Submission and Approval Process

[ahockley]

Here's an overview of the "life of a photo essay" and how it is submitted and approved on this site:

1. Start by making sure that you've read our Guidelines for Photo Essays, located at http://www.railroadphotoessays.com/f...read.php?p=293 Please note that these general guidelines are easy to follow and not overly restrictive. We're simply trying to ensure that all the essays meet a certain level of quality. You don't need to be a pro photographer or expert writer to get your essay approved, most folks will not have any problem meeting the standards. We also make exceptions for older photos and also accept photos that are intentionally soft focus or have other artistic styles. (Please note that "just plain blurry" is not considered a valid artistic expression for this venue, even if you try to sell it as "soft focus")

2. From the main forums page, you'll note a category called Submit Photo Essays Here with forums called Photo Essays Pending Review and Submit HTML Essays Here. This is where you submit a new photo essay. To submit your essay, create a new post and enter your essay. The essay can be in the form of a post with a series of replies and attachments, or an HTML post. Use the HTML category for HTML essays, and the other category for all other submissions (we have to keep the HTML submissions separate because of the way the forum software handles HTML).

3. After you have submitted your essay, the review staff will move it out of the submission forum into a private forum for review. During the review period, your essay will not be visible to you or to other general site members. Who are the reviewers? They're a group of fellow photographers with an interest in railroading. Some are professionals and some are hobbyists (if you want to see the list of members by group, including the Review Panel, go here: http://www.railroadphotoessays.com/forum/showgroups.php ). During the review process your photo essay will be read by several reviewers. This process will take anywhere from a few hours to a few days depending on the schedules of our all-volunteer review staff.

4. After a reviewer reads through the essay, the reviewers will choose whether or not to recommend approval. Our goal with multiple reviewers is that each essay will receive a fair review from a variety of reviewers with different backgrounds and points of view.

- If your essay is approved, (most of them are) it will be moved to one of the publicly-viewable photo essay categories. Even if your essay is approved, there may well be some critical comments posted during the review. Along with the essay, the reviewer's comments and critique of the essay will be visible. Since the policy of this site is to allow constructive criticism of all material, showing the reviewer notes and allowing other members to provide additional comments supports our goal of providing a learning environment for everyone. Congratulations on your approval, and thanks for being a contributor to RailroadPhotoEssays!

- If your essay is not approved, you will be notified via a Private Message on this site, and the photo essay will be moved to the Essays Needing Revision forum. This forum is designed so members can only view threads they have started ( i.e. their own photo essays). You will be able to see your essay, along with the assorted reviewer comments, their reasons for not approving the essay, and their suggestions for improvement. General members of the site will not be able to see your essay, or the reasons for rejection. This forum can be used as a "working" forum, where you can make revisions, alter photos, or otherwise change your essay and ask for further review. If after revision your essay is approved, it will be made public with only the final set of reviews publicized. The initial rejection and "working" messages will not be made public.

If you have further questions about essay submission, please check the How to Submit Photo Essays forum or reply to this message.

[gbrewer]

Re Item 3.

This may be the process as defined, but in my limited experience it usually works like this: after submitting, the review panel members comment directly below the entry. This way the author may watch the comments come in until, with luck, three thumbs up are given. Some edits may be suggested, and the author may do so or otherwise respond. After this happens, the submission usually disappears briefly only to reappear in the list of essays.

My question is: why not always do it this way? My latest submission followed step 3 and disappeared from my sight after only one reply, leaving me wondering what is going on behind closed doors.

Glen Brewer

[patrickculverton]

Originally Posted by gbrewer

Re Item 3.

This may be the process as defined, but in my limited experience it usually works like this: after submitting, the review panel members comment directly below the entry. This way the author may watch the comments come in until, with luck, three thumbs up are given. Some edits may be suggested, and the author may do so or otherwise respond. After this happens, the submission usually disappears briefly only to reappear in the list of essays.

My question is: why not always do it this way? My latest submission followed step 3 and disappeared from my sight after only one reply, leaving me wondering what is going on behind closed doors.

Glen Brewer

Okay everything is clear in these procedures.

Quite strict yet we'll have easy flow of submission with these photo essay writing surely. Anyways, looking forward with the member's photo essays.

Reviewers, may have mercy on us. Lols.

Cheers,
Patrick