Tuesday, January 9, 2007

About Blatantly Random

Filed under: Other — Malcolm Owen @ 3:54 am

So, what is this Blatently Random then?
Blatantly Random is a blog about what we think the average slightly geeky person might want to know about. Geek Culture, Random Internet Crap, Electronic Entertainment and anything else we find great is the order of the day, and you’re sure to find something good on the site for you to enjoy. You know, things that make you go “Hmm”, and possibly “Dude!” every once in a while.
And it’s spelt Blatantly with an A not an E.

Are you sure it’s Blatantly not Blatently?
Yes, we’re sure it’s Blatantly. Check a dictionary and you will see we’re right. And just in case people can’t spell it, we’ve got the E version, although it just points to the A version, with no bizarro type weirdness. Or people wearing evil beards.

What’s the story behind this then?
A fair few years ago, Justin decided to make Gametactics.com, a site for everyone to visit and enjoy. He then met Malcolm, via the medium of the internet chat room at Pseudo (The online TV station, before it died the first time), and they both concentrated their efforts into the site.
After a while, even the most diehard of gaming enthusiasts can get bored writing about the subject, so an outlet was sought after for the pent-up writing energy, that didn’t require it’s writers to stay specifically on one topic. And so Blatantly Random was born.

How do I contact you?
Might I suggest either commenting on a story, or if you want to use that “e-mail” thing, I’d highly recommend attaching “malcolm.owen” to “blatantlyrandom.com”, with an “At” sign between the two. That would be an @. Why do it this way? To stop spam, unless I can think of a better method…

Do you have a “Comments Policy” or “Terms of Service (TOS)”?
Despite it sounding official… Yes. It’s basically:

  1. No Spamming. If you are suspected of spamming, it will be deleted or edited.
  2. No flaming when it’s unwarranted. Debate is healthy, attacking isn’t. This not only covers comments about posts, but also towards other commenting visitors too. Sure, you can call someone wrong, and back it up with something at least, but name-calling, bullying, etc etc etc is not desired here.
  3. Don’t copy our stuff without our permission. Obviously quoting is fine (like a line or a paragraph), so long as you reference the source in some way (e.g. when we link elsewhere, we try to link not only the page itself, the creators, but also if needed, the page that told us about it in the first place). If you want to use a full article of ours, then ask us first.
  4. Please try to use correct spelling, punctuation and grammar when writing comments. Note the word “try” in that sentence. It’s OK not to be a good speller, so long as you at least try to get it right. Of course, it’s fine to purposely ignore this rule if it has relevance (e.g. Comic Effect), but at least make yourselves readable.
  5. Think before you write. Since the world is becoming more net-literate, it’s possible your future employer might do a search for a known nickname of your own in order to see what you are like outside of work. The last thing you want is to have your world crushed by something you wrote. Be careful.

What about Blatontly?
Absolutely not.

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