As I understand the tutorials section at the moment only for those who wish to have unique unpublished tutorials with no spelling errors checked by a moderator before posting which is fine and all but I have though of an idea which could get more tutorials while keeping existing implementations. Dani, what about if you setup a "Open Tutorials" category just like how there is a "Code snippets" category then the best tutorials in Open Tutorials can be published into the "Tutorials" category and a robots.txt can prevent bots from accessing the "Open Tutorials" category due to the quality of the community based tutorials. Does that sound like a good idea or what? I would publish a weekly tutorial and that adds up to 52+ a year. Please post comments on this idea here.
That might alleviate the confusion about how to post a tutorial for review.
I went ahead and renamed the 'Contribute News Stories' forum to the 'Contribute Editorial' forum because that is specifically its purpose, and it can work just as well with tutorials as with news stories.
http://www.daniweb.com/community-center/contribute-editorial/178
Anything that you post in there can only be seen by yourself as well as moderators/staff writers. Once approved, it gets moved to one of the public sections of the site and promoted to an official news story or tutorial.
I went ahead and renamed the 'Contribute News Stories' forum to the 'Contribute Editorial' forum because that is specifically its purpose, and it can work just as well with tutorials as with news stories.
http://www.daniweb.com/community-center/contribute-editorial/178
Anything that you post in there can only be seen by yourself as well as moderators/staff writers. Once approved, it gets moved to one of the public sections of the site and promoted to an official news story or tutorial.
Thanks for the new forum dani. I shall give it a try but with the approval system in place it would be nice for another forum where people can ask for tutorials to be written. Could such a forum be created? Could even be a subforum of the Geeks Lounge along with a sticker on how to post tutorials in that forum.
Thanks
cwarn23
> Anything that you post in there can only be seen by yourself as well as moderators/staff writers
Just FYI, I can't see anything in there. Are you sure it's not "staff-writers-only"? Or is it that nothing has yet been submitted?
> Anything that you post in there can only be seen by yourself as well as moderators/staff writers
Just FYI, I can't see anything in there. Are you sure it's not "staff-writers-only"? Or is it that nothing has yet been submitted?
I've just submitted a tutorial so something should be in there.
I can see it. Not a PHP guru so cannot peer review it mind, but I can see it :)
@Dani: Perhaps regular mods should get access to this forum as well?
AFAIK regulars mods should be able to see this forum, that's certainly what Dani stated in her posting and it would make the placing of tutorials there somewhat impotent without this visibilty.
Am I right in thinking you cannot see any posts in there Nick?
AFAIK regulars mods should be able to see this forum, that's certainly what Dani stated in her posting
But she is mistaken. This is due to the fact that this forum was previously only used by staff-writers. As you know, we mods aren't allowed to edit anything editorial, so that's why Dani never gave us access to the "contribute" forums.
So, no. I can't see any posts yet. But if we're going to use the forum as a tutorial-dump-site, we should get the ability to read the posts in there methinks :)
> I've just submitted a tutorial so something should be in there.
Nope, can't see it. I'm pretty sure just the forum name was changed and not the permissions hence the result. Maybe Dani can change the permissions when she is online.
The criteria to seeing it is being a moderator AND a staff writer.
I'm not sure how allowing tutorials to be posted there helps at all then, as the people with the skills to peer review them will not have access.
At the moment we ask for them to be posted in the relevant forum where the mods with the relevant skills can see them, flagged as a potential tutorial, and they can be peer reviewed and then their status changed to that of tutorial if they make the grade.
Removing them from the view of the very people who need to be able to see them would appear to be a huge retrograde step...
> The criteria to seeing it is being a moderator AND a staff writer.
Good luck getting them reviewed. :)
last night I posted a second tutorial and both tutorials are in the que. I know two staff writers are subscribed to this topic so could one of them please review them.
Thanks.
Stay tuned :)
Stay tuned :)
So who is going to review it? You or Davey? :P
So what's happening happygeek. I just got pm's that all except one have been moved to the php forum. So are the php mods going to review these and do I from now on post these in the php forum with the prefix TUTORIAL: or NEWS: ?
I was still working my way through them :)
I've moved three tutorials to the PHP forum so that the mods can peer review them and, if they are agreed to be of the right quality/accuracy etc, reclassified as 'official' tutorial postings.
The news one that you submitted I have just moved into the forum as an ordinary posting. It wasn't really news, nor a tutorial, and makes for a good normal posting.
I've only moved these posts to ensure they get reviewed as quickly as possible, seeing as you've put the work into them, while Dani is sorting out who gets what access and how to the contribute editorial forum. Currently the mods cannot see the posts there, so it seemed most efficient to move them to where the relevant mods with the relevant experience could see them and review them for now.
So it appears there are no mods online to review them. That's a first :(. Mods, *cough* Nick *cough* when you's get the email for this thread reply can someone please review the tutorials which have been moved to the php forum. I hope it takes less time in the php forum than it did in the Editorial. ;)
Already working on it. It may take a few days though, since we take tutorials very seriously and have them reviewed by a number of mods.
Mods, it has been over 3 days and still none of my tutorials have been approved. What's going on peoples. Is this what I am to expect whenever I post another tutorial?
Tutorials cannot simply be given 'official' DaniWeb tutorial status without first being peer reviewed to ensure they are accurate/error free, not to mention grammatically correct. While I can handle the spell checking and grammar side of a PHP tutorial I am not able to peer review them from the coding perspective. There is a discussion going on at the moment about who is best suited to do this.
Tutorials will never appear immediately with DaniWeb approved status for the reasons given above I'm afraid. Patience is, as they say, a virtue.
Tutorials cannot simply be given 'official' DaniWeb tutorial status without first being peer reviewed to ensure they are accurate/error free, not to mention grammatically correct. While I can handle the spell checking and grammar side of a PHP tutorial I am not able to peer review them from the coding perspective. There is a discussion going on at the moment about who is best suited to do this.
Tutorials will never appear immediately with DaniWeb approved status for the reasons given above I'm afraid. Patience is, as they say, a virtue.
Ok, so we are waiting for who is most qualified for reviewing php tutorials to be put forward I get from that text. It would be nice if we could be updated every once in a while.
There is a discussion going on at the moment about who is best suited to do this.
Glad to see one of the four tutorials have been approved. Any news on who's the new PHP Tutorials administrator/approver is or is that still to be decided?
cwarn23, i think the moderators need more time to decide. Am sure its quite a task considering the number of editorials and stories they have to debate on before publishing.
cwarn23, i think the moderators need more time to decide. Am sure its quite a task considering the number of editorials and stories they have to debate on before publishing.
Well it's been 10 days and perhaps the moderators could enlighten us on what their talking about in the moderators lounge in regards to this topic.
you have a point there/ I've also made the same suggestion before but i don't think its part of their rules.
> i don't think its part of their rules
That's a bit harsh IMO. Except for a couple of highers ups, everyone here is a voluntary contributor, possibly including the one who'll be reviewing the tutorial.
Plus that's a pretty quick change of view from:
cwarn23, i think the moderators need more time to decide. Am sure its quite a task considering the number of editorials and stories they have to debate on before publishing.
to:
you have a point there/ I've also made the same suggestion before but i don't think its part of their rules.
Anyways, patience is a virtue etc. so please don't lose hope. :)
S.O.S, its not a quick change. I remember asking something similar which was: Can a member be informed on the decisions made by admins and moderators when he makes a report and i got responses from moderators saying its quite a task to review so many of such and get back to thousands of members. That's why i advised cwarn23 that patience is needed. Also, if i remember, the moderators were also harsh in their words by saying "just stick to the rules, its left for the moderators to debate on it in their lounge and many other replies" and that's what made me say is not part of their rules because am sure they usually dont.
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