[theforum] writers guidelines proposed changes

[Erika]

1.First of all... can we STOP capitalizing Web? that's so "Wired Style 
1998" oh, what's that... 2004 is calling, and this is what it says:
http://www.wired.com/culture/lifestyle/news/2004/08/64596

moving on...

2. First of all, the information at the top of this page:
http://evolt.org/node/add/story

Should be visible EVEN to viewers NOT logged in.  And you can see from 
the text, the page was written with that very expectation:

"To submit an article, you must be a registered user of the evolt.org 
Web site. Please register — it's free. You must be logged in to submit 
an article using the form below. Please note that your registered userid 
for the evolt.org Web site is not the same one given to you by the 
discussion list mail server"

OTOH, it makes sense for the user to be logged in before he/she can fill 
out the form.  So the likely solution seems to be making the form itself 
a separate page.

Now, should a user attempt to link to the form without logging in first, 
the error message should be more user friendly than "YOU ARE NOT 
AUTHORIZED.."  How about, "you must be logged in to view this page" and 
then providing the associated login/register options.

3. This page
http://evolt.org/how-to-get-published-on-evolt-org

is pretty good, but leads to a dead link here:
http://evolt.org/how_to_how_to/index.html
it should go here
http://evolt.org/how_to_how_to

Also there are comments towards the bottom noting problems, with no 
responses.  Stuff like this makes evolt appear neglectful at best, 
abandoned at worst.

Since this article displays on the front page, it should not show any 
signs of neglect or linkrot.

4. This page
http://evolt.org/writers_guidelines/index.html

- Web/web inconsistent on the page
- need no more than one link back to the front page of evolt.org
-  her link to "sign up here for login and password" goes to this page:
http://evolt.org/user/register
which is another lovely "Access denied: You are not authorized to access 
this page."   FAIL.
- link to "admin group" leads to this page
http://evolt.org/who_runs_evolt
pretty out of date... (I do like how I'm the only one in the desdev 
group with no specialties whatsoever tho....)
- another of many links to this page
http://evolt.org/node/add/story
which spits a generic "not authorized" error to everyone who is not 
logged in.

5. job opportunities
http://evolt.org/job_faq

we should consolidate Amanda's article on posting a job op with the 
following comments so that both process and content are addressed

6. aardvark's
http://evolt.org/guide_code
I am going to submit a revision of this.

7.  Finally, we have essentially FIVE submission guideline pages... plus 
the submission form itself.  I propose creating an article submission 
landing page that provides a quick n' dirty bullet list of links to all 
the relevant pages.  Because they all have some good stuff to say.... 
Careful writers like to know everything FIRST before submitting, since 
that give you the best chance of having an article accepted.

Another option would be to consolidate any pages that seem redundant or 
like they could be consolidated...

Or, if we want to make the "how to get published" our landing page, we 
should still have a "quicklink" type bullet list somewhere at the very 
top, or bottom of that page.

Erika