Article Revival - Revisited .. was Re: [Theforum] New feature suggestions

Michele Foster michele at wordpro.on.ca
Tue Nov 13 12:00:51 CST 2001


Hi Madhu,

Let's see if I can provide a bit of background information.  If you look at
the status page for CodeFest
(http://members.evolt.org/Mishka/CodeFest_2001/tasks.htm), you will see this
item on the list:

<quote>
done (teo) - mwarden [New Feature] Old Article Revival
        How to do this? (Similar to f.e.o. Article Headline?) mwarden's
note: it's just random article from -1 year until we get a db structure to
manually select articles to be revived
        Who's going to decide which articles get revived, how often this is
updated, where this information appears, and how it looks within the current
site
</quote>

I think Jeff revised the code somewhat, from what Matt describes above.

Anyway, the reason I grabbed the info from CodeFest, is to show that no
resolution was ever arrived at.  Specifically with How to do this? and Who's
going to decide [....].

Hence, why the implementation of this feature was done randomly.

This was on the drawing board for about a month prior to CodeFest.
Consistently folks were asked for feedback.  None was given at that time.

So, that brings us up to the present.

IMHO, there are several questions/comments that need to be addressed, in
random order:

(1)  We need more than one volunteer .. ideally a group of 3-4 individuals
responsible for this.
(2)  How will this "group" decide what articles get revived and for how
long?
(3)  Technically, can the "headline" feature of f.e.o. be duplicated and
used for this on w.e.o.?
(4)  ATM, only active Admin members have access to manipulating content on
the site.  If we introduce this feature, can others have the same access
(i.e. Priv. >= 3) in order to select the Headlines?
(5)  How will this group keep track of this?  Would we need to add a field
or two to the article table indicating yes/no and when an article was
"revived"?


Ok, that's all I can think of off the top of my head.. hehehe

Michele


----- Original Message -----
From: "Madhu Menon" <webguru at vsnl.net>



| In any case, technology is almost never a solution for selecting good
| content. This requires humans - and editorial skills. Essentially, we have
| to go through the archives, dredging up buried (but still relevant)
| articles and bringing them back to life.
|
| This isn't a job for one person. A few knowledgeable people have to comb
| the categories and do it. Fortunately, we don't have to do this for "News"
| and probably much of "Reviews and commentary".
|
| Having done this thing for a long while with sites I've managed, I'm quite
| willing to help out with this.






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