June 2, 2016 at 11:41 am

@peachpurple I found the notice for copyright inquiries from their TOS. It says:

15. COPYRIGHT POLICY: It is our policy to terminate any person’s account with us if they repeatedly infringe the intellectual property or proprietary rights of others. If you believe any of your work has been copied and posted on the Website in a way which infringes your intellectual property or proprietary rights, please contact us by any of the means set out in paragraph 17 or click on the “Report this” link at the bottom of the Website page or next to the allegedly infringing copy. You will need to provide us with the following information: (i) a description of the work that you claim has been infringed and a description of the alleged infringing copy of it; (ii) a description of where the alleged infringing copy has been posted on the Website; (iii) your contact details; (iv) a written statement, signed by you, to confirm that you are the owner of the work or you are authorised to act on the owner’s behalf and the information you have provided to us is accurate to the best of your knowledge and belief. 

Paragraph 17 doesn’t mention contacting them in any way, but this email is given in paragraph 18:  [email protected]

My overall impression? This is a site run by amateurs who are not native English speakers and who lack the expertise to deal with complex concerns such as DMCA takedown notices. But at least they made the effort to include the info in their TOS. Hopefully, they will also follow up on it.

June 2, 2016 at 11:31 am

I have three special needs children: 1 severely autistic/retarded/ADHD; 1 ADHD/dysgraphia/possibly autistic; 1 ADHD/dysgraphia/dyscalculia.

We have had to battle with the school system for the past decade or more. Sometimes it’s over accommodations and the services/equipment they need, sometimes over the points on the IEP, sometimes over their behaviour and the level of supervision they receive.

What I can say to any special needs parent is simply this: be an advocate for your child. Be proactive, inform yourself and insist on your child’s rights, give concrete feedback and helpful suggestions, and document everything.

If there is a need to visit the school or speak with staff more than twice over any given issue, ask for a meeting to discuss what can be done. Even if your child’s behaviour is the issue, you can ask for a behaviour plan that will address the problem in a positive way. That forces teachers to actually sit down and troubleshoot the problem. They can’t just complain and blame things on your child.

Always put the ball back into their court, and expect them to do their job.

June 2, 2016 at 11:08 am

@bestwriter I suspect that at least in part, it is an automated process that is included with the website theme. It places a great deal of weight on how many other users the individual has friended. I don’t put much stock in it.

I suspect the popular posts algorithm is more reliable, though even there I have to wonder why it never seems to change much.

June 2, 2016 at 10:23 am

Thanks everyone for your well wishes! I have submitted my second piece and managed to scoop a third piece for the same client today. I am a little nervous that I haven’t received feedback on the first, but it is a medical article and apparently they have 4 days to consider the article.

Luckily, this client has a very high acceptance rating, and only rarely seems to ask for rewrites. I hope that means my writing will pass muster. I did good research for both articles, and I think the tone I chose for each piece was good.

@scheng1 I do wonder a bit about how frequent the work will be. Tonight there was only one article in the health category. There was one in the “other” category, and there were 5 listed under mobile phones. I forgot to look at these before I clicked on the medical one, so I’m not sure if they would have been easier….

When I search for work, the search is automatically set for everything from 2-star to 4-star content. Not a lot is coming up for the OpenOrders, so tonight I added the option for DirectOrders. Most of it seemed like web site reviews for chat apps, dating services, etc. I noticed that the prices seemed higher for DirectOrders, but I’m not really understanding how they work yet.

What is the purpose of the “Report Briefing”? I’m trying to figure out if I’m meant to fill this in, and if so with what?

@sunil and @lovern Thanks to you both for the encouragement! I know I will be less nervous about this once I have a few articles accepted. For now, I am happy to have the moral support 😀

@morgoodie You writing skill is very good. I can see you writing on such a site. Honestly, it’s not such a difficult thing to write articles for clients if you can get topics that are right for you. I enjoy the medical ones. A topic like cell phones might be easy for some, but I wonder if I would find enough to say, LOL!

June 2, 2016 at 2:35 am

@morgoodie I think I may have already got a post for a flower name challenge. I remember doing something like that, back on Bubblews. If not, I’d certainly be up for writing a new post for this. I think a “flower garden in your name” sounds like a lot of fun!

As it was your idea, you should be the one to post the challenge. You can start a new thread in our writing challenges forum, just for that! I’ll even take some time to create a pretty graphic for you later, if you like 🙂

June 2, 2016 at 2:27 am

@scheng1 They do seem like a very professional site. I’m just hoping I can find enough assignments there!

@sunil Yes, they apparently take members from all English-speaking countries that have PayPal service. I’m really glad you & others took the time to mention that this service is different from the US one, which won’t accept anyone outside of Americans.

I got a 4-star (excellent) rating based on the brief, informal writing sample. I am hoping that I can upgrade that once I have a few assigned pieces accepted 😀

@peachpurple The US branch only accepts American writers, but the UK one will also accept writers from Canada, Australia, and I think also New Zealand and South Africa. It has to do with banking and PayPal accounts, as well as a preference for countries where English is one of the official languages.

@morgoodie TextBroker is a site that matches writers with clients who need work written. It’s what is sometimes known as a work for hire site. The clients order the work with specific instructions and a fized rate of pay, and the writers then request to write the piece. If the piece you submit is accepted, you get paid according to the offer.

June 2, 2016 at 1:45 am

@peachpurple Does the site have an email address for copyright infringements? If they do, you should file a DMCA takedown notice with that address. You can also file a complaint with Google, who will deindex the pages containing the violating material. If need be, you can even complain to the web host. They will not tolerate infringement, and will threaten to shut a site down if it doesn’t take prompt action to remove violating content.

June 2, 2016 at 1:40 am

@peachpurple I recommend using a proper graphics editing suite instead of a Paint program. You can get some good results on free sites like Canva or PicMonkey.

If you just want to crop, resize, and maybe add a bit of text or a frame to your images I would recommend IrfanView. If you want to get fancier and you want a desktop app, I would suggest GIMP. For mobile devices, my daughters highly recommend PicsArt.

I don’t think uploading to Pinterest is helpful, as featured images here have to be uploaded directly rather than embedded from a link. The important thing is to choose a horizontal or landscape orientation, and to be sure the image is 1200 pixels wide by 600 pixels tall.

Resizing from larger to smaller doesn’t usually cause the same kind of distortion as stretching a smaller image to fit a larger space. Your images are always very clear, so I don’t think this is an issue for you.

June 2, 2016 at 1:33 am

@meowch15 Welcome to LiteracyBase! I see you got some great advice already from Peachy, so I’ll just say that it’s good you spoke up to ask for help. There are a lot of great people here who love to support each other any way possible. So whenever you’re not sure how something works, just sing out!

June 1, 2016 at 5:51 pm

@bestwriter When you see the item for a post in your points history, the word “Link” appears next to it. If you click the link you can see which post the item refers to.

June 1, 2016 at 5:08 pm

@support She hasn’t mentioned anything to me. I will check in with her again on Facebook, just to be sure….

June 1, 2016 at 5:07 pm

@lovern Nice to see you’ve added a profile pic! Yes, any resizing should be done before we upload. It’s preferable to have an image that is close to the requested size and dimensions, though, if at all possible. Even resizing it ourselves can cause distortions.

June 1, 2016 at 5:06 pm

@kaka135 I’m so glad you were able to check in, and pleased to hear you and your baby are doing well. We missed you!

June 1, 2016 at 2:08 pm

@swalia If you notice in your points history, the word “Link” appears next to the entry for each post. If you click this word, it will open the post for you. This way you can see which post earned what amount 🙂

As for shorter or longer posts, while many people say they prefer short posts the longer ones are preferred for SEO purposes. I think that in a lot of cases, the reasons people dislike longer posts is that they consist of long blocks of text with little whitespace or other features to add visual interest and give the eyes a rest.

Adding numbered or bulleted lists helps a great deal, as does writing shorter paragraphs and using more sub-headings. Additional images, videos, or even embedded previews of news articles can also help break up the visual monotony.

Unfortunately, it seems that on LB any embedded content (e.g. videos, article previews) gets placed at the bottom of the post instead of wherever it was placed in the body of the post. This is really too bad, because it makes these items look like afterthoughts. The embedded links appear where placed in the forum comments; I wonder if @support knows why this isn’t the case with posts?

June 1, 2016 at 1:27 pm

@swalia I definitely agree that a notification for comments on our posts would be helpful.

I have been trying to remember to tag writers when I comment, so they will get a notification for the mention. I discovered that we can also see the comments mentioned if we filter our Activity for posts. All the comments will show beneath the mention of the post itself.

@scheng1 Yes, it would be good to be able to see more analytics so we can determine which of our posts are getting the best traffic. An SEO tool of some kind would also be most helpful.

@bestwriter Yes, adding tags is a great idea but it would be more helpful if we could browse the tags! Also, we should have a field for tags in the “Post Now” form.