heya,
i had 2 rather "unlucky" experiences in the last few news submissions and i can see some space for improvement here.
we're submitting our news on our page and in the same second on moddb to give you (the moddb readers) the chance to use your tools you've got used too (like the watchlist or the daily check of the frontpage)
now we've posted a news some months ago with new media and also a request for you modders out there for help. it was declined for the frontpage as it contained a request for help - nothing wrong here. but a mod-moderator first had to tell me that news must not include requests for help - he spent time going through the text, writing a comment. i spent time removing and correcting the newspost. an unlucky situation.
now a few days ago we've released a new media update including (as usual) thumbnails with the size of 256x192px and proper XHTML1.1 valid html code (copy & paste of our newspost as we're using textile on our page and not bb code, so we can't copy&paste the source of our newspost, we have to take the valid XHTML1.1 version of it.).
now a moderator went through the text and sent me a PM that we must not post news that include html tags (obviously it's parsed anyways and not filtered out although it's ment to be "OFF" according to the news-submission-page -> bug? security problem nevertheless) and that the thumbnails have to be 200x150px - ok, that's both understandable and i'd love to follow those basic guidelines.
but:
there is no place where those guidelines (for submission to the front page) are written down and what's especially irritating me is that the news that are allowed for the front page have double standards applied.
i first wondered why our other news were submitted to the front page although they contained thumbnails with our standard size of 256x192px and XHTML1.1 - and the latest news were declined. but now i checked some of the recent news submissions and the guidelines that i followed now (i resized the thumbnails, changed to bb code and re-submitted the news) do not have to be followed by the other mods.
i guess (i don't know) there's a certain lack of guidance for the mod-moderators atm and i strongly suggest you (the moddb staff) put some basic guidelines into your faq or wherever and link to them on the news-submission page.
a perfect place would be behind the "Everywhere (main page & mod profile)" part as those guidelines apply only to the front page as mod-news themself are published immediately.
ah, and a small but (as i found out by experience) very usefull suggestion: enable the email notification on received PMs by default.
larger mods like us want to make use of moddb as it's an excellent platform (really, it's wonderful - that's why we're using it 
) for modifications of all kind and players of all genres that do not want to be bound to a single game or genre. i think that's exactly what you (moddb) want to represent too. but those larger mods (and the guys responsible for the publicity and pr) don't have the time to check it daily, so important PMs like informations about not followed guidelines may be overlooked.
dont want to blame anybody here and sure, it's not a hard thing to click the radiobutton to receive email notifications - but it's a fact that most users register because they want to participate - and not go through their user-profile settings every second week it's a one time thing to do (usually) and as an experienced community admin i can tell you that it saves you (the admins) much work and will make the guys that submit their news happy as they instantly know what's wrong.
ok, long post, just suggestions that i think are usefull
