It's a sad day for music lovers everywhere as Ray Charles is dead. He will be missed.

Well I had what I would call a stellar week in Slashdot for me. I managed to get three stories posted to the front page in the span of 48 hours.

SETI@home Turns Five Today
Intel Sued for Patent Infringement
Nanobacteria Discovery?

Out of four stories in the same period, three were posted to front page! Not a bad week, considering most of my stories previously were shot down. I think I'm getting the hang of posting stories to slashdot, and I'm going to give some pointers to all ye who wish to grace the front page.

1. Read slashdot stories; you can never go wrong with a little research into how to post on slashdot. Reading the stories that *have* graced the front page will help you to get the knack.

2. RSS uncommon websites that post interesting news. If you can swing it, RSS is the best way to gather all the information you'll need to find that gem before anyone else, but the common sources for news like news.google.com and cnn.com and the bbc are only good if you are very quick to the punch, because guaranteed for every story you post from a major site, ten others will have already posted it.

3. Break it down into who, what, where, when, why, how. Follow that order.
a) Who provided you the link?
b) What's it about?
c) Where will this story affect people?
d) When is this story good? If it's today's news, post it, if yesterday, don't bother because it was already shot down.
e) Why is this of use for slashdotters?
f) How can this make our lives better/worse. How is where you can put your own brief comment, keep everything else completely objective.

4. Research! Do your homework. Don't try to post a story about a topic you know nothing about. If it's something that makes you go wow, ask yourself if it's relevant to slashdotters (news for nerds, stuff that matters).

5. Timing. If the link you find is under an hour old, go for it. If it was posted in the morning and still hasn't appeared on slashdot, you can try and post it but your odds have decreased about 50% because likely someone has posted it already and the slashdot editors have decided not to bother covering the story, because it's likely not that important.

6. Brush up on your language. Slashdot is not like other communities that care about what you think; that's what the comments are for, not the articles, really. It's okay to put something in the How section of your article, if it's going to trigger discussion, but if it's flamebait, forget it. How would you score your article? Innuendos will get your story dumped.

7. Slashdot has one or two tones of voice. Try to stick with them in your article and you'll fit in. Don't get all emotional.

8. Check to see if the story was posted already, or if you have a subscription account, check to see if the story is coming up next. You can't help it if the subject you're writing about is coming up next, but you can help it if it was posted yesterday or five minutes ago. Read the sections on Slashdot too, before you post, because many stories go to section only. It's okay to cross-post from Slashdot Japan, because quite a few slashdotters can't read Japanese and there currently is no way for Slash to crosspost or connect the dots, unless you do it for them.