FanPost Fridays: Share your thoughts on the Nationals in FBB's FanPost section...

Since someone here at FBB had the start time for today's game wrong [ed. note - "Someone?"] we had some free time this afternoon so we decided to use that free time to point everyone here at FBB towards the FanPost section, which exists so that you, the Federal Baseball reader, can express your own opinions on all the baseball-related goings on in the nation's capital.

Over the years, whenever people have reached out to us to express interest in writing for FBB, we have told them to go over to the FanPost section and write there for a couple reasons:

1. It gives us a better idea of your writing and how you interact with commenters and the inevitable critics who read your work and offer their own opinions,
2. It gives interested parties a chance to work with a version of the SB Nation's story editor.
3. We take what we do seriously [ed. note - "Maybe too seriously?"] and don't bring on just anyone.e
4. Even if you're not interested in writing for FBB, it's a great place to share your thoughts.

[ed. note - "Want to know a secret? We also use the FanPost section as our own virtual front porch, like the fictional one at 420 Paper St., where we ask people to stand for days, or in most cases weeks on end in order to prove their determination to join in our own far-less-destructive-than-Project-Mayhem endeavor."]

Though not active as some other sites around the SB Nation, there are still plenty of interesting stories written here in our FanPost section, and we've tried over the years to highlight that work and get it in front of as many eyes as possible.

When people write long-ish, interesting comments, we sometimes suggest that they take their thoughts to the FanPost section to share them at length in a format that isn't as limited as the comment section.

Over the years we've found a few front page authors in both the comments and Fanpost sections and continue to do what we can to promote the work you do there.

Last year, we created a Group on the front page of FBB to collect the best, most active stories and highlight them a little bit higher on the page than where the current FanPost section now sits.

As you can see in the image below, the FanPost group sits [ed. note - "Unless we forget to bump it back it back up the page."] below the Top 5 stories of the day:

Below that you'll also find the group entitled, "Welcome to NatsTown: Tweets, Pics, Vines + More" where we collect all of the shareable content that we and all the other FBB readers create, collect and share, like FanShots of funny stuff from Twitter and other quick stuff that doesn't necessarily need a full story:

Using the FanPosts and FanShots allows you to use FBB to share your own thoughts and quick takes on the events that transpire throughout the season that you feel are worth more than a comment.

The comments section, in our/my opinion continues to be the best part of all [ed. note - "Most."] SB Nation sites, but there are plenty of other ways to make the most of Federal Baseball's tools to express your opinions.

We will also promise/try to do more to share your stories via Twitter and we're also regularly sharing them on our Facebook page, which has grown over the last few years with a lot of work, to get them out to as many people as possible.

We're going to, starting today, make sure to highlight the best stories each week on what folks around the SB Nation are referring to as FanPost Fridays and the stories that get the best response/most comments will get bumped up to the top five stories to share them with everyone who stops by to check out what's going on in NatsTown.

A few simple rules to follow in your FanPosts, which are not rules, per se, as much as polite suggestions, though that's not entirely true, some are rules:

1. As is the case with the comments and stories on FBB, avoid using profanity.
2. Don't plagiarize other people's work. If you're going to cite something, use a quote, make sure you link to the source of said quote.
3. Don't use copyrighted images. We can and will add pics to the best stories and clean up the grammar spelling when we do share them, though we'll never alter the content/ideas.
4. Use this power for good. Though you can of course do it, we're not going to share stories that focus on pointing out how dumb some other writer somewhere on another site is. Argue with their thinking, logic, etc. but we're not going to promote hit pieces on other writers.
5. Have fun. The FanPosts are a great tool and we'd love to see them become more active with more people sharing their opinions.