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3. SCREENING GUIDELINES
3.1. If the potential contributor is not known to the screener, or anyone else in the PARI people group, look him or her up. Let’s confirm we are dealing with a real person. If possible get a telephone number for the contributor.
3.2 Ensure that the story meets PARI’s mandate:
>(a) It is substantially rural. >(b) It deals with the everyday lives of everyday people.
>(c) It tries to capture those everyday lives through the work, labour, lived experience he/she is writing about.>(d) You can ask the author that as far as possible the voices of the people he/she is writing about should not be overshadowed by his/her own. So, direct quotes are important. >(e) Photographs are important too, this is a visuals-driven site.
3.3 We do want geographical diversity, in addition to the cultural.
3.4 Look out for novel ideas that have promise and potential, even if those are not realised in the story under consideration. In other words, don’t write off the contributor.
3.5 At the same time, be wary of cultural, class, gender and caste stereotypes.
3.6 Beware of plagiarism. If you have a sense of having seen something before somewhere else, check it out. While PARI is open to reproductions — we are, after all, an archive — these should not be passed off as original material by a potential contributor.
3.7 Check the contributor’s diligence in correctly sourcing information and facts, and properly citing the source/s.
3.8 The kind of site we are, we might get very interesting content that is sometimes poorly expressed or written because English is not the writer's first or main language.
We should try not to turn away such content and writers. We should accept that there will be different qualities and levels of writing. That said, with that kind of copy, we need to expand and refine the kind of work we do on those pieces beyond the standard correction of grammar and angrezibaat (both necessary).
3.9 As stated in sub section 2.1 of the Content Editing Guidelines, all articles will, on average, be 1,000 words or less. That’s the standard we aim for. An article can go up to 1,400-1,500 words if it is very good – in terms of content as well as writing and photographs. If it’s a story of truly exceptional merit or on a crucial subject, we can consider a longer word limit for that article – and it can go up to 2,000 words. Ideally, the screening editor or first editor should be able to assess and decide the word length. Accordingly, she/he can work with the author to tighten/reduce or to add to the length (usually, by addressing content gaps), before the article reaches the final edit stage.