The Sims Wiki:The Sim's Pen

This page is currently inactive and is retained for historical reference

Either the page is no longer relevant or consensus on its purpose has become unclear. To revive discussion, seek broader input at the community discussions forum.

Not to be confused with The Sims Wiki:News team.

Note

If you would like to nominate your fanon to appear in the next edition of The Sim's Pen, see The Sims Wiki:The Sim's Pen/List of nominated must-reads.

Shortcut TSW:TSP

The Sim's Pen is The Sims Wiki's weekly fanon newspaper. It is written by volunteers. Should you wish to volunteer, follow the instructions and guidelines below.

How to volunteer

Although there is no strict requirement for joining the News Team, we do expect that News Team members are:

• able to write and communicate fluently in English,
• able to commit to writing complete news blogs,
• willing to volunteer to write news blogs, and
• to follow through with completing those writing tasks.

If you feel you meet these criteria, please sign your name on the Volunteer Sign-up list below.

Standards for the News Team

Generally, we publish our weekly news blog on Sundays (based on UTC, not local time/date). Special blogs about new game features, other Sims, or Wiki news can be written on days other than Sunday, but please don't write news blogs for minor occurrences.

There is no absolute standard on the appearance of the weekly blogs. However, as these blogs have been released, a unified visual appearance and layout has materialized. For examples of the theme, see this.

• Each blog is titled with 'User blog:<User name>/The Sim's Pen - date Month year'. The date is listed as a number, and is given an ordinal suffix (e.g. 11th, 21st, 22nd), and the month and year are both given fully.
• The blogs usually use a green border and white background. To add this to a blog post, include {{Blogheader|start|color=green}} at the top of the page and {{blogheader|end}} at the bottom.
• Blog posts usually utilize {{Pagecover}}; images used in the pagecover should be higher-resolution and, if possible, related to a main subject of the blog (like a new game/expansion pack release, an upcoming holiday, etc).
• The blogs generally use the same section headers, including a section on 'Fanon News'. Other sections can be included as the situation warrants.
• Usually there is a "must-reads" section, spotlighting fanon articles which are the most popular or which the writer deems attention-deserving. Usually there would be a "Hot Story" for narratives and "Weekly Celebrities" for fanon Sims. If you do not know what should be featured next, try referring to this list for ideas.
• When The Ministry of Statistics updates the fanon stats, generally the update is featured on the latest issue of TSP.
• The blogs are signed by the users that post them.
• The {{Follow us}} template is added to the end of the blog.

Volunteer Sign-up

If you would like to sign up to write an edition of The Sim's Pen, see The Sims Wiki:News team#Volunteer Sign-up for The Sim's Pen.