[pmwiki-users] PmWiki Magazine proposed Submission/Approval Process

[Ben Wilson]

This email responds to Pm, and also announces a "Shepherd-based"
process inspired by Pm's thoughts on the matter.[1] In the spirit of
moving things along, I'd like everybody's comments on the three
processes: which one you favor (maybe why).

Once discussion peter's out, we'll see which process floats to the top
and give that one a go. If a process proves unworkable in practice,
then we'll experiment from there.

On 9/28/06, Patrick R. Michaud <pmichaud at pobox.com> wrote:

Reply to On Notice Time:

Pm was concerned the notice time would impede authors enthusiasm. One
mitgation to that concern is to move the notice time to a week, or
three days. Nothing bars the author from writing the article during
the notice time and releasing a "ready to edit" page at the end of the
notice period.

On "Off-Magazine" Drafts: I'm flexible here, naturally. As I ask
below, is there a way to restrict to -Draft except for a few? Then,
the author could propose, write the article, then have it edited after
the notice period. Although, at this point, the argument _for_ a
notice period loses steam. It is clearly an arbitrary brake in the
process.

I definitely still like the idea of a (:description:) summary/abstract.

To this effect, I put a new method "Shepherd-based." There are now
three processes proposed. [1]

> On the mechanics of "publishing" an article:
>
> The easy way to designate an article as being "published"
> is to give it a [[!Published]] category tag or other marker
> that indicates that it has been reviewed and is ready for
> publication.  This could automatically cause the article
> to appear on the Magazine.Magazine page (e.g., via a pagelist),
> or at least easy to find all of the officially "published"
> articles.
>
> We should have a convention that an author will designate
> an article as [[!Published]] only after having received a
> review.  And perhaps the way to note that the article
> has been successfully reviewed is for the reviewers to
> sign the article at the bottom:
>
>     Reviewers: Pm, BenWilson, Sandy
>
> It would then be easy to find any "published" articles
> that lack a review signature, as well as for people to
> see who commonly performs article reviews.
>
>
> On other mechanics of propose-accept-draft-review-publish:

There is one concern here. If the Magazine follows a chronological (as
well as topical and alphabetic) listing, how are published articles
sorted? A Wanted article could languish for months before being
written. Once published, sorting on ctime would push it down the
stack. I would prefer a system that lists articles chronologically by
when published.

Hmm, with the "Reviewers: A, B, C," a pagelist would help show them.
But, would a signature work as well? Reviewers: ~~~~0, ~~~~1, ~~~~2
(where each is a different reviewer) Then we have timestamps with.

One alternative is to keep the article in the -Draft mode. Is it
possible to restrict everybody to draft mode except for shepherds?
Then, when the article is ready to publish, it can be saved as a
non-draft.

An obvious advantage to this process is it showcases categories, page
text variables, and pagelists---some of which is new or overhauled for
2.2. Hmm, I see a plot brewing . . .

> On moderator-based article publication:
>
> I don't think we need a moderator policy, except perhaps
> for whatever appears on the Magazine.Magazine front page.
> And if we think moderation is desirable, it wouldn't be at
> all difficult for me to put a customization in place that
> restricts adding of the [[!Published]] tag to a set of
> approved moderators.

I think the Published tag is good to limit to a few as the process is
very light otherwise. It allows for some quality control.

So, I'll put my hat for Sheperding, provided the following are true or
near-to true:
   * -Draft open, but non-Draft requires publish by a shepherd reviw
     (for ctime purposes, or its alternative)
   * A fixed number (I propose three) shepherd (we should probably
have 4-6 or 8-10
     shepherd volunteers) signatures required to publish, and the last
shepherd publishes.
   * Authors begin by first creating the article page and put in a
(:description:), no
     article sans description is published. The description will be
used in the pagelists.

-- 
Ben Wilson

[1]: pmwiki.org/wiki/Magazine/ArticleSubmissionAndApprovalProcess