Archive for Navel Gazing
Please don’t sue us – An open letter to Tony Fox, PR rep for Viacom
Posted by: | CommentsDear Mr. Fox:
My name is DB Ferguson, and I run NoFactZone.net, a blog which many consider to be the best independent Stephen Colbert fan site on the web. We’ve been blogging about Stephen Colbert since July 17, 2006, so close to 4 years. We have an all-volunteer staff of 13 Completists, who blog 7 days a week to bring the Colbert Nation the most up to date news about Stephen Colbert and the ‘Colbert Report’. We receive on average over 60,000 unique visits a month and over 100,000 page views. We’ve had over 2.5 million unique hits over the course of our blog, and every one of those hits was free to readers and positively biased towards Stephen Colbert.
Before I go any further, I would like to praise the access to videos that you have given through ColbertNation.com. I’ve been a fan for a very long time, and I remember the horrid shape of the official ‘Colbert Nation’ site and the videos for the first couple of years of the show. I remember struggling to even watch a video, and there was no way that a video was getting embedded. We at No Fact Zone mostly linked to YouTube videos, until they were taken down, not because we wanted to make money off of the videos, but because we wanted to share the greatness that is Stephen Colbert with anyone who would listen. In the fall of 2008, ColbertNation.com made a game changing move. They started streaming both full videos as well as embeddable clips. And the way that the new media department tagged the videos and the way that the videos were searchable was so amazingly wonderful. I still visit the official ‘Colbert Nation’ site almost every day, and when I do, I almost always stop to watch a video or two. Sometimes it’s something recent, but often it’s something from the vaults, something I haven’t seen in years, but I just have a hankering to watch. I’m quite grateful for the fact that Viacom listened to their viewers and gave them access to videos. I will be the first to admit that there are processes in the video experience that should be upgraded, but all in all, it’s head and shoulders over what was being offered for a very long time.
That being said, I was a bit distressed when I read at the Hollywood Reporter that Viacom will start suing bloggers who use unauthorized clips of the ‘Daily Show’. From the tone of the interview, it sounds like this edict applies to all Comedy Central shows, including the main topic of our blog, the ‘Colbert Report’. Now, I use authorized clips of the ‘Colbert Report’ and the ‘Daily Show’, with the rare exception of fanvids (virtually all of which have been removed from the original servers and are no longer available). I do screencaps sometimes, I’ll admit to that. And we often post the videos of the shows without the embed frame, as I prefer to feature the video as large as it will go on my site. But I’m using video that streams directly from Viacom and ColbertNation.com, ads and all.
You said in your interview with the Hollywood Reporter that “My feeling is if (websites) are making money on our copyrighted content, then that is a problem.” When I tell people I am the webmaster of a very popular web site, the first thing people ask is “How much money do you make?” And I can say, in all honesty, not a dime. I take pride in the fact that I do this site not because I am making money, but I do it simply for the love and the passion of blogging about a man and a show that I have grown to respect and admire. We’re more than a news site, we’re a community.
To further alleviate any concern you may have about us profiting off of Viacom’s intellectual property, let me be perfectly transparent about our finances here at No Fact Zone. Our server costs run us $129 a month. Our host graciously manages our box for free. You see that ad in the far right corner? That’s our lone ad on the site. Wanna know how much I made in February 2010 from that ad? $1.62. No, seriously. $1.62. We’ve received donations for our server, which sit in a fund that our host keeps and uses to pay our server fees. But the blogging staff doesn’t see a dime; the donations go straight to the server fees. Our staff gets no pay, no perks, nothing except the satisfaction that what we are doing is producing something we as a fan community can be proud of.
Look, I understand that you don’t want blogs profiting from your content. I know of quite a few high profile blogs that take clips and post them under their own frame. Those sites have lots of ads, and paid staff, and make lots and lots of money. I can see how that would irk you. Our site is just a simple fan blog, with some of the hardest core ‘Colbert Report’ fans on the net, whose sole mission is to praise Stephen Colbert, all glory to his name, peace be upon him. We are one shiny, happy lovefest here, a 100% biased constantly updated ad for your show that we sustain at our own expense. If you have a problem with something we’ve posted, please, shoot me an e-mail. I’ll be more than happy to take it down if you feel that somehow, for example, a screencap of Stephen Colbert in a cute outfit is going to financially hurt Viacom in some way. We want to make this work. We want to praise, and we want to blog, and we want to be a community that does not live in fear of the people who also bring us what we so very much enjoy and love.
Thank you for listening to the fans.
Sincerely,
DB Ferguson
Webmaster and founder, NoFactZone.net
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Reasons why it sucks that Hulu is dropping Comedy Central programming
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For those of us who primarily watch the ‘Colbert Report’ and the ‘Daily Show’ on Hulu, today is a sad day. Hulu’s Senior VP of Content and Distrubution, Andy Forssell, made an announcement on the Hulu blog that as of next Tuesday, March 9, Hulu will not be carrying any Comedy Central shows. Now, granted, people in the US can continue to watch both clips and full versions of shows on ColbertNation.com and TheDailyShow.com. But for months now, virtually the only whole shows that I would watch of the ‘Colbert Report’ were on Hulu. And I have to be honest – I’m a bit peeved about this decision.
But why, you may ask, would this rub me the wrong way so much if I have access to the show via the official sites? Well, let me tell you. Are my reasons selfish? You betcha. Am I being whiny? Yeah, probably. But I got something to say! Which leads me to my first reason …
1) No more free ‘Strangers With Candy’
On occasion, I want to do a screencap of ‘Strangers With Candy’ for the site, or maybe just sit down and have a mini-marathon of some of my favorite SWC episodes. Now, I have the DVD’s, but sometimes, it’s nice to just be able to watch the shows on the computer. Plus it also allowed us to embed relevant clips here on No Fact Zone as the need would arise. Well, we can say goodbye to the pole and the hole … no more full episodes of one of my very favorite Stephen Colbert projects.
2) The viewing experience is smoother and the ads more relevant on Hulu than on ColbertNation.com
Trust me when I say I have watched a lot of videos, both full episodes and segment clips, on Hulu and ColbertNation.com. And I choose Hulu 95% of the time. The only time I ever watch full episodes on ColbertNation.com is when I want a particularly large screencap. The main reason for this is the ads.
Now, I’m not adverse to ads. People have to pay the bills, and I can respect that. But Hulu gives me multiple options for viewing ads, and once I’ve seen an ad for a particular segment of the show, I can watch that segment repeatedly without being bombarded with ads. Each break comes with a different ad, and sometimes I am even given the option of watching a full 2 minute ad and then the entire show is ad free. This is an excellent opportunity, and I really like it when the ads are movies because I actually enjoy watching the trailers.
With Comedy Central.com, I have to watch 3-4 ads before I can watch any part of the show. But let’s say I want to skip to the interview. I am forced to watch 2 minutes of ads, and often it’s the same ad over and over and over and over and over, before I ever get to any content. If I decide to rewind and go from the third section to the first, I have to watch another ad, and sometimes even two. The pause feature isn’t nearly as smooth, and it’s just a much more frustrating experience.
I know I might be an exception to how a normal user might use the site. I think I can safely say that when it comes to the ColbertNation.com videos, I’m a bit of a power user. But if I’m having this much trouble, surely others who watch the video are having the same issues.
3) Hulu gives the option of embedding only a small segment of a video.
I absolutely LOVE this feature! If I want to embed a part of the show – say, a musical number, or a snippet of dialogue – Hulu allows me to pick the exact snippet of the full episode that I want to embed, and put parameters in the code to install the code. I can also designate what size I want the Hulu video to be through a simple HTML adjustment, to best fit within the parameters of the body of the blog (although the default 512px width is a good size anyway). With the ColbertNation.com videos, I cannot embed the whole episode, and the sections of the show only allow a certain parameter of viewing experience – it tells you the size of the segment, the frame (with ads for other Comedy Central projects), and another aspect of Comedy Central videos that I simply cannot stand …
4) ColbertNation.com embed code screws up my LiveJournal feed.
About 10% of my syndicated site readers are LiveJournal users. Many of what I would call the Power User Zoners read the site via LiveJournal. But when the RSS feed syndicates code from an official Comedy Central video, LiveJournal simply cannot read the code. The Hulu video embeds lovely in any RSS feed or browser where it appears.
5) This is going to totally hose my morning schedule.
I warned you at the beginning of this post that my reasons were selfish, so let me spell this out a bit clearer. Hulu posts their videos of the ‘Colbert Report’ right around 5:45a CST or so. ColbertNation.com posts their full episode HD video around 7:30a CST. I normally start my episode guide by 6:20a so that I can have it done by 7:30a so I can get ready for work. And considering I spend over an hour a day typing and talking about and analyzing every episode of the show, I tend to only watch it once. So my options are: a) watch it on my TiVo, in standard def, and type the guide every morning on my netbook, or b) wait until CN.com posts the videos so that I can do the typing and editing on my Mac, but risk running late for work every day.
So, yes, this makes me cranky. We work darn hard around here to do the best that we can do and still have a little bit of a life away from the computer. I’ve had a very nice, smooth morning schedule for months after I started using Hulu as my primary source for shows. Also, I can watch the show in HD from Hulu on my shiny new iMac screen. But now? Phhhtt.
Thanks for listening to me rant. How many of you watch the shows on Hulu? And how will you be watching the shows now?
And, while you can, let’s pour a forty of Formula 401 on the ground to honor the death of ‘Colbert Report’ Hulu videos.
h/t to my old friend vdovault as well as MrTigger and Roland
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No Fact Zone State of the Union address
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Yes, Zoners, it’s about that time where I like to give a few status updates on some of the more behind-the-scenes aspects of how we do what we do here at No Fact Zone, and invite you all to continue to help me make this the best Stephen Colbert and ‘Colbert Report’ fan site on the web.
First, I would like to give a huge round of applause and thanks to our crew of Zoner Completists who consistently help me get the readers of this site the best Colbert-centric news on the web. I’d like to give a special thanks to Justine Marie and Nerdygirl for the tasks that they do that are much more behind-the-scenes than you will see from the other Completists. Justine Marie has done an amazing job with keeping up with the No Fact Zone calendar page, keeping us up to date on all of the special events and TCR/TDS guests each week. Nerdygirl has also been a huge help with keeping the Episode Guide archive up to date. I’m also especially proud of Jordan, Wren, Val, and Lady Nocturne for their weekly posts that give the site a consistency that takes our content above anything else out there like it on the web. Katt and Tiger are still new here, but doing an excellent job of learning how to keep up with our Six Degrees content for all of you fans of the ‘Daily Show’ and people who have made an impact in the Colbertverse. And of course, I simply could not do this without Ann G. and MsInterpreted, who work to get you the news every single day, and making sure you get the Stephen Colbert news as soon as it breaks.
But most of all, I could not do this without you Zoners. We get so much great content from people who send us tips every single day, and I know personally I get so very much fulfillment from seeing people discuss the stories of the day in the comments. We have a very happy and active readership, and the culture that we have built here at No Fact Zone is unlike any other in the Colbert fandom. Truth be told, that is the thing that I am most proud of when it comes to this site. I’m so thankful that all of you come here, day after day, and read the post and comment and send tips about stories that you think other Zoners might enjoy. It’s a really amazing feeling to know that we’ve built this tiny little section of the Colbert Nation into something that I really believe Stephen is thankful for.
Please click through to read more about the future of Colbert University, our call for new Completists, how our fundraising fund stands, and a lovely piece of eye candy.
Read More→
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Time Warner Cable can gargle my mansack
Posted by: | CommentsI live in Dallas, Texas. I live in a high rise loft complex, and the only cable option I have is Time Warner Cable. Living on the 10th floor is not conducive to, say, hanging a dish out my window.
You may remember that when I got to meet Stephen Colbert in October, 2008, my audience question was “When are you going to be broadcasting in high def?” (His answer: “I gotta get some work done first, honey.”) This is something that has been on my mind for a *long* time. As soon as Stephen Colbert started hinting about the HD conversion of the show, I knew that the switch was imminent. I started a quiet campaign, both as a customer and as a webmaster, to find out the scoop about when I would be getting Comedy Central HD on my Time Warner Cable. I have a ton of other HD channels, but this particular one is rather near and dear to my heart, as you might imagine. We even sprung for a 42″ flatscreen in anticipation of this conversion.
I tried contacting anyone I thought might have an answer – Comedy Central media relations, Time Warner, both local and national (multiple times), and couldn’t find anyone who might know when Time Warner Cable, specifically the Dallas area, would be carrying Comedy Central HD. I finally sent an e-mail to an executive e-mail address I got from one of my very favorite blogs, The Consumerist. This is the response I got this morning:
Thank you for writing. You have reached Time Warner Cable’s Office of the President. Time Warner Cable does not currently offer Comedy Central HD in your market area at the present time. Unfortunately, we would not be able to provide you with a time frame of when this channel may be available. Time Warner Cable keeps a constant communication in regards to contract agreements that would allow us to display stations on our network. Until a contract is agreed upon, these stations would not be available. Once there is an agreement, notification is usually sent out to our customers indicating the addition of the channel.
Regards,
John Orzolick
Customer Care Advocate
Time Warner Cable Corporate Office
Do you know what that means, kiddos? That means that the webmaster of the friggin’ LARGEST STEPHEN COLBERT SITE ON THE FRIGGIN’ WEB doesn’t get to watch the show in HD when it comes out on January 4, 2010. And, much more importantly, neither do a hell of a lot of other Time Warner Cable customers who also happen to be members of the Colbert Nation.
I know this is more of a personal rant than anything, but I’m cranky. Dammit. I also know that we have a lot of readers who are not in the US who can’t even get the show on their television. For that I do feel fortunate – that I have the money for cable, and the access to the ‘Colbert Report’ on my regular channel. Not all Colbert fans have that. But still, to know it’s out there and to not be able to get it is just irksome.
And just because I’m in a poll type of mood, please give some feedback in the poll below and the comments.
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In my mind, I’m already on a relaxing beach
Posted by: | CommentsEvery morning I get up at 5:45a, clean my house for 30 minutes, and then spend the next hour to hour and a half doing the nightly episode guide, responding to e-mail, and sometimes even getting up an extra post or two. Throughout the day, I monitor the site, and the comments, and the Colbert-related news that is breaking, and my e-mail with my iPhone. Often, like today, I bring my netbook to work and blog or catch up on site related e-mails during my lunch. When I get home at night, I often spend an hour or two either blogging, again catching up on e-mails, keeping up with the Completists, or doing other adminstrative site duties. I figure I put in a good 3-4 hours of site work each day. I go to bed early so that I can do a guide in the morning. I never get to watch the show live any more, or simply “watch” the show like a normal fan. Each show means an hour and a half of work, coming up with 2-3 paragraphs of commentary on the episode, at 6:30a. Have you ever tried to write intelligent commentary at 6:30a?!
On the weekends, while I do go on posting binges quite often, I also do a lot of things like clean up or change the template and other site maintenance. I also work a lot via e-mail and IM chat with completists to teach them how to be stronger bloggers, and I often brainstorm with them to help come up with new ideas for the blog. I figure I easily put at a minimum 20 hours a week into the site, and most weeks it’s probably closer to 30-40 when you count in the e-mails and Twitter and other things I do behind the scenes to keep the community happy and active. I never get a day off from this job that I have given myself, and trust me when I say that as far as rewards or perks go, to paraphrase “Rocky Horror”, I ask for nothing and I receive it in abundance. I’ve been doing this blog for over three years, and never taken any kind of extended break, with the exception of when I went to New York, which activities were still extremely blog-centric. Did I mention that none of us get paid a dime for this?
And on top of all of this, I’m working full time, with over an hour’s worth of commuting each day, plus keeping up with our home, plus working with my husband to keep our marriage happy, and on rare occasions seeing some of my real life friends.
I am burned out.
I need to take a step back to refresh and recharge, so that I can calm down, get myself grounded and begin enjoying things again. When I allow myself the time to take a few steps back and find my core, and remember that this site is first and foremost here to give thanks to Stephen Colbert (all praise and glory his name, peace be upon him), it takes me back to a simple, uncomplicated place where I find my renewed passion for this blog and this subject and this community.
So, I’m taking a break. An internet vacation, if you will. I’m not sure how long – maybe a few days, maybe even as long as a couple of weeks. I’ll check my e-mail once or twice a day and forward any tips to the other completists, but that’s it. No Twitter. No blogging. No IM’s. Lots and lots of sleep and rest and reading. Maybe I’ll start that exercise program I’ve been meaning to do. I definitely want to go on a weekend day trip with my sweet husband, who puts up with me sitting in front of these monitors way more than a husband should have to. I really need to make sure to stay on my game for the next few weeks at my new job – I’m approaching the end of my 90-day probation, and I really want to sprint to the finish.
This also means no episode guides. Maybe one of the other completists can take it upon themselves to at least put up a placeholder post so that people can chat about the episode. Or maybe I’ll do a quick one in the mornings. But truth be told, I kinda want to sleep in tomorrow. And go spend some time on the couch with my sweet husband, to watch TV and pet the kitties and do some of the “normal” things that people who don’t blog take for granted.
I’ll catch everyone in a while! Have fun while I’m gone! Here’s a picture of a puppy.
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No Fact Zone fundraising drive – Please support our site!
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Jen from DrakNet and I (okay, mostly Jen) have been working this morning on a way to get the site on a new server, and get it up and running. She’s worked with a company called LiquidWeb to get our site on a new dedicated server. What this means is that we have a box all to ourselves, and she can configure it to handle our hefty server load, and we will have room to grow.
Please remember – our site is 100% volunteer. We continue to make this a true labor of love, and none of the staff are paid with the money that we are raising. The money raised is going straight to our server provider, to make sure that our server costs are covered. Without these funds, we will be seriously struggling to keep this site afloat. DrakNet has volunteered to pay for the server each month regardless of what Zoners kick in; however, this $139 a month server fee that they are giving us at cost will be coming out of the budget for DrakNet’s donated non-profit hosting program, as well as their Kiva Loans program which will lessen the money available to struggling non profits that host with them, and third world entrepreneurs that have been the recipient of their loans in the past.
To donate, go to the handy-dandy buttons in our sidebar and click away! And please comment here to let everyone know that you support our site.
Thank you all for your generosity and kindness. Seriously. This site would be no fun without the community that we’ve built here.
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Frank discussion with all of the Zoners about the future of No Fact Zone
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Okay, kiddos, grab your cocoa, and have a sit down. We need to have a talk. Specifically, we have to talk about the future of the site. I’ll make this as gentle as I can, but it’s also something that needs to be addressed as soon as possible. I want to keep these discussions as transparent as possible, because this site is as much about our community as it is about our content.
As most of you know, without being conceited about it, we truly are the #1 fan-run Stephen Colbert fan site on the web. We are a 100% volunteer-run site, and for a couple of years now, we’ve been generously hosted, with no cost to us, by our friend Jen over at DrakNet. She has not only moved us from server to server as we’ve grown, she’s also done all the server maintenance on her own time at no cost to us. (And trust me, she has put a LOT of time into this site for us). We have done our best to keep ads to a bare minimum, and taken the small amount of money raised from said ads to run contests and other rather small expenses that the site has accrued.
However, our site is big. It’s too much for any shared server that DrakNet has in its network. Not only are we getting over 75,000 unique visitors a month, and over 4,000 page views a day, but we are using nearly 2 gigs of memory all on our own. We sucked down 70 gigs of bandwidth last month. Every time we get the honor of being on the front page of ColbertNation.com, it adds hundreds of hits per day. And that’s not even counting the additional weight of carrying Colbert University on our hosting service. Most importantly, No Fact Zone is very resource intensive. And unfortunately, with a WordPress blog, there’s not much we can do about crunching down that bloat.
In a nutshell, we are officially too big for our britches, and we need to move to a dedicated server. This means that somehow, we have to come up with the funds to move to a dedicated server. Jen has done some research and come up with an option for us that would allow us to move to our own server, and would allow her to manage that server. Unfortunately, to handle our current load and to allow room for growth, we’re going to need a dedicated server with a cost of $110/month, and that’s with Jen pulling strings with people that she knows to get us an excellent rate.
Here’s the inevitable ugliness that I’ve avoided for three years – we need to monetize the site. I just don’t have the discretionary income to pay that out of pocket every month.
We’ve got a few options to generate income to help pay for this new resource:
Ads
- I don’t think that a simple Google Adsense account is going to cut it. I don’t even know exactly where I am going to put any ads we put up, but we may have to move a few things around or even get a new template. I can see about joining ad networks, and I might be able to recruit ad sponsors (which is the ideal situation for me), but we’ll have to see. At this point, this seems like the most reliable and likely option for the majority of our monetization.
Tip Jar
- Another option would be a Tip Jar, where readers can put together a dollar or two each month, if they are able, and help support the site. We can even set up a network where we have people “subscribe” to the site, for a $1/month donation or something, and hopefully have this “subscription” status be reflected on the site, either on a Sponsor page or possibly within the comment structure. There are quite a few options, but all of these would depend on the generosity of our readers.
Affiliate Sales
- This means that we would be pushing our Amazon links a lot more in the content of the blog as well as the sidebar, and encouraging people to purchase Stephen Colbert related product from our site. I have also brought up the idea of selling No Fact Zone related merchandise – we could sell that at a rate that would help us to pay some of this monthly cost.
We’ll explore other options as well – we’ll do whatever it takes to keep this site running without totally annoying the readers. We will also do our best to find ways to monetize the site that do not depend on our readers and their pocketbooks. It is also very important to us that we continue to keep the grassroots, genuine feel of our site. We have always been by the fans, for the fans, and have never done this site to make profit. This site has been purely a labor of love since Day 1.
But if we can’t pay for a proper server, we won’t have a site at all. That’s the cold, hard truth.
So here’s my question to you, the Zoners who have been with us all these years – how do you feel about these changes? These changes are necessary, and they will be happening. But I want to get any feedback from you about your thoughts on this issue.
Thank you for your understanding.
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The ‘No Fact Zone’ State of the Union Address – January 2009
Posted by: | CommentsIt’s about that time again to have a State of the Union address for our little site here. For those of you who read through to the end, I’ll make sure to reward you with a shiny piece of Eye Candy.
Before I get to talking about our wonderful, shiny new template, I’d like to put out a call for help with the No Fact Zone episode guides. When Jenny with a Y came on as a Colbert Completist and started helping the site with her R.A.P.S. posts, it really added a powerful community tool to the site. We could now have a place to talk about the most recent episode mere moments after it aired. It also helped fill the void of the lack of prompt Episode Guides each day. Because all of the Completists here at No Fact Zone have full-time jobs and other obligations of our time, we have not been able to keep up with our guides as much as we would like.
There are two solutions that I would like to propose to help this site keep up with the guides, and I offer them to you now. First, I would really like to recruit a few of our more talented Zoners to help with the guides as part of a newly-formed Guide Crew. (We’ll think of a catchy name for the crew later, I promise.) I would ideally like to have 4-5 people on this crew, whose sole duty is to create one Episode Guide a week, and for each of the crew to commit to a particular evening during the week. Each of the guides takes approximately 2 hours to complete beginning to end, although after doing these for close to three years, I’ve found that I can complete a basic guide sans videos within 1/2 hour of the show ending at night, and I add the videos the next day.
In addition to helping maintain the high quality of the site, you’d get perks that only Completists get, such as news before it hits the site and other goodies. Plus you’d have the gratitude of all of the Zoners who get to appreciate your work. If you feel you can commit to 1 1/2-2 hours, one night per week to helping No Fact Zone, please volunteer in the comments and I will contact you about training and scheduling.
The second part of this project is getting caught up on the guides that we still need to create. If you look on our Episode Guide page, you’ll see that we still have over 30 to complete for 2008. Look for the red “Coming Soon!” notes to see which guides need to be created.. If you have time to do even one or two of these guides in the next few weeks, let me know, and we’ll get them assigned to people who can help. I’ll set up the basic framework for the posts and all you’ll need to do is to help create the Notable Moments section, which is the most time consuming part of completing the guides. This would be a huge help if you would like to support the site, but cannot make a long-term commitment to being on the Guide crew*. (*Man, we have GOT to think of a better name for that team! Anybody? Anybody?)
Now, onto the template news!
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