Article Contest Extension and Suggestions

[ehpoole]

I know Steve has just extended the Article contest by a week, but considering how poorly we have all been at promoting it lately I would like to propose that we extend the deadline by as much as a month or two.

Personally, I am far more interested in acquiring a larger volume of quality Articles than I am in winning any competition.

We would also like to make a few other suggestions that would be very helpful for our members in this regard, whatever the ultimate deadline may be.

1. If Bas is willing, it would be great if he could create a video tutorial on the process of authoring and submitting Articles. The Article creation screen is a bit unwieldly, IMHO, and our members could really use some assurance that they are doing it properly. We absolutely need a tutorial for our users.
2. We need the Board to write up the contest rules and what does or does not qualify. We also need to decide who is or is not eligible (for instance, I am staff, do my articles qualify/not qualify). We should probably also better publicize how the 3 winning Articles will be chosen. We have mentioned some of this in the Article that announced the original contest, but much of this information is left unsaid. (Note: When we decide who is or is not eligible, don't allow the fact that I have contributed 2 articles to sway that decision either way. I did not submit them for the sake of winning any contest.)
3. In general, we need to decide and publish what our criteria will be for accepting Articles (contest or not) so that only the highest quality material makes it to Article status. We want a large inventory of Articles, but they are only useful to our members if they are of equally High Quality! If we turn down a member's submission, we really need to be able to refer them to a policy that helps to explain why we turned down their Article so as to minimize hard feelings. Members should be made aware that just because the bulk of an Article may have been previously published in a thread does not mean that it is inelligible for submission as an Article. The purpose of Articles is to better archive quality submissions so they need not be entirely unique works.
4. While not absolutely necessary, it would be nice if someone (plural?) would scour past threads for material worthy of incorporating into formal Articles. When such works are located, we should encourage the original poster to rework their thread postings (and photos where applicable) into a formal Article and submit that article. Copyright wise it is best, and cleanest, to have the original poster do this conversion rather than Staff or Board members.

I mention these items because I fear that confusion can breed contempt and create perceptions of favoritism. If we can address these before the close of the comptetition (hopefully well before the close) then we can hopefully keep it fun for everyone. No matter what, we need to make certain everyone who makes the effort to contribute is thanked for their contribution and understands how much we value their taking the time to invest in this site's future.

We really need for individuals other than Steve and I to step up and take real ownership of this as the two of us are more than a little distracted trying to improve the site and bringing new features online.

I am open to thoughts and comments from other Staff, Admins, and the Board. If there is agreement to significantly extend the deadline then we should do that soon and, regardless, more heavily promote the Article Contest this go round. I know that I have tried to encourage some members to rewrite their posts as Articles and we should all be doing the same for the duration of the contest whenever we find such threads.

I apologize for not bringing these comments up sooner as I had intended to do.

 

[SteveColes]

I know Steve has just extended the Article contest by a week, but considering how poorly we have all been at promoting it lately I would like to propose that we extend the deadline by as much as a month or two.

Personally, I am far more interested in acquiring a larger volume of quality Articles than I am in winning any competition.

We would also like to make a few other suggestions that would be very helpful for our members in this regard, whatever the ultimate deadline may be.

1. If Bas is willing, it would be great if he could create a video tutorial on the process of authoring and submitting Articles. The Article creation screen is a bit unwieldly, IMHO, and our members could really use some assurance that they are doing it properly. We absolutely need a tutorial for our users.
2. We need the Board to write up the contest rules and what does or does not qualify. We also need to decide who is or is not eligible (for instance, I am staff, do my articles qualify/not qualify). We should probably also better publicize how the 3 winning Articles will be chosen. We have mentioned some of this in the Article that announced the original contest, but much of this information is left unsaid. (Note: When we decide who is or is not eligible, don't allow the fact that I have contributed 2 articles to sway that decision either way. I did not submit them for the sake of winning any contest.)
3. In general, we need to decide and publish what our criteria will be for accepting Articles (contest or not) so that only the highest quality material makes it to Article status. We want a large inventory of Articles, but they are only useful to our members if they are of equally High Quality! If we turn down a member's submission, we really need to be able to refer them to a policy that helps to explain why we turned down their Article so as to minimize hard feelings. Members should be made aware that just because the bulk of an Article may have been previously published in a thread does not mean that it is inelligible for submission as an Article. The purpose of Articles is to better archive quality submissions so they need not be entirely unique works.
4. While not absolutely necessary, it would be nice if someone (plural?) would scour past threads for material worthy of incorporating into formal Articles. When such works are located, we should encourage the original poster to rework their thread postings (and photos where applicable) into a formal Article and submit that article. Copyright wise it is best, and cleanest, to have the original poster do this conversion rather than Staff or Board members.

I mention these items because I fear that confusion can breed contempt and create perceptions of favoritism. If we can address these before the close of the comptetition (hopefully well before the close) then we can hopefully keep it fun for everyone. No matter what, we need to make certain everyone who makes the effort to contribute is thanked for their contribution and understands how much we value their taking the time to invest in this site's future.

We really need for individuals other than Steve and I to step up and take real ownership of this as the two of us are more than a little distracted trying to improve the site and bringing new features online.

I am open to thoughts and comments from other Staff, Admins, and the Board. If there is agreement to significantly extend the deadline then we should do that soon and, regardless, more heavily promote the Article Contest this go round. I know that I have tried to encourage some members to rewrite their posts as Articles and we should all be doing the same for the duration of the contest whenever we find such threads.

I apologize for not bringing these comments up sooner as I had intended to do.

Extension: I don't think that would be a good idea right now. I have managed to screw this up pretty bad. I just extended a week. To extend it again, I think would just cause more confusion.

1. Great if Bas is willing.
2. Again, enough confusion. I did this wrong. Let's not make it worse for this contest. Yes there should be rules. But we are not in the position of deciding quality. Just format and completeness. I have already changed the process twice let's not inadvently change it again. If I'm conflicted about the process, what will the rest of the people think. Let's get this contest done and then use experience to do it better the next time.
3. Right now we need articles more than we need great writing. I agree about the criteria being being written up, not for this contest, though. But a general policy for article content and approval should be written. But if we make it restrictive and complicated then all we will do is discourage articles from being written. I promise you that large library of mediocre to good articles, will bring more hits on search engines and thus new people and advertisers to our site than just a few excellent articles.

As far as getting a Policy written up and approved, I can tell you only way it really will work, is if someone writes up a strawman. Then let's the staff and BOD beat into submission. And then whoever needs to approve it, can. Then we can publish it.

4. Here I think it is Necessary but should be a continuing process. When a staff member sees a post that can almost stand as an article, they should promote it and then ask the poster to do any clean up or edits that may be required. Or a moderator could that for them , especially if that user is no longer active.

if we do that often enough, then we start to get users asking for their posts to be promoted, etc.