What Is The Hao Hao Report?

Hao It Works | Joining HHR | HHR Tools | FA-Q |Terms & Conditions

Overview

The Hao Hao Report (HHR) is a way to quickly see what the most popular English language articles regarding China are. The HHR accepts blog posts, major news articles, and basically anything about China. The HHR is part of the Lost Laowai family, a site providing a number of resources for foreigners coming to or already in China.

You may have heard the term 'social bookmarking' before. Basically, social bookmarking allows people to save links to good articles or sites in a way that others can view them and perhaps add them to their bookmarks as well. The HHR is that plus a bit. If you're familiar with the popular Digg.com site, then you're familiar with the Hao Hao Report, as the principle is the same.

Anyone can Register for FREE and then start adding stories. Just copy and paste the URL of the site you want to add into the Submit A New Story page, fill in the required info, including a brief summary of the story and away you go. The story will then appear in the Vote on new stories page. This is where people can browse the submitted stories. If they're good, Hao! it; if the article gets enough Hao's, it will appear on the main page.

So why the goofy name? To be honest, we just wanted something easy to remember that was relevant to China. Hao (好) means 'good' in Chinese, and so logic would follow that Hao Hao is doubly good. Some newage linguists refer to this as "great", but we like to keep it simple.

If anything is unclear, or you just want to let us know what you think of The Hao Hao Report, .

Hao It Works

The Hao Hao Report is broken down into three key pages. The Vote on new stories page, the Hao China Stories page and the Top stories page. A few factors decide what is on what page, and just so it's clear - here's how it breaks down:

  • When a page is added to The Hao Hao Report, it is put on the Vote on new stories page in a sort of queue to be browsed and voted on. The stories on this page are listed by the date they were added (newest first).
  • When a story gets enough votes to make it popular, it is moved to the Hao China Stories page, which is also the first page you visit when you come to the site. These stories are listed by the amount of activity they've recieved, so you'll always see the most buzz-worthy at the top, provided they've been deemed worthy of reading by the HHR community and been given the initial required number of Hao's.
  • The third significant page, Top stories, is just that - a list of The Hao Hao Report's top stories about China. These are what the HHR community has voted as the best of the best of Chinese news and blog stories, and are ordered by the number of Hao's they've received.

Joining The Hao Hao Report

Though registration is not required to vote on the stories, you do need to join the community to leave your opinions about the stories, or add stories yourself. Simply, this is a way to keep the list clean of spam and unwanted submissions. We know that in a given day you're asked to register for a thousand things in the vastness of the Internet, and as such we've made it as simple as possible. All you need is a username and an e-mail address.

We hate unsolicited e-mail too, and as such have a strict policy of not using your e-mail for anything other than verification should you forget your password. Registration brings with quite a few benefits. On top of being able to add stories to The Hao Hao Report, you are also able to leave comments/join discussion about the stories, see a live view of what people are doing on the HHR, and also track what your friends are adding to the site.

Membership is, and always will be, absolutely free. Join now.

Hao Hao Tools

What good would a site be if it didn't have a few neato toys. We've put together a few tools to further add to the interactivity of The Hao Hao Report.

  1. If you are a user, check out The Hao Hao Report Bookmarklet for an easy way to add stories to the HHR, wherever you are online (Note: You'll need to login for the code).
  2. If you are a blogmaster or run a site with news and stories about China, check out our Blogmaster Tools for ways to increase traffic to your site by making it easy for readers to add your stories/posts to The Hao Hao Report.


Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

Can I submit stories from my own blog?
Yeah, sure you can. Hell, you wouldn't have written it if you didn't think it was good, and we're all about the good. The only condition we'll put on this is that you don't spam the site with your stories. If you've written a good post and want people to know about it, cool. If you want to catalogue everything you've ever written, submitted one after another, umm... this will get you disliked.

So, how much is considered spamming?
Use your own judgement. The first page of New Stories is good real-estate for posts to be seen and hao'd. If you submit a lot of stories from your blog at once, you push all the others down the list. This isn't nice.

What if the story isn't in English?
The focus of this site is for English-language stories about China. Though many of our community here have damn good Chinese (as well as a number of other languages, I'm sure), we're sticking to the English bit. This isn't to say the stories can't have another language in them (eg. Chinese learning posts), it just means the focus should be towards an English speaking audience.

What if I've just got a funny story to tell, but don't have a blog?
Also cool by us. Just go to the Submit A New Story page, and where it asks for the URL, leave it blank. This will submit the story as an "Editorial".

Can I add videos to submitted stories?
Yup! Simply take the video's ID number (ie. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UumuNF_jY1w, "UumuNF_jY1w" is the ID) and stick it between the appropritate video tag (<youtube></youtube>, <googlevideo></googlevideo>, <xoinks></xoinks>). Example: <youtube>UumuNF_jY1w</youtube>

The only condition with this is that you need to include a "summary" that doesn't include this code, as the video should only display on the full story page and not the front (summary) page - the summary can just be a simple introduction to the video. Also, please put all videos in the Video category.

Something's broke.
PLEASE . Despite speaking in the "we" sense for most of this FAQ, HHR is mostly just a one man show, and as such, depends on your input, feedback, suggestions, and all that.


Terms and Conditions

This is all a bunch of crap so we don't get into trouble. To summarize, you don't screw us around, and we'll not screw you around.
  1. Description of Service. The Hao Hao Report is a free, online application from Lost Laowai (the "Service"). You understand and agree that the Service is provided on an AS IS and AS AVAILABLE basis. Lost Laowai disclaims all responsibility and liability for the availability, timeliness, security or reliability of the Service. Lost Laowai also reserves the right to modify, suspend or discontinue the Service with or without notice at any time and without any liability to you.

  2. Personal Use. The Service is made available to you for your personal use only. Due to the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act of 1998 (which is available at http://www.ftc.gov/ogc/coppa1.htm), you must be at least thirteen (13) years of age to use this Service. You must provide current, accurate identification, contact, and other information that may be required as part of the registration process and/or continued use of the Service. You are responsible for maintaining the confidentiality of your Service password and account, and are responsible for all activities that occur thereunder. Lost Laowai reserves the right to refuse service to anyone at any time without notice for any reason.

  3. Proper Use. You agree that you are responsible for your own communications and for any consequences thereof. Your use of the Service is subject to your acceptance of and compliance with the Agreement. You agree that you will use the Service in compliance with all applicable local, state, national, and international laws, rules and regulations, including any laws regarding the transmission of technical data exported from your country of residence. You shall not, shall not agree to, and shall not authorize or encourage any third party to: (i) use the Service to upload, transmit or otherwise distribute any content that is unlawful, defamatory, harassing, abusive, fraudulent, obscene, contains viruses, or is otherwise objectionable as reasonably determined by Lost Laowai; (ii) upload, transmit or otherwise distribute content that infringes upon another party's intellectual property rights or other proprietary, contractual or fiduciary rights or obligations; (iii) prevent others from using the Service; (iv) use the Service for any fraudulent or inappropriate purpose; or (v) act in any way that violates the Program Policies, as may be revised from time to time. Violation of any of the foregoing may result in immediate termination of this Agreement, and may subject you to state and federal penalties and other legal consequences. Lost Laowai reserves the right, but shall have no obligation, to investigate your use of the Service in order to determine whether a violation of the Agreement has occurred or to comply with any applicable law, regulation, legal process or governmental request.

  4. Your Intellectual Property Rights Lost Laowai does not claim any ownership in any of the content, including any text, data, information, images, photographs, music, sound, video, or other material, that you upload, transmit or store in your HHR account. We will not use any of your content for any purpose except to provide you with the Service.

  5. Representations and Warranties. You represent and warrant that (a) all of the information provided by you to HHR to participate in the Services is correct and current; and (b) you have all necessary right, power and authority to enter into this Agreement and to perform the acts required of you hereunder.

  6. Privacy. First and foremost, we will NOT sell, spam or in anyway molest your e-mail. As a condition to using the Service, you agree to the terms of the HHR Privacy Policy as it may be updated from time to time. Lost Laowai understands that privacy is important to you. You do, however, agree that Lost Laowai may monitor, edit or disclose your personal information, including the content of your emails, if required to do so in order to comply with any valid legal process or governmental request (such as a search warrant, subpoena, statute, or court order), or as otherwise provided in these Terms of Use and the HHR Privacy Policy. Personal information collected by Lost Laowai may be stored and processed in the United States or any other country in which parent company Forbidden Studios LLC or its agents maintain facilities. By using HHR, you consent to any such transfer of information outside of your country.

  7. Advertisements. As consideration for using the Service, you agree and understand that HHR may display ads and other information adjacent to and related to the content of the news articles. Lost Laowai serves relevant ads using a completely automated process that enables Lost Laowai to effectively target dynamically changing content.

  8. Account Inactivity. After a period of inactivity, Lost Laowai reserves the right to disable or terminate a user's account. If an account has been deactivated for inactivity, the email address associated with that account may be given to another user without notice to you or such other party. For more information on how HHR deals with account inactivity, please consult the Program Policies.

  9. Termination; Cancellation. You may cancel your use of the Services and/or terminate this Agreement with or without cause at any time by providing notice to HHR, however a terminated account may continue to exist for up to ten business days before such cancellation takes effect. Lost Laowai may at any time and for any reason terminate the Services, terminate this Agreement, or suspend or terminate your account. In the event of termination, your account will be disabled and you may not be granted access to your account or any files or other content contained in your account although residual copies of information may remain in our system. Lost Laowai will notify you via email of any such termination or cancellation, which shall be effective immediately upon Lost Laowai's delivery of such notice.

  10. Indemnification. You agree to hold harmless and indemnify Lost Laowai, and its subsidiaries, affiliates, officers, agents, and employees from and against any third party claim arising from or in any way related to your use of the Service, including any liability or expense arising from all claims, losses, damages (actual and consequential), suits, judgments, litigation costs and attorneys' fees, of every kind and nature. In such a case, Lost Laowai will provide you with written notice of such claim, suit or action.