Draft page feature
Posted: Sun Sep 18, 2011 12:09 am
Hi Gang,
As I understand it, the community generally expects new pages to appear on summitpost.org in a relatively complete, polished form. If this convention truly is important to the community, then in my view, it deserves a little support from the content management system. In fact, there have been requests for this feature in the past, and the workarounds suggested (e.g., developing the content on the side, either in plain text or implemented in HTML) seem likely to discourage an author's attempts to meet this community standard.
While it is currently possible to preview changes to pages, it doesn't seem possible to preview the first version of the page (let alone save it permanently in the database, where it would be safe from a browser crash). Although authors could just use some naming convention for unfinished pages, I agree that this would fail to address some of the core motivations for the standard (e.g., they'd still show up in the "new pages" areas, though perhaps this is less of an issue now that we seem to have moved to moderated "best new pages" areas).
Again, if the standard is important, then I think it justifies efforts to make it easier for authors to meet that standard. While it's true that some authors might still flout the standard, I am certain that a "save as draft" feature would result in more new pages appearing in better form.
That's what everyone one wants, right?
- Chris
As I understand it, the community generally expects new pages to appear on summitpost.org in a relatively complete, polished form. If this convention truly is important to the community, then in my view, it deserves a little support from the content management system. In fact, there have been requests for this feature in the past, and the workarounds suggested (e.g., developing the content on the side, either in plain text or implemented in HTML) seem likely to discourage an author's attempts to meet this community standard.
While it is currently possible to preview changes to pages, it doesn't seem possible to preview the first version of the page (let alone save it permanently in the database, where it would be safe from a browser crash). Although authors could just use some naming convention for unfinished pages, I agree that this would fail to address some of the core motivations for the standard (e.g., they'd still show up in the "new pages" areas, though perhaps this is less of an issue now that we seem to have moved to moderated "best new pages" areas).
Again, if the standard is important, then I think it justifies efforts to make it easier for authors to meet that standard. While it's true that some authors might still flout the standard, I am certain that a "save as draft" feature would result in more new pages appearing in better form.
That's what everyone one wants, right?
- Chris