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GeneralRe: Security Pin
AspDotNetDev9-Oct-12 14:26
protectorAspDotNetDev9-Oct-12 14:26 
SuggestionTo report, to down-vote, to respond in depth: once again the question of long-term value to CP ... Pin
BillWoodruff8-Oct-12 16:52
professionalBillWoodruff8-Oct-12 16:52 
GeneralRe: To report, to down-vote, to respond in depth: once again the question of long-term value to CP ... Pin
Rage8-Oct-12 23:01
professionalRage8-Oct-12 23:01 
GeneralRe: To report, to down-vote, to respond in depth: once again the question of long-term value to CP ... Pin
BillWoodruff9-Oct-12 22:56
professionalBillWoodruff9-Oct-12 22:56 
GeneralRe: To report, to down-vote, to respond in depth: once again the question of long-term value to CP ... Pin
Rage9-Oct-12 23:02
professionalRage9-Oct-12 23:02 
GeneralRe: To report, to down-vote, to respond in depth: once again the question of long-term value to CP ... Pin
Pete O'Hanlon8-Oct-12 23:15
mvePete O'Hanlon8-Oct-12 23:15 
GeneralRe: To report, to down-vote, to respond in depth: once again the question of long-term value to CP ... Pin
BillWoodruff9-Oct-12 23:13
professionalBillWoodruff9-Oct-12 23:13 
GeneralRe: To report, to down-vote, to respond in depth: once again the question of long-term value to CP ... Pin
Pete O'Hanlon9-Oct-12 23:55
mvePete O'Hanlon9-Oct-12 23:55 
You're right in that I try to take an upbeat view about the value of the content. I have a real fondness for CP, and will fight to try to preserve what I see are the great points of it. If you talk to Chris, the area of CP he is proudest of, are the articles, so I think he will be open to suggestions on how to improve them.

In order to understand what the solution is, we need to first understand what the problem is - and this is my personal opinion, I could be wildly off course here. I guess the question is, why do people write articles? To some, writing articles is something that will look good on their CV - so they really don't care what the quality is, quantity counts more than relevance or quality. Others write articles because they have identified a niche that they are perfectly suited to fit, and they do so out of a sense of community - sadly, these articles will only really be of interest to those who are searching for that niche. Next, there are the superstars who have a yearning to share all the cool stuff that they have learned or are interested in. Finally, there are those who have written something outside CP and have come here to write articles to promote these things (be it an Open Source project, or a commercial product). We'll call each group A, B, C and D respectively.

Group A - the article approval process was meant to fix issues with quality. There are two areas of concern here; first, there were many, many dross articles posted before the approval process was put in place, so they need to be tackled. Secondly, it's plainly obvious that the approval process doesn't really work - partly because people have wildly different views of what counts as a quality article and partly because others are too zealous.

Group B - there needs to be a way to highlight these niche articles. Quality may be great or quality may be terrible, but if people aren't reading them, then the author will never improve (or even have an incentive to improve them).

Group C - the superstar authors are just as capable of turning out rubbish as everyone else. This needs to be recognised. Fortunately, people take the time to read their articles, so this is one of the highest probability of issues being raised and fixed - the superstars generally really care about the quality of the work they produce.

Group D - be it open source, or be it commercial, if an article is poor, it will only serve to damage the reputation of the product; as long as they are challenged on the quality, these are also likely to fix issues with the articles.

So, how do we deal with A and B? Well, group A is effectively a three stage process.

First of all, authors should be prevented from producing rubbish; this means halting articles in the approval process - if something's a tip and is posted as an article, the approval process should let the community automatically move that to the appropriate type, right now the process isn't quite fit for purpose.

Secondly, rather than automatically rejecting articles, more use should be made of the mentor process - most people aren't aware that we have mentors here on Code Project. I'm pretty sure that we could put something in place where the votes to remove could automatically involve the mentor team (and only let an article die if it can't be fixed in this process). Let's give budding auhtors a chance to "up their game" and produce something they are proud of.

Finally, the old dross articles need to be tackled. They should either be removed or, if possible, editors could fix issues with them. This would require plumbing being put into place to allow editors to know what articles need looking at, and to allow editors to mark them as being improved.

Something I would put in place as well - if an editor has had to make substantial changes to improve an article, I would remove the original author details. That way, they will not get the credit for other peoples hard work, and they will hopefully get the message that poor work is not rewarded.

Now, as to group B - that's a trickier one. I do feel that we could have a section on the home page that highlights a selection of random articles, and these could be selected based on number of views/time present on Code Project. I also feel that they should be language independent; if your filter is set to C#, for instance, you will miss out on an interesting article on extending C++ STL.

Again, these are my personal thoughts, and as always, the groupings have a million shades of grey in there, so there is no one size fits all category.

*pre-emptive celebratory nipple tassle jiggle* - Sean Ewington

"Mind bleach! Send me mind bleach!" - Nagy Vilmos


CodeStash - Online Snippet Management | My blog | MoXAML PowerToys | Mole 2010 - debugging made easier

GeneralRe: To report, to down-vote, to respond in depth: once again the question of long-term value to CP ... Pin
BillWoodruff17-Oct-12 1:49
professionalBillWoodruff17-Oct-12 1:49 
GeneralRe: To report, to down-vote, to respond in depth: once again the question of long-term value to CP ... Pin
Chris Maunder10-Oct-12 4:34
cofounderChris Maunder10-Oct-12 4:34 
GeneralRe: To report, to down-vote, to respond in depth: once again the question of long-term value to CP ... Pin
Pete O'Hanlon10-Oct-12 9:25
mvePete O'Hanlon10-Oct-12 9:25 
QuestionPoor results searching for an article Pin
Bob Ranck8-Oct-12 10:16
Bob Ranck8-Oct-12 10:16 
AnswerRe: Poor results searching for an article Pin
Nish Nishant8-Oct-12 10:56
sitebuilderNish Nishant8-Oct-12 10:56 
AnswerRe: Poor results searching for an article Pin
Chris Maunder9-Oct-12 13:13
cofounderChris Maunder9-Oct-12 13:13 
SuggestionRe-voting Pin
ridoy8-Oct-12 10:10
professionalridoy8-Oct-12 10:10 
GeneralRe: Re-voting Pin
Richard MacCutchan8-Oct-12 22:31
mveRichard MacCutchan8-Oct-12 22:31 
SuggestionCan't bookmark article AND broken images Pin
AnoRhoads8-Oct-12 9:43
AnoRhoads8-Oct-12 9:43 
SuggestionRe: Can't bookmark article AND broken images Pin
Richard MacCutchan8-Oct-12 22:34
mveRichard MacCutchan8-Oct-12 22:34 
GeneralRe: Can't bookmark article AND broken images Pin
Prerak Patel9-Oct-12 0:31
professionalPrerak Patel9-Oct-12 0:31 
GeneralRe: Can't bookmark article AND broken images Pin
Richard MacCutchan9-Oct-12 0:36
mveRichard MacCutchan9-Oct-12 0:36 
GeneralRe: Can't bookmark article AND broken images Pin
Elina Blank9-Oct-12 1:35
sitebuilderElina Blank9-Oct-12 1:35 
GeneralRe: Can't bookmark article AND broken images Pin
Chris Maunder9-Oct-12 14:11
cofounderChris Maunder9-Oct-12 14:11 
GeneralRe: Can't bookmark article AND broken images Pin
AnoRhoads9-Oct-12 14:48
AnoRhoads9-Oct-12 14:48 
BugBroken images Pin
Prerak Patel7-Oct-12 19:44
professionalPrerak Patel7-Oct-12 19:44 
GeneralRe: Broken images Pin
Slacker0078-Oct-12 0:17
professionalSlacker0078-Oct-12 0:17 

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