How to properly utilize FanSHOTS

What we have here, is a failure to communicate.

Throughout the news-and-rumor filled offseasons and Winter Meetings time, there are words of baseball transactions and ideas flung around much like an Animal House food fight.  And with there being about eleventy-billion websites out there that report upon these things, regardless of if they're factual/credible or not (your discretion), we as Atlanta Braves fans want to know about the news that pertains to our team, the Atlanta Braves.

And lately, on about a daily basis, there are several new fanposts that "break" the news to this site, for other Braves fans to get riled about how the team's not pursuing Adam Dunn, or why Ben Sheets isn't on the radar when every other pitcher is pretty much an injury risk equal about.  But anyway, these fanposts consists of:

• A URL/hyperlink/portal, or whatever you wish to call it
• A snide remark or agreement with the contents of the link
• Filler, because the combination of the first two bulletpoints usually don't result in 75 words.

Without fail, gondeee will peruse the link, find it either worthy of front page material, and FanShot it himself, because any FanPost with FILLER x78 times is aethstetically hideous.  And then someone will always remark about not being given credit, and gondeee will open up an Excel spreadsheet of all his regular Talking Chop users and put a tally mark next to their name for bitching.  Often, he will follow this with a bender of frustration, involving alcohol of whatever he can get his hand on from White Irish Rose to Listerine.

Recently, gondeee has voiced his opinion about the "credit" issue, and suggested that more people utilize FanShots.  I second this notion, considering that a nugget I posted towards the end of the regular season about how Jeff Francoeur couldn't wait for 2008 to end is still on the main page.

But where as gondeee verbally pimp-slapped his user base to use the FanShots, it occurred to me, that there are quite a few people who just simply, don't know how to use them.  This is where I interject my dropping of internets science:

First step - click here.  New FanShot.  Not New FanPost.  FanPosts of just links will end up with FILLER or whatever clever Mets Suck/Phillies Suck words you can cram into the remainder of 60+ words.

POSTING LINKS:

This is what the LINK section will look like.  Notice the green highlight of the word "LINK."  I've put placeholder instruction text in it before capping it.  It's self explanitory, but let me elaborate anyway, because my fingers are a pompous arrogant ass and like people like to hear their own voice, I like to see my own text.  My fingers are assholes.

LINK TITLE:  This will be the text that will be the headline on the right-side bar, and if gondeee bumps it to front-page, will be the blue clickable text that automatically zips you tot he URL that you set.  Rick Rollin' is only about 87 years old in internet years, so don't bother.

DESCRIPTION:  Your snide remarks and comments about the contents of the URL.  Best part?  No minimum word count.  So no need for FILLER, ever.  Unless you want to be an ass and put FILLER 74 times just to piss everyone off, but doing so will likely make gondeee not front-page you, and he'll likely repost it himself and hog all the credit.

POSTING QUOTES:

Quote posting, I find to be more appealing, because if there's an interesting quote said by someone, it's easier for me to get interested in the contents of a URL.  That being said, it should be self-explanitory through the label, as well as my placeholder text, that the aformentioned quote be entered into that box.  But not the entire article, because that's lame, and more importantly, it's no longer a quote, but plagiarism.

QUOTE SOURCE:  This is where it gets a little tricky for those who don't know some HTML.  Don't worry, there are millions of people out there that don't know.  So let's break it down to where anyone can understand it: I'm assuming that you've already copied the URL for where your quote came from; that being said, let's look for that weird block of characters that starts with <a href=""

In between those two quotation marks, paste your URL.  Do not delete any of the brackets, leave all of the stuff that came with the page intact.

Now after the first ">" and yet before the "</a>" tag, this is where you enter your customized text that will be the clickable type that sends the user to your desired URL (No Rick Rolling, please).

Now, now that you've established your quote, quote source, you can actually hit your enter key after the "</a>" tag, and start a new line, to where you can write yet another snide remark/comment of your own personal thoughts that everyone else can ostrasize/critique.  At your own risk, naturally.

That wasn't so bad!  Gondeee doesn't get enough credit for maintaining the site - far too often people just show up to criticize his opinions, and offer nothing much else.  So this is my contribution to hopefully helping save him two minutes of undue grief or at least one hearty sigh of disappointment, as well as his liver from one too many more Pabst Blue Ribbons.  Despite all my own personal potshots at gondeee's alcoholism, and deliberately doing what he asks us not to do (THE CURACAO KID), I do it in jest and good intention.  But seriously gondeee, bump this to front page, and give me massive credit, or else I'll go to your friend's bar and pinch a loaf in the corner, and name it after you... I'm kidding... maybe.

All this being said, have fun with the FanShots, and go nuts with sharing your Braves gems of the internets.  There's still five months of off-season to go through until opening day, and there's bound to be many opportunities for you guys to share some news, and get that warm-and-fuzzy feeling of getting credit for your contributions.