system is designed to work and as we get more writers, it isnt going to work if we aren't all on the same page.

The way that it works, is that when you have a topic that you want, you go to the proper day and look to see if that topic has been reserved yet. If you do not see it and it is breaking news, then you should be fine to reserve it and begin writing your article. Also, when reserving your topic, please be as specific as possible so that other writers are clear as to what your article covered. Being clear about your topic also allows room for other articles from other writers - or from you.

If the topic is not breaking news, then you should look around the site via the categories to see if the topic has already been covered. We have already run into an issue where someone covered a topic, then someone else covered that same topic two weeks later. If you find that someone covered a similar topic some time ago, you should consider whether or not it is news and if it is, it is best to try to add something unique from the original article. Also, if there is an article with a similar subject, it is appropriate to link that older article.

The reason that we recommend that you reserve a topic and then begin working on the article, is so that other writers can speak up if the topic has already been covered. In theory, we can just take the duplicate article down but if it has been up for a fair amount of time, google will have already located it and it can hurt the site ranking to have a then-dead link.

If there are any questions, please feel free to ask!