InterLink Guidelines & Policies

The Communications Committee just approved the following guidelines & policies for InterLink. As you can see, we started with the purposes and general philosophy from the old interLoc guidelines.

InterLink Guidelines and Policies

September 2010

Description and Purposes

InterLink, an official publication of American Mensa, Limited, is a monthly e-newsletter resource intended to serve as a channel of communication among the National Office, the AMC, the local officers, and other interested members. It is a vehicle for significant, thought-provoking ideas, suggestions, questions, concerns, or discussions from Mensa members relative to Mensa administration or operation. Its purpose is to assist Mensans interested in performing leadership duties within Mensa, now or in the future.

Embedded links help readers connect with other members’ discussions as they read. Content for InterLink is gathered and generated by a team of volunteers; input and responses from readers are included in every issue.

Content

Each issue should include at least one feature article, as well as readers’ responses and any of several standing columns. Feature articles should be pertinent to the functioning of Mensa and be of value to a reasonable number of officers. Content intended for only a few, complaints about individual instances, or suggestions for localized improvements, unless they have larger implications, should normally be forwarded to the person or persons involved for action, rather than published. Communications, even if referring to single instances, that have a constructive information value to Local Groups are potential publication material.

InterLink is a forum for intelligent and reasoned presentation of views, even if they are unpopular or controversial. However, space in InterLink will not be made available to the individual fanatic, nor for soothing personal ego bruises, nor for unsubstantiated charges or vendettas.

Because each issue may include as many as seven or eight individual pieces, no one piece should be longer than 400-500 words. Less is more; writers and columnists will be encouraged to be informal but pithy as opposed to conversational.

Pieces will not be edited extensively but rather looked over for grammar, punctuation, AML house style, etc.

The Production Manager will do a preliminary evaluation of any incoming piece to determine its adherence to the above goal statement. Any lingering questions about the appropriateness of any piece (from the PM or others) will be forwarded to and answered by the Communications Officer, who may choose to consult with the AMC Chair or others as necessary.

Deadlines

• Working backwards, InterLink will be sent out on the 20^th of each month.
• The final copy of the text will be sent out for review on the 15^th of each month. Reviewers may include the Chairman, Communications Officer, Executive Director and other national directors as appropriate.
• Materials for each issue must be turned in to the Production Manager by the 10^th of each month.

Columnists

The Communications Officer will appoint volunteer columnists and apprise the Production Manager of changes to the team.

Columnists will be reminded once about upcoming deadlines and prompted to respond with their plans, whether they are submitting material for the upcoming issue or not. Columnists are assumed to be responsible people and will not be hounded.

Not every column will be published every month.

Columnists who accept or make use of member responses are not required to use every response. The goal should be a representative sample of all responses to each question. Often the same readers will answer more than one question. Columnists should pick whichever response is likely to be the most beneficial for other members, or whichever rounds out a question the best, but should pick just one from each person. Along the same lines, all other qualifications being equal, priority should probably be given to responses from readers who have not responded before.

Rather than open the Pandora’s box of editing long responses, columnists may pass over long entries in favor of terse and substantive ones. When merited, longer articles may be serialized over multiple issues. As much of each piece as possible will be linked to its online presence, so readers can go get more information for themselves if so inclined.

[Columnists as of  August 2010: Brian Reeves- Features; James Franzen-Mensa Matters in the Online Community ; Liz Meadows-Timely Questions. Claire Natola-Newsletter Highlights; Carol Philo-Elist Round-up; Staff-Resource Review and Profiles in Leadership]

Letters

Letters to InterLink will be assumed to be for publication unless otherwise specified by the writers. A statement to this effect will be included with each issue next to the response link.

If letters are responding to a specific topic, the sequence will be as follows:

• One round of responses to any original article or piece.
• One round of rebuttal.

Anything beyond this sequence runs a high risk of adding nothing new to the conversation and instead alienating/boring other readers. Those who desire to continue the topic can, either publicly or behind the scenes, be encouraged to take the conversation to any one of AML’s online meeting places for further discussion.