I have had a lot of people making fun of me, yelling at me and stuff in the BBS last week. Now, I know my pictures in last week's issue were not very good. It's because when I was cropped them, I made the shots up close because I thought no one would be able to read the text otherwise.

After taking a look at a few other articles, I have seen what they did, and I think I have made the biggest mistake!

I am very sorry, Dartanian -- I am sorry that your interview never got published. FairyKiya, I am sorry about your article, too.

It was my first time learning how to do pictures. I promise, I am making tons of other articles, with good pictures this time. I plan to make much better articles in the future. I hope you accept my apology!

This is Danny2112 here, waiting for this article to come through...
*waits!*

Editor's Note: Danny2112, you have nothing to apologize for! Dear me, dear me, were a few of our citizens really so awful in the BBS that they couldn't understand your unique selection of photos? I see in your more recent photographic submission (see this week's issue) that you're taking their complaints with a grain of salt, but they bothered me a bit.

First of all, as you can see in past "How to Write for the Times" articles, I have asked all photographers to crop their images in order to fit our computer memory constraints. You, Danny2112, were one of the first to go for what graphic artists call a "severe" crop. Ain't nothin' wrong with it, and indeed, there's much to praise. You attempted to trim your photos down to the important business, not the huge crowd shots that we normally see.

Now, perhaps our citizens felt you could have found a better focus for some of your photos. Well, that's the point of learning -- because we get better. We get a better focus. We improve what we're saying in our photos, stories, whatever, and how people can read them. It would be unfair of us to expect you to create a perfect product on your first try!

I feel bad that I wasn't reading the BBS for your article last week. I would have let everybody know that, even if some readers disapprove, that doesn't make our work all bad -- especially when, as I suspect, most of those folks want to be published in the Times more regularly.

Please see this week's editorial to hear a bit about the challenges an editor faces when it comes to continuing to appreciate your regular writers while giving new writers real opportunities to prove themselves.