Hello TV.commers!

We wanted to let you know that we've made a couple of changes to our submission policy. Previously, editing submissions ONLY to add links to a guide (for instance, linking Paula Abdul's name in the American Idol show summary back to her guide) were not allowed. However, we're trying to make navigation easier and, to drive traffic to all TV.com pages, we're allowing edits to links to guides as a valid submission. We realize this might create some confusion at first, but here are some guidelines to help out:

- Editors are required to accept edits to add links. Editors are NOT required to go through and add in all the missing links on their guides (that is, we're not going to "cite" an editor for not having proper linkage in his or her guide).

- Proper linkage is not mandatory to make a submission. So an editor cannot reject a submission because it doesn't have proper linkage. However, if there is reason to believe that users are submitting information without links, and then consciously going back to put the links in, such users should be warned and reported for gaming.

- Links do not have to be added beyond the first reference to a person or guide in the submission. So if Hugh Laurie's biography refers to House several times, only the first instance of the show should be linked. However, several separate items on the same page (i.e., list of trivia) should be linked separately (since those are different submissions).

- Links should NOT be added to speakers' names in Quote submissions, nor to link back to the current page (i.e., mentions of Hugh Laurie in Hugh Laurie's biography should not link back to Hugh Laurie's guide).

For tips on how to add links, please see more_ncis_now's great post in the User to User Help Forum here.

Also, please remember that many old submissions might still carry b and i tags which you will need to edit to the new strong and em tags when submitting. For more help on this, see here.

The second change is that only links to TV.com guides will now be allowed in submissions. No links to external sites, including other CBS Interactive properties, should be added to the guides. Our focus in making these changes is to drive traffic to TV.com pages, so we're more concerned about adding links rather than taking away existing links to other sites (such as MovieTome or Mp3.com). That said, submissions to remove links to non-TV.com pages should be considered valid (except, of course, the links to episode videos and official sites input by staff).

Please let us know if you run into any issues with these two changes.