[thesite] Answer this [LONG]

Martin martin at members.evolt.org
Sat Jun 9 15:04:24 CDT 2001


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John Handelaar wrote on 9/6/01 7:33 pm

>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: thesite-admin at lists.evolt.org
>> [mailto:thesite-admin at lists.evolt.org]On Behalf Of Warden, Matt
>> Sent: 09 June 2001 17:45
>> To: thesite at lists.evolt.org
>> Subject: Re: [thesite] Answer this

>I just figured it out.
>
>BG: I've been a print and radio editor.  

BG: Been an online content manager, commissioning
articles in a not-dissimilar way

>I think that one of the
>things that doesn't fly for me with this is that your^H^H^H^H
>our procedure of acquiring new feature articles (you're right,
>it has tailed off enormously, but I'll come to that in a moment)
>contains the following assumptions:
>
>*	The way to get one new great code piece à la 'Breadcrumbs'
>	is to invite several people to write entire features.

Not 'the' way, just 'a' way. Yeah, it's commissioning. But
recognising that we probably have more knowledgeable people than
we know about.

>*	Merely 'good' features shouldn't be posted, commented on
>	and possibly, as a result, re-posted as 'great'.  

'good' works for me.

>They
>	must be great to begin with even though our medium (the web)
>	doesn't require it.  IIRC, 'Breadcrumbs' took a long time
>	to pull together.

But wasn't intentionally done as a series, it just happened
that way. fwiw, the basic idea was floating about before the
Breadcrumbs series was written.

>My editing head says that this isn't how it's done - an editor
>would draw up a features list and find people to write the stuff,
>and/or receive proposals from freelancers and accept/reject/modify
>those.

Don't disagree

>
>In evolt's case, the latter was the only original mechanism, and
>the articles have trailed off.  Interestingly, though, the only
>reason they've *noticeably*  trailed off in number is because the
>Admin group have stopped writing them.  We've never had many more
>pieces going in from non-admins than now.

Again, don't disagree. I know I'm particularly guilty of dropping
my writing input. I've got about 4 half-written articles on the go
some of which haven't moved for 6 months.

>Why?  [That's probably a new thread, and in any case I'll wait for
>suggestions before offering any].

Time. Also I think that there *has* been a change in submissions
since the new design went up - less news, if you'll notice.

Also, we do want to have a less admin-dominated input.

>Meanwhile, the new (and to some extent previous) commissioning
>process also makes all of these assumptions at the same time. Please
>no-one read this and think I'm saying this is deliberate, it's
>just how it's gone:
>
>*	WEO is a publication, not a community site (not even one with
>	a high bar to jump).
>
>*	WEO is a community site and therefore needs no formal
>	editing procedure.

Both combined - a community contributed publication (think
'literary magazine' perhaps) - with an editing process. The
process is "It's good enough, or not", and admins only do
small amounts of tidying of HTML where required.

We *have* emailed people offlist to say 'that was great -
any chance you could write that up into an article?'

Also, we have occasionally emailed article authors to
say "Can't publish this just now, but if you refocused it
like *this* it would kick ass' 

>*	WEO has an editing process but its 'core' sees no need to
>	explain what that is to either its readers or its
>	'employees' 

Don't disagree - mea culpa

>- nor does that editing process need to be in
>	any way 'professional'.

Disagree, although it may appear that way. I know
we do have some people with writing smarts who have
been working on writing and editing guidelines.


>I mean, I've been a member of thelist for about that long
>and there's no doubt at all that I'd have written articles
>(or got friends and/or employees to do so) *if* I had a
>clearer idea of what was wanted...

Agreed. We intuitively assumed that would be the case.

"Dear John
Please write more on stuff you know about. Content
processes might be a good place to start..."

>...which whilst sincerely meant, has never been true in
>practice.  There IS an editorial hand at work on WEO and
>very few people have a real feel for what it is.  

For which we're at fault. Point taken.

>I doubt
>that any person or people created it, either. (OMG!!!
>A roving dismembered editorial HAND!!!!)

you've been playing Black and White, mate...

>
>But I'll tell you one thing (and to be honest I might not
>have jumped in quite so quickly on this subject otherwise):
>MAN, that's one _dull_ first Question.  

Here's another which is sitting waiting:

___________________________
>Hierarchical site structure storage
>Author: MartinB
>Print Article
>
>[Edit]
>
>
>	
>Many sites are simple hierarchies - they have a root at the homepage and 
>branch out to directories, subdirectories and pages. Product catalogues 
>are the same.
>
>If you want to be able to dynamically manage the site, such that 
>navigation bars automatically update when you add new sections, then the 
>structure has to be held dynamically as data. 
>
>At each node of the structure, you have a page, which contains 
>subnavigation to any pages below it. Then you would tag each content asset 
>with metadata to say where (ie attached to which node) it lives in the 
>structure.
>
>A slight complication.
>
>Say you have a content piece which lives in more than one place. So you 
>can access the same assets by going down more than one branch of the tree. 
>In each place, the asset is the same words, but is in the appropriate 
>style of that part of the site. To the user, they appear to be separate 
>pages, but in fact, they're maintained as a single content asset.
>
>Ideally, you should be able to tag each content asset with more than one 
>location
>
>Example
>
>This bank site has a potential maintenance problem. The exact same service 
>is offered to two different segments of their business market. 
>
>1.	Foreign currency cheques in the small business section of the site
>2.	Foreign currency cheques in the large business section of the site
>
>
>If this is held as two separate pages, then they are sure to get out of 
>sync. And as each market segment is fiercely owned by a separate 
>department, it has the potential for getting very political, particularly 
>as there is a third department who actually operates the service. 
>Logically, there shold only be one maintainer of the service information, 
>particularly as it's not differentiated for each segment. 
>
>Some possible directions
>
>1.	As a technically naive person, the standard description of LDAP sounds 
>ideal for this. But no-one seems to use LDAP for holding this kind of 
>structured data... could it work?
>2.	Is there a standard XML schema for structured hierarchies? If not, what 
>would it look like?
>3.	How would a standard database schema map this, so that I could run it 
>on a simple CF/ASP/PHP/Perl and MySQL site like my evolt space?
>4.	What would the CF/ASP/PHP/Perl look like for each of the above?
_____________________


John
I very much do value your input on this - let's keep talking,
eh?

Cheers
Martin

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_______________________________________________
email: martin at easyweb.co.uk             PGP ID: 0xA835CCCB
       martin at members.evolt.org      snailmail: 30 Shandon Place
  tel: +44 (0)774 063 9985                      Edinburgh,
  url: http://www.easyweb.co.uk                 Scotland





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