From about 9 pm PT to 10 pm PT, we will be locked in read-only mode.  You will not be able to leave comments, seed links or write articles during this period.  Thank you for your patience.  

This post is being typed in Newsvine's fancy-and-functional new article editor, the result of lots of hard work on the part on Michael Murray and several dedicated beta testers. It's now rolled out to everyone's account. Before we get to the exciting tour of our new pride and joy, there's a very important change among all the new features:

News Types are now gone.

Before today you needed to select a News Type to publish an article or seed a link: Event, Opinion, or Other. Now, there's just a simple statement you can confirm or deny if you wish: This is a report or an opinion about recent news. Here's what that looks like.

This means the Code of Honor's changed. What used to read:

Chosen news types and tags should be accurate and informative - not used to provoke or make a statement.

and

Inappropriate or malicious use of news types, tags and clipping is prohibited.

Now reads:

Articles and seeds must be published to appropriate groups and categories. Tags must be relevant to the article or seed.

and

Publishing or clipping to irrelevant groups and/or entering irrelevant tags is prohibited.

Also, note #3c, a new rule:

Denoting an article as ‘a report or an opinion about recent news’ when publishing or seeding when it is neither may precipitate article or seed removal and suspension or banning.

This will be enforced early and often. We want readers to be able to easily acknowledge and recognize news, and this will help do that. It'll also help better organize current and future uses of Newsvine that aren't for news, whether it's fiction writing, personal reflections, or fashion debates. Don't feel like you have to write or share pieces that fit the statement.

Now, let's take a tour!

New Article Types

The black bar at the top of the screen has changed - where 'Write Article' once was, now there's 'Publish'. Click that, and you'll see that you can now post Photo and Video posts.

If you just want to share a photo or video from YouTube, these posts are great. The photo article should only be used for photos that are your creation. (We're psyched to see Foto-Friday next week.) If you see a great photo or gallery somewhere else, you should still seed it.

Videos

You can now embed videos from YouTube, and it's as simple as grabbing the URL. You can also use the embed code if you're so inclined. Click the filmstrip next to 'Insert Media' like so:

That area's important; it's where you'll add images and polls as well, and more options are forthcoming.

Add your URL as prompted. In our case, it's a video of this beatboxing cellist: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T36A-H8dPhI

We automatically pull the description from the video for the caption, but feel free to edit it like we did here. In the editor, videos, images, and polls appear as smaller versions with buttons so you can move the video's placement in relation to the text and edit the alignment.

That looks like this:

The embedded video looks like this:

We suppose the embedded video is a little more impressive.

Images 

Adding images is more advanced, too. Now it's easier to give credit, crop images and more. There's three techniques to adding an image to your article, all accessible by clicking the portrait next to 'Insert Media'.

You can upload images from your hard drive much the same way as before. Find the image on your hard drive, crop your image if you wish, and if you didn't create the image, find the original source and give credit, with a link when possible. Here's one we took:

You can also post images from URLs. Here's one from the lovely MSNBC Tumblr: http://27.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_ljwg952BIR1qc52lxo1_500.jpg

Select 'Paste image URL' and the magic happens; see below. On this screen, you can add an appropriate caption, credit, and link after the magic happens: 

Please link to the origin of all images pulled from pasted links. This one we saw on the MSNBC Tumblr, so we linked there. Images pulled without crediting may be cause for article removal.

Save your photo and it'll look like this:

Note that HTML works in the captions for all images and video - we linked to an article related to the image.

If you've already uploaded images, they'll be available to use again by clicking 'my recent images'.

Polls 

Click the bargraph next to 'Insert Media', and you're greeted by a sleeker, more welcoming 'Add Poll' screen:

Polls manifest the same way they did before, but now you can 'close the ballot box' by finding a date on the calendar and setting a time of day.

Scheduling

You can now schedule articles to post at future dates, too! Just click the down arrow next to 'Publish Live' and select when you want the article to go live - though if you're also accepting comments, make sure you're around to moderate.

Seed editor

The seed editor sports the same look and the same optional statement. It'll also grab images for you when seeding certain articles, which looks like this:

You can also provide your own image, which should be relevant to the seed, and you must have rights to. If you have republishing rights with attribution - like this Creative Commons license - please give credit in the seed summary for now. We're anticipating rolling out a crediting feature.

Questions? Comments? Feedback?

We're very excited for this release, and we hope to see you using it to write and share news even more. Click 'Publish' on the black bar, the former 'Write Article' - or just click here, since this was such a long walkthrough - and get to writing, previewing, embedding, uploading, and publishing. Then let us know how it was for you in the comments!

Update 4/25: Revised 'New Article Types' screenshot, clarified 'Seed editor' section.

The Newsvine Team is happy to award Physicist-retired a Random Act of Vineness for his recent analysis of the nuclear crisis in Japan. The situation in Japan is quite complicated and is difficult to understand at times. Physicist-retired has been doing an excellent job of providing up-to-date and accurate information to their readers.

Being a great Newsviner doesn’t only include writing and seeding articles. It also has to do with a user’s comments and moderation. Physicist-retired’s comments have been informative, intelligent, insightful, and truly a pleasure to read. Many of said comments answer other user’s questions and add a higher level of understanding of the situation in Japan.

Physicist-retired has also managed to steer the conversation in the right direction, offer valuable feedback to other users, engage the community, keep out personal bias and politics, and even encourage other users to post articles on related topics.

This has been noticed and appreciated not only by staff, but by fellow users. Several of whom sent us emails to nominate Physicist-retired for this award.

Please join the Newsvine team in congratulating Physicist-retired for their outstanding efforts.

Keep up the good work!

Hello, everyone. I'm an Apple user.

My name is Luke Dorny and I started working at Newsvine last week as your new designer.

I spent most of my formative years in the Northwest in the eighties and am very happy that we're returning to the Seattle area. We love this area. We are currently making the transition from Long Beach, California and the 70ºF winter weather into the 40ºs and "humidity" that I remember so well. I've travelled some in my life and plan to do more, but I prefer the forest to the desert, so we're very happy to return here.

I've studied at University of California Los Angeles, and have been involved with design most of my life. It began in print and package design but has mostly been web technology for the last fifteen years.

Also, I love me some skateboarding, snowboarding, technology-related news, old mechanical items that predate the digital world, as well as travel and foreign culture. My wife's family is from Holland and my family is from Northern Europe, especially Denmark. We have three small children, one boy and twin girls, and no doubt there will be links to my flickr site with photos of them to follow.

I'm excited to get started on a few things but give me some time to coordinate with the team as I become more acquainted with the Vine and some of the many unique qualities here. You have all created a very interesting world of editorial and commentary and I intend to support you all with additions and revisions to the experience. With the group I'm in now at Newsvine Headquarters, I'm sure that many things will be possible. Please be patient with us. I appreciate your support.

I don't plan on being a stranger, so introduce yourself to me as well, and we'll see you around the 'Vine (probably not proper).

It’s been a long time between RAVs here at Newsvine. Recent and not-so-recent arrivals may not even know what the top right stem of Vineacity stands for. The description reads:

Earned for an exceptional moment of greatness on Newsvine.

Dowser has had many exceptional moments of greatness here, from her ongoing 'Hick in New York City' series to her recent articles on mineral collecting in Kentucky's Flourospar District. Her work has not gone unnoticed - Newsvine still receives RAV nominations even when they're not given out for long stretches, and many have been for Dowser, including these two recent published ones.

When new Viners ask staff for examples of how to use Newsvine as an author, Dowser is often the example we give. Her writing is thoughtful, accessible, informative, and fun to read. She sources pictures on the rare occasion she didn't take them. She embodies #4 of the Code of Honor and fosters discussions that are not only healthy and open but also fantastic reads. She also covers

One of the timeless references at Newsvine Global Headquarters is 'The Thousands Test' when discussing types of users and specific users. The test is: would a thousand more of (user in question) make Newsvine a better place? The Newsvine Team would be overjoyed to welcome a thousand more Dowsers, but we know there's only one, and we're happy that she's chosen to share her unique contributions with this community.

Congratulations, Dowser; you're a Newsvine superstar. Viners, please join us in congratulating her on a much-deserved Random Act of Vineness.

The Newsvine Team is thrilled to award a Random Act of Vineness to Ben Josephs for his unparalleled administration of Newsvine Photographers. This is, in our opinion, one of the best run groups on Newsvine (at least, according to one particular staff member who may or may not have threatened to never delete another spammer again unless we recognized Ben for his efforts).

Newsvine Photographers hosts what easily is the longest-running group-participation series on Newsvine, ever, with Foto-Friday, as well as putting forth monthly challenges. Ben maintains the group actively--keeps it on topic, gently and respectfully reminds users who violate the group rules and policies, takes the time to send warning emails to users who have violated the rules, and removes them if they continue to ignore the policies.

The group is easily the most well-maintained and focused group on Newsvine, and the high level of, and long-running participation by, so many Newsviners is due to Ben's time and attention and encouragement. Members of the group encourage and offer advice to each other. It's rather awesome.

The Newsvine Blog looks forward to spending a couple of hours on Friday evenings with a cocktail, perusing the photographic offerings of Newsviners participating in Foto-Friday. In fact, this may very well be the highlight of the Newsvine Blog's week.
Please join us in congratulating Ben, and to thank him for his diligence and persistence.

From the Code of Honor:

Newsvine's primary purpose is to provide a place for people to share and discuss topics relating to the news.

That's never been its only purpose. Newsviners have used the site for everything from writing exercises to finishing long sentences to digging through each others' photo albums.

Right from the beginning, one of the hot topics on the site has been the site itself. Meta content has been some of the most important and popular content on Newsvine.

Now, we've got a place for those articles and seeds: the 'Not News' section. Content published to the 'Not News' section won't show up on the front page, but it will everywhere else. This will make for a more focused front page but still allow - and hopefully encourage - inventive uses for Newsvine.

From now on, Meta articles can be published to 'All of Newsvine', replacing the old Meta policy, but must be published to the 'Not News' category. This allows more visibility for Meta articles than the former method.

If you have examples or questions about what should go where, ask here and administration will discuss them with you.

The Newsvine Team is happy to introduce Sally Chamberlain, the latest addition and team member. Sally has several years of experience and a writer and editor and will be working as a Community Moderator, working hard to enhance the conversations on Newsvine and help to maintain a level of respect in discussions.

Sally will be working side by side with Tyler to expand the enforcement of the Code of Honor and promote quality content to a broader audience.

Feel free to drop by her column and say hello.

Pardon our dust. We're currently in read-only mode. You can read the site but can't do any of the fun stuff you're used to doing.

Newsvine is battling some database issues and will be fully functional as soon as they're resolved.

Good news: the operations teams won't just restore our database but upgrade it. This should improve the performance of database-heavy operations, like the conversation tracker.

We'll have a stabler, more responsive site to you as quickly as we can. Apologies for the inconvenience.

UPDATE: 1:09 PM PST: Commenting, seeding, publishing, and clipping capacities restored.

Hypothetically speaking, let's say Newsvine were to give away several HD video cameras to 'Viners to produce, say, one short video report/interview on personal finance and the economy every month. An example segment might be a video interview with a local businessperson who had successfully gotten credit for his or her new business and was up and running, or a person who hadn't made a mortgage payment in over a year and was waiting for their bank to take action. Reports would be featured on msnbc.com.

Any interest in the community for such a thing? If you'd like to be a part of it, please indicate your interest in the comment threads and some examples as to the sorts of subjects you'd want to cover.

Today is my last day at The Vine. I am moving on and looking forward to new adventures in life and business.

The Newsvine Team is honored to present our newest Newsvine Guide, Rottlady.

Rottlady has a long history of being helpful to her fellow Newsvine members, by being kind, patient and available to assist others. She also sets a great example by publishing creative, positive and engaging articles.

Rottlady joins our three other Guides, Viki Babbles Gonia, Red Wolf and Lauhal.

For more information on what Newsvine Guides do, please visit this article.

Please join us in congratulating Rottlady for the recognition of her many years of contributions and helpfulness around The Vine.

UPDATE: This Next Level Debate is now live, and can be found HERE.

Welcome to the second installment of Newsvine Next Level.

As we approach the April 15th deadline to file federal tax returns, tensions are running hotter than ever as a recent article from the Associated Press indicates that nearly half of U.S. households escape federal income tax.

Heated debates have ensued about what the most equitable and sensible way is for the federal government to tax its citizens. Emotions run extremely high on this topic, as all Americans are impacted by the way that the system works (or doesn't work). Elected officials can't come to a consensus, and over time seesawing legislation efforts make the IRS tax code increasingly complex and cryptic, while millions of American citizens are caught in the crossfire.

Strong arguments are being put forth from both sides of the table. Yet, discussions about these important issues affecting us all too often fall apart into rancor and mud slinging.

We at Newsvine and msnbc.com hereby challenge all of you to tackle one of the most controversial veins of this topic with reason rather than rhetoric - by taking this debate to the Next Level.

Gone seem to be the days of good, lively debate. Recently there has been a ton of slapfighting between politicians, pundits, and the public. Labeling, over-generalizations, straw-man arguments and rhetoric are becoming so commonplace that people accept these counterproductive tactics as the rules of engagement. Likewise on the Vine, the most heated debates about the most controversial issues oftentimes slide down the path into name-calling, circular arguments, ad hominem attacks and other undesirable forms of debate.

Newsvine can be a pretty complex place, and as the site adds more new users, we want to help them get out of The Greenhouse that much faster. Fortunately for everyone, there are already some Viners who have done this for years.

To recognize these folks, we're giving them a designation - Newsvine Guide. Their comments will show up in a friendly brown, with a compass in the corner. It denotes that when it comes to using the features of Newsvine, these people know what they're typing about.

Who they are

Our new Guides are Red Wolf, lauhal, and Viki Babbles Gonia. They've been helping users in The Greenhouse and are active participants in Anti-Spam. We approached them after observing months upon months of polite, informative assistance on their part, and we're delighted to have them on board.

Compass on deck of derelict fishing ship by mikebaird on flickr.

What they'll do

What they were doing already, for the most part. Because of their extensive knowledge and ability to communicate that knowledge, they now have a designation that will hopefully make their guidance more resonant, especially with newcomers. (A shiny yellow comment may be better received than a gray one.) They're also still Newsviners - who will debate, write, and seed about more than just Newsvine. When commenting in their columns, their comments will show up as 'Author' and 'Seeder', not 'Guide'.

What they don't do

Guides are not expected to moderate or resolve disputes between users. This role will continue to be carried out by Tyler, our Community Moderator.

One of the Guides, Viki Babbles Gonia, will also be responding to some customer support mail.

Look down and you'll see a fresh new addition to article and seed pages for Newsvine users. We call it the Wetbar.

The Wetbar is a new tool we're releasing initially to Newsvine users and eventually across other sites powered by Newsvine technology (we're looking at you mothership). It's already on certain Newsvine powered pages like NBCSports and TODAYMoms but we're just getting started.

This handy little bugger should make it a lot easier to point your friends and followers to interesting discussions you're participating in (or fires you're starting) on the 'Vine. Facebook and Twitter have emerged as great ways to include your own social circles in activities you are involved in around the internet and we want to make it as easy as possible for you to accomplish this.

We've also placed a slightly different incarnation of the conversation tracker inside the Wetbar to see if people prefer its format to the traditional conversation tracker. Please let us know what you think in the comments.

E-mailing articles is now more advanced as well with one-click support for mailing via Hotmail, Gmail, Yahoo, and AOL.

Last but not least, if you've decided the Wetbar is not for you, you can click the 'hide tools' link and it'll scamper off into a corner.

Just a quick heads up that we'll soon be rolling out a new article editing interface. You'll notice an "Easy mode" and "XHTML mode" (quicktag buttons), wider editor width and article previews will pop open a new tab or window. Also, recently we began the process of removing some features that weren't being utilized much, in an effort to streamline and simplify Newsvine ahead of some future improvements. That's all for now, folks :)

Hello Newsviners,

The Winter Games are almost upon us. Being based here in Seattle, we're totally pumped up for the Winter Olympics - so, I've created the official Newsvine 2010 Olympics Group, open to all. Please join me in seeding, clipping and writing about the Winter Olympics.

Especially useful will be accounts from Newsviners on the ground in Vancouver or Whistler, during the Games. Tell us what you're seeing and hearing - even if you're not one of the lucky few that somehow got tickets to an event. What is the nightlife like? Has your city been turned upside down? Is public transportation what the VANOC promised it would be, back when Vancouver/Whistler won the games? Have you seen any of the athletes out and about town? Are you planning to travel to the Olympic Games, and if so - how have you gone about making your plans? Share your experiences by writing an article.

I was reading about record snowfall up at Whistler a couple weeks ago. Last week it was clear down here in Seattle, but now it's raining again and I hope its dumping up in Whistler!

Let's all pool our resources together by publishing anything Winter Olympics-related to this group, the winter-olympics tag page and the Vancouver region page.

Here's to an exciting new year and the 2010 Winter Olympics!

The forms have been filled out and the hurdles have been cleared: As of today, I am officially registered to cover the 2010 Consumer Electronic Show (CES) in Las Vegas as an MSNBC.com / Newsvine correspondent, live-blogging from the NBC Universal Blogger Lounge and elsewhere around the convention.

From time to time we at Newsvine HQ like to remind the Community of certain rules that, if followed, help ensure that Newsvine remains a fair and equitable place for everyone. Please take a few moments to consider the following rules and conventions regarding the publishing of articles to Newsvine.

Please, do not publish "articles" consisting mostly or solely of copied text from other web pages or emails. Doing so will result in the removal of that content as well as likely restriction and/or cancelation of your Newsvine account. By publishing an article to Newsvine, you are implicitly asserting that said content is legally yours to publish in its entirety.

Small amounts of text may be inserted into original articles written by you, so long as those portions of the text are clearly identified using blockquotes, proper attribution given with a link back to the original source of said content. Again, the amount of text originally written by you should greatly outweigh the amount of "borrowed" text, if you would like to publish the resulting piece as an article to Newsvine.

IF the text you would like to contribute for discussion to Newsvine is found elsewhere on the web, and you do not plan to write the majority of the contribution yourself, seed a link instead. Posting content that should be seeded as a link is a disservice to Newsvine contributors who have taken the time to express themselves creatively through publishing original articles, since these illegitimate "articles" compete for the same space reserved for actual original articles.

There has been some questionable borrowing of content posted to the Vine of late. I would like to give the benefit of the doubt to the offending parties, assuming that they did not know better, but copyright infringement and plagiarism is not allowed per the User Agreement, regardless of intent. There is absolutely no excuse for a repeated offense of this type.

To recap: do not publish content to Newsvine as an article (as opposed to a seed) if you are not the original author or copyright holder of said content. IF you use others' content from an external source, you should likely be seeding that content and you definitely should be giving credit to the source of that content as well as a link to the original content. In general, it is inadvisable (and lazy) to post content taken from email FWDs to anywhere on Newsvine, so avoid this practice altogether.

Just to make it doubly-clear, copyright and plagiarism-related violations will be met with the stiffest penalties issued by Newsvine Moderators.

Thank you for understanding that these rules are in place for legal reasons, to respect the intellectual property rights of others, and to support and recognize the creativity and original contributions of Newsvine writers.

Newsvine is excited to announce Wonderful World, a community hub where 'good news' stories from both the Wire and the Vine will be featured.

If this sounds like a familiar idea, it's probably because there's already a number of Viners who like to focus on good news, with many of them joining the group Good News Wednesday. Naturally, we wouldn't make a page like this without giving some shine to the community, the originators.

Good News Wednesday has its own featured spot on Wonderful World, right in the left-hand column, so if you've got some good news to share, join up and share some articles and seeds with the, well, wonderful world.

(My algorithms tell me humans like puns.)

Newsvine is a relatively young site, so we don't have many annual traditions. But one of our favorites is the Cinderella Bracket, our own lightweight take on the traditional NCAA Tournament Bracket.

Let's be honest: do you really have any special insight into that potential Marquette — Memphis matchup? Instead of throwing that 30th dart at the wall grinding out a full bracket, try picking just a handful of teams that you think will exceed expectations. The Cinderella Bracket gives you a fixed amount of credits to spend on a roster of teams, priced by seed. And you can even make up to three entries, so you can use one to pick the home team without feeling bad about it.

Can you guess this year's Cinderellas? If you think you can, or if you just want a shot at the brand new Xbox 360 that's this year's prize, give it a shot. Get your picks in before the opening tipoff Thursday morning.

It's been awhile since we launched Newsvine Groups. As we ramp up toward launching newly-redesigned groups, I'd like to solicit feedback on the most desired features for Newsvine Groups V2.

A significant distinction between the new group architecture will be the concept of multiple states of membership. For example, having different permissions for owners, admins, contributors, moderators and patrons. Just thinking aloud, a possible scenario is:

• Patron - Can read group content, add group postings to watchlist.
• Moderator - (all of the above and,) can unclip content from the group, delete inappropriate comments.
• Contributor - (all of the above and,) can post content to the group (articles, seeds, clippings).
• Admin - (all of the above and,) can assign roles to other group members below this level, invite/approve/boot members, modify group layout, styling and description.
• Owner - (all of the above and,) can assign roles to other group members below this level, delete group, change group name and domain.

In addition to the concept of different levels of group members (and corresponding permissions), we'd also like to know if you all would like other improvements or alterations to how Groups currently function. A few examples:

• Add posts to Group Talk module to Conversation Tracker
• Ability to separate clippings from articles and seeds
• Auto-accept all group join requests (I really could use this one!)
• Ability to send email communications to all or some group members from a single interface within the group control panel, and the ability for group members to set communication preferences
• Ability to host a private group that has its content publicly available (well, I guess this would be a result of the permissions I outlined above, anyway)

Please feel free to give me additional suggestions about you'd like to see in Newsvine Groups V2, by posting a comment below. BEFORE you post your comment, see if someone else has already made that suggestion (or something similar to it). If they have, vote for that suggestion rather than posting your own as a new comment. If you have a slight modification to their suggestion, or want to add to it, do so by replying to that comment. All completely new suggestions should be posted as a "parent" comment (i.e., not a reply to another comment in this thread).

In a day or two I will go and review the suggestions. The ones with the most votes will be taken into consideration as the Community's most desired feature requests. So, do not sell your own request short by posting it as a duplicate of another member's previous submission, thereby splitting the vote tallies among them.

A suggestion with the highest tally does not necessarily ensure that the feature will be included in this release. In kind, we may also discover a suggestion with little or no votes, that we think would be very useful (or easy to include), and you may end up seeing it in V2 - so do not be bashful, post your suggestions and requests here.

PS - This is not a discussion thread for general feedback, requests and complaints - this is specifically intended to gather feedback from users about our upcoming release of Newsvine Groups V2. Any off topic posts will be deleted. Thank you!

About an hour ago, we quietly launched the ability to connect your Newsvine account to your Facebook account via Facebook Connect. This is phase one in an ongoing project to allow various other social sites you may enjoy to integrate better with your activities on Newsvine.

On every sidebar except the front page sidebar (for now), you'll see a light blue box prompting you to connect your accounts if you happen to already be logged into Facebook. If you aren't logged into Facebook, or if you've already connected your accounts, you won't see the box.

Upon clicking the box, your Newsvine and Facebook accounts will become aware of each other and every time you vote on a story, this action will show up automatically in your Facebook news feed. We've only wired up votes for now but are curious as to what other sorts of functionality you'd like to see. Writing articles and seeding links will definitely come next and possibly comments after that, but with comments we're a little wary of people flooding their Facebook news feeds. Some of you leave over 100 comments a day on Newsvine (you know who you are!).

Aside from posting items to your Facebook news feed, are there any other bits of functionality you wish you had around here, leveraging your already established presence and relationships on Facebook? If so, leave your requests in the comments below.

Also, we've given Tyler the keys to the Newsvine Twitter feed. If you can't get enough of his knowledge nuggets on Newsvine, try the bite sized morsels now available on Twitter.

The Newsvine team would like to recognize the exceptional work of Shawn Gordon, in independently compiling and publishing the first-ever Newsvine book: The Unofficial Vine.

Shawn took it upon himself to create a project whereby the Newsvine community nominated and voted on the top articles ever published to The Vine. The winning articles were then compiled by Mr. Gordon into a book and put up for sale on Blurb. All proceeds from the sale of the book are to be donated to the American Red Cross. Shawn also chronicled the entire project from his Newsvine column, as well as the accompanying Newsvine group.

You may preview The Unofficial Vine here.

For an in-depth wrap up of what went into the project, please visit Scott Butki's interview of Shawn Gordon.

Please join the Newsvine team in recognizing one of the most creative and compelling projects ever carried out on Newsvine by congratulating Shawn Gordon with us.