Content Guidelines

Pendect is a news platform that’s built on community contribution, news transparency and individual content personalisation. Below you'll find all the information regarding our platform, our users, and our guidelines for content creation. We rely on our community and value the input of our active users. Therefore please don't hesitate to reach out to us, if anything is missing or you have any suggestions as to how we could improve Pendect.

Pentributor & User

What is a Pentributor?

Pentributors are the centrepiece of Pendect and help create a space that is void of fake news, individual opinions and repetitive information. They comb the internet for newsworthy events, check their accuracy and rewrite them into news cards that follow Pendect's guidelines.

Who can become a Pentributor?

Well, everyone! All you need is an interest in news and the urge to see a change in the way news are consumed by the people. It doesn't matter where you're from or what your background is. We encourage everyone interested to reach out to us! Side note: you must be at least 18 years of age and proficient in English.

Other user roles & how to spot them:

Each contributive member is marked with a badge for easy differentiation. Pendect employees who have an active account on Pendect are always marked as such. To identify other users's roles, please check their profile.

Team: This user is an official employee of the Pendect company.

Reviewer: A user who reviews card for accuracy and compliance of guidelines before publication.

Verified: A user of public interest that has authenticated their identity.

Pentribution Guidelines

A Pentribution is what we call a news contribution - or card - to Pendect. A card consists of a title, a summary, a source and sometimes an image. Each card has to meet certain standards, listed below:

Newsworthiness

Submitted cards must contain newsworthy information. Therefore historical events, personal updates of public figures and already covered news stories should not be submitted.

Examples of events that are newsworthy

  • Elon Musk tweets he's about to play golf with a world leader discussing new product innovations
  • An event that's currently happening or has been ongoing
  • Opinions about on-going events by public figures

Examples of news that are not newsworthy

  • Elon Musk tweets he's about to play golf
  • An event that happened in the past and is currently not relevant
  • Opinions about on-going events by journalists and/or news reporters

Opinions & Biases

News cards should never show the Pentributor’s opinion. Opinions of public figures are allowed as long as quoted and marked as such. Opinions of journalists and/or news reporters featured in articles of events are not permitted.

Sources

All sources must have a reputation for upholding facts and need to have an editorial oversight. Furthermore, statements from public figures, companies or organisations are also admissible if made on their respective website, verified twitter account or other confirmed sources.

Sources that rely on extremist views, rumours or gossip, or sources focussing on personal opinions are not allowed.

Examples of allowed sources:

  • accredited news outlets, press agencies or local news websites such as The New York Times, Associated Press, Boston25News.
  • Twitter accounts of public figures, companies, organizations, government facilities @BernieSanders, @tesla, @amnesty, @IRS, @WHO
  • other social media platforms with verifiable accounts< Instagram accounts by public figures; official facebook pages by companies;
  • blogs and/or news sites of companies, organizations, government facilities Google's Events; WHO News Releases;
  • videos and/or radio segments that feature announcements of public figures, organizations, government facilities and/or report on current events Videos must be uploaded to an accredited platform such as YouTube, Vimeo, or corporate website

Examples of prohibited sources:

  • extremist news websites, state-sponsored fake news sites, personal blogs of non-public figures, articles or commentary without verifiable sources
    • comments on social media platforms, tweets accounts that don't belong to any unverifiable public figures, organisations, companies or government facilities, anonymous accounts
  • websites, blogs or accounts run by anonymous entities
  • biased websites, blogs or accounts
  • hear-say

Eyewitness and whistleblower reports:

In the case you come across an eyewitness report and/or are witnessing an event live or you want to bring light to a situation of a private or public organisation, please reach out to us directly so we can verify your story. Please attach any form of proof - e.g. a video, documents.

Language, tone & general spelling

Pentributors are urged to uphold neutrality of language and tone, originality of wording and factuality of content. Pendect is currently only accepting submissions in English.

Names of people, places and organisations:

Names must be spelled out fully, preferably in the commonly used spelling. Donald J. Trump instead of Donald Trump.

Anatomy of a card

Title

Keep your titles short while giving a good overview of the event. Titles shouldn't be vague, click-bait or biased. Keep titles to a maximum of 140 characters.

Summary

Summarise the key events and don't include the author's opinion (yours or original author). The summary should substantiate the claims made in the title. Your summary should be a meaningful TL;DR of its source.

If your source material contains quotes, you can use either direct or indirect speech.

  • Direct: The Minister said, "There will be no global risk."
  • Indirect: The Minister said that there would be no global risk.

Images

Currently images are added by the Reviewer during the review process to ensure all legal requirements for usage rights are met.

Categories & Tags

Each card has to be filed under one single category and contains tags for locations, people as well as organisations. Tags for specific events or topic need to be added manually by either the Pentributor or the Reviewer. Tags for people, locations and organisations are added automatically, though Pentributor are given the option to add or change them if necessary. A card focussing on the Democratic candidates for the U.S. Elections 2020 shall be tagged with the represented people, locations and parties as well as the relevant topic it is covering, e.g. U.S. Elections 2020 and Democratic Primaries.

People & Public Figures:

Names must be spelled out fully in the commonly used spelling. If a person is also an elected official, their title must be tagged as well. e.g. Boris Johnson should be tagged as 'Boris Johnson' as well as 'Prime Minister of the United Kingdom'

Locations:

Specify locations as much as possible. Locations can be cities, counties, countries, continents as well as specific places. If a place is mentioned and tagged, please also make sure the city and country its in is tagged as well. e.g. Missoula, Montana (City + State) or Berlin, Germany (city + country). If the location isn't specified in your source, use location of people/organisation mentioned, e.g. statement by the US President shall be tagged under Washington, DC and United States of America. If your source involves an organisation or a government facility, use their headquarters as the main location, e.g. NASA & Washington, DC & USA.

Locations can also regard public and/or commonly known buildings. The White House, J. Edgar Hoover Building, Museum of National History, Harvard University

Organisations

If an organisation has any abbreviations or other common names, please go through our list of already implemented tags and check for all different spellings. e.g. GOP, Republicans are both included in the tag 'Republican Party'

Other Tags:

Pentributors can also add custom tags for specific events represented in their card. e.g. a card covering bush fires in Australia, shall be tagged with "Bushfires" or "Bushfires Australia"

Topics

Topics are an easy way to stay up to date on current events and consist of cards that are linked to one specific event. A topic is either generated when there are more than three cards for a particular event, or added by a Pentributor when seen as relevant.

Example for topics:

  • Democratic Primary 2020: this topic includes all events covering the candidates of the Democratic Primary, events regarding the Primary itself and related events by the Democratic party.
  • Covid-19 Outbreak 2020: gathering all events happening regarding the global covid-19 outbreak.
  • U.S. Elections 2020: all relevant events related to the 2020 U.S. Elections

Review Process

To avoid false, untruthful or fragmentary information, each card is reviewed by at least two other Pentributors before being published to ensure the community’s standard of quality.

Reviewers proofread the card and ensure its neutrality, check the source material and verify the source itself.

If the submitted card meets our standards, it will be published to the Pendect feed and you'll be notified. If your card does not meet our standards, contains misleading information and/or a permitted source, it will be rejected for publication.

Reasons for rejected cards

Sometimes cards get rejected. When this happens to your Pentribution, we will notify you and give you the reason behind the Reviewer's decision.

Reasons for rejection, including but not limited to:

  • your card contained spelling or grammar mistakes
  • your card did not summarise its source properly
  • your card contained harmful, extremist, wrongful or false content
  • information provided is doxxing an individual
  • the link provided leads to a questionable source