What is Insight Outpost?
Insight Outpost is a social forum for you to share your thoughts with the world. Anyone can post, anyone can upvote, and the articles with the most upvotes get featured more prominently. Think of it as blogging without all the work.
Some answers to frequently asked questions:
What kind of writing do you feature here?
Generally humor writing, although anything that’s well-written and interesting is welcome. Although we refer to posts as ‘articles’, we encourage writers to use any format they like – editorial, screenplay, haikus, pretty much anything – to express themselves.
Why should I join the Insight Outpost community?
Maybe you’re a blogger who’d like to increase traffic and reach a wider audience. We encourage writers to submit content they’ve already posted elsewhere and include a link back to their blog or website on their profile and the bottom of their articles.
Maybe you’d like to blog but don’t want to spend a lot of time and effort building an online audience and posting often enough to sustain it.
Maybe you’re an author who’d like to get a little more mileage out of work that you’ve already published in a literary journal or other print medium.
Maybe you’d like to contribute your views on a particular subject where you know other people who are interested in that subject will find it.
Maybe you just like reading good writing.
If I contribute, do I lose any intellectual property ownership rights to my writing?
No. Authors retain full ownership of their writing.
What are ‘snaps’ and why can I only give a limited number per day?
Snaps are another name for upvotes. We limit the number of snaps each user can give per day so that the snap counts for each article will be more meaningful.
That said, we recommend people use their snaps generously. Insight Outpost depends on the community to identify and upvote quality posts, and if people hoard their votes, the system doesn’t work as well.
Please note that comments and lists do not use snaps – feel free to upvote and downvote these as often as you like!
What are subcats?
Subcats, short for subcategories, are formalized tags that authors can use to categorize their writing. Subcats can describe both format (for example, news satire, poetry, rant, etc.) and subject matter (law school, the NFL, Sarah Palin, etc.)
I/O uses subcats rather than a free form tagging system to provide greater consistency in how the site is organized.
What are the Author Score, Comment Score, and Talent Scout numbers in users’ profiles?
The Author Score represents the cumulative number of snaps an author has received for his or her articles. A higher Author Score means that articles you write will receive a bonus in the ‘trending’ view and have a higher chance of making the front page.
Likewise, the Comment Score represents the cumulative number of upvotes an author has received for comments and list elements he or she has posted. There is currently no bonus associated with the Comment Score.
People earn Talent Scout points by identifying and upvoting new articles that become popular. Generally speaking, the first 1/3 of people who upvote an article will receive Talent Scout points proportional to the number of snaps that article ultimately receives. Users with high Talent Scout scores get to pick an article to be featured on the main page.