Kathy Ostman-Magnusen writes:

When I do a painting I look back at past work and think, “Eww maybe I should redo that painting.” But NO.. it is best to press forward. I know that some of my articles posted on EzineArticles could be better. Boy those first ones could be improved upon, but I think it is best to press forward in anything creative.

I never really thought about going back and redoing one. I have a few but it was because of errors I had made that finally dawned on me and normally an immediate response.

My urls have changed some but I would not dream of going through them again. I think innately I understood that it would not be fair to EzineArticles to go back and change things.

If you go to Buzzle? Once your work is published, you can’t do it without asking the Editor.

Why not do that? Time is money.

Kathy

~~*~~

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ellen mossman-glazer writes:

Chris, when you evaluate the re-reviewing service, keep in mind the type of articles that might suddenly become outdated in some important way – sometimes research literature or other new info is a reason to go back and revise to keep your information on a specific topic accurate or on the cutting edge. One cannot fix everything to be up to the minute of course, but sometimes you find a little bit of brilliance that makes a new difference.
ellen

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Joe Shaw writes:

Chris,

I may be pointing out the obvious, but if someone has to go back and update 10 or more articles for spelling or other errors, then they probably don’t deserve to be authors here.

It seems pretty obvious that the bulk changes must be resource box changes.

Is it possible that people are gaming the system in some way to create double exposure for a set of articles?

——
3 Options I could see

1. Set a cuttoff for when an article can be “corrected”. Maybe the ability to make a correction should only lasts for 1-7 business days or something? This would allow corrections for errors, but not corrections for a lack of planning from authors who want to change their opt-in links 2 months from now.

2. Charge some amount ($5 maybe) per article for corrections made after a certain time limit like 1 week. If someone really wanted to change their links, it would be available, but at a premium to discourage frivolous changes.

(Ideamarketers charges $12 just to proof read your articles, and it takes several days for them to get to it anyway.)

3. Cancel changes all together.

Personally, I think options 1 or 2 provides the best service for an occasional correction. I could certainly see where you would want to discourage thousands of link change approvals.

Best wishes to everyone,
Joe

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Kathy Ostman-Magnusen writes:

I think updates and new info require a NEW article. I think anything other than that is just being lazy.

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Angela Chen Shui writes:

Wow! Those figures are high!

This issue has been front and center recently as I undertake several transformations of my main sites. When these are done, I know I’ll have to go in and change the resource boxes but I’m not going to do that until each site’s changes are done, so I can just do everything one time for the relevant articles.

I’m interested to know the details of what the edits are too as you decide on how to “provide a premium level of service for our most active members who like to edit their articles a lot”. The human cost does add up… and we all want EzineArticles to be able to continue providing its wonderful, first-rate service with its constant developments.

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Darlene Norris writes:

It would be nice if we could update our resource boxes without having to send the entire article in to be re-reviewed. Would this be a possibility? I’m a new author, and I’m experimenting with resource boxes to see what get more clicks to my website.

I dislike having to waste your time by re-submitting an article for a minor change that I could do myself.

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Christina Sponias writes:

Chris, I think that you should not publish this list with the names of the authors that constantly update their articles because this is not good for their image.

I think also that in the Internet we can do many things that we cannot do offline, like updating old content. It has a utility. It doesn’t happen only because the authors make mistakes.

For example, I have now 133 live articles at EzineArticles but I updated 3 of them after their publication because there was a good reason for that. The first one was updated because I mentioned that I was writing an ebook. When I finished writing it I changed the old article mentioning that my ebook was ready. The other one was updated because the title was not so good. I noticed it was not receiving the clicks it should have. The title was too general, so I updated it adding a few words to the title in order to describe it better.

The third time I needed to update an article happened when you changed the screen in the authors’ page and I had copied my article as usually, but I needed to paste it from my page’s screen. The result was that all paragraphs were glued together; there was no space between the paragraphs, but the article was approved!

I didn’t see it when it was approved, only some time later. Your editors didn’t notice this mistake too! It had to be updated when I wanted to send it to a site and I saw how horrible it was with all paragraphs together.

Of course, there are authors that take advantage of this possibility, but updating an article has a meaning.
We authors don’t do it for fun and we don’t like to see our article disappear because it has to be updated.

I think you can charge the authors that update an article more than once or more than an article per week for example, but it’s important for us to have the possibility to easily update an old article for many reasons.

Yesterday Google alert showed me that someone used my article number 4. I’ve already published 133 articles here but he or she decided to use in his/her site the forth article I wrote for EzineArticles.
I’m sure this article is perfect, but if it was not, I would like very much to improve it, since it is still useful and for many people, it is new. The information I give in my article number 1 is still more than useful. Think like an author!

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Lance Winslow writes:

Hmm? Very interesting. I was considering going thru and re-editing some old articles, but I figured out that it would take me a long time to rear 5 million words? And so, I guess it would take that same amount of time for someone to re-approve them, yes that would be costly and labor intensive. EZ should not have to pay for something like that. I see what you mean.

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Joe Shaw writes:

Don’t forget,

If this is working right. Our articles didn’t just stay at EzineArticles, they got published all over the internet. Fixing an old article here does not fix any of your syndicated work.

If you really want to get the word out, you’re probably going to need to write some fresh content.
——-

This problem will grow exponentially as the EzineArticles community (nod to Chris) continues to grow with thousands and thousands of new authors publishing thousands and thousands of new articles.

At some point EzineArticles simply won’t be able to afford offering this with no restrictions for free.

And that’s the real issue… Unrestricted Updates probably mostly from people wishing to change their resource box, and a big part of that is going to be changing their links.

I agree with the other posters that this is a great service for the occasional mistake, but I forsee that the ability to have unrestricted updates will foster poor planning in author linking strategies and it will eventually become cost prohibitive for EzineArticles.

My warm regards to all of you.
Joe

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Christopher M. Knight writes:

Ellen,

That is why we are trying to evaluate what is being changed in all of these articles (100k of them a year being edited) to determine if it’s to improve the quality of the article or to improve the profitability of the article.

In most cases, my theory is to improve the profitability of the article… in which case a small annual fee wouldn’t be unreasonable and would help us provide a higher quality/faster review service.

Joe,

Thanks for your thoughts… we’ll consider it… and perhaps this is a time we can also introduce a proofreading service that I’ve always wanted to introduce.

Darlene,

That is a service we already laid the ground work for to become one of our premium services. :-)

Christina,

Good points…. I’m going to invite our top October article editors (meaning the authors in the top 10 who edited the most articles) and ask them to defend or share an explanation as to the value they were trying to add by their edits.

If their edits were profit motive driven, I suspect they won’t respond. If their motives were quality driven or to add more value to their reputation, I suspect they will respond.

Joe,

Ironically, the same additional array of servers that makes it possible to submit articles faster and with higher uptime — are also the same systems that made it easier for authors to edit their articles. Unfortunately, human labor involved costs significantly more CPU/Server power to address the load.

—

Thanks everyone so far…

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Cathy Perkins writes:

You make an excellent point, Chris. I have edited just a few of my articles but it has been for my benefit – changing links. These edits added nothing to the content and I now see how time consuming it is for everyone involved. From now on, it will be a new article with new content for the new links!

Thanks for such a quality product. I love EzineArticles!

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Audrey writes:

Thinking back to the changes I’ve made, they were either small typos that I caught after approval or a change in resource box, when I changed websites. If I found an article I didn’t like anymore, I’ve taken it down.

Audrey :)

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Trevor Kugler writes:

Chris/Casey,

I was asked to explain why I edited so many of my articles last month, so I’ll do so. When I realized that links could be placed in my articles, after the first three paragraphs, rather than only the resource box, I wanted to change my most viewed articles to reflect this.
So that’s what I did. Also, I changed certain articles so that the links pointed to more pertinent pages on my site, rather than just “pointing to my site” in general (when I first started writing articles I didn’t understand this).
I guess you could call my motives “profit” motivated, although there has been very little profit. I would call them “traffic” motives, because traffic is what I’m trying to accomplish.
In any case, that’s why I edited so many articles this month. Simply to add links “in” the articles where I could, thus making them more pertinent and hopefully driving traffic for both of us. Changing and/or adding links was the main reason, and now that I’ve done that, I won’t have to agian. I suspect that my name won’t be on the top of the list for editing articles any more…..

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Christopher M. Knight writes:

Just a random thought:

Perhaps we might also conclude that profit-motive article edits are done on MONDAY-THURSDAY and that non-profit motive edits are done on Friday through Sunday’s?

We don’t have the data yet, but I bet we will find that Monday’s are resource box change for the bulk of the edits.

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Cathy Perkins writes:

The problem I see is how will you know what is profit motivated? I didn’t realize I was doing it until I thought about it this morning after reading your post.

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Joe Shaw writes:

Group,

I’m just brainstorming here. This may or may not be a good idea…

Maybe there could be a solution that could programatically make global resource box changes?

An author could then just request a global resource box change for ALL articles or SELECTED articles.

Then the EzineArticles staff would only have to make 1 approval for all changes.

Botta bing, botta bang, yada yada yada… everyone’s happy, the physical labor is actually reduced, and EzineArticles would have a functionality that no one else has.

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Ronald writes:

Sometimes when I have a new better resource box, I want to change all my article’s resource box for maximum traffic :)

Now I just learned that we can use default resource box so when I change my default resource box, all the article’s resource box will be changed. Am I right?

[Reply]

Christopher M. Knight writes:

Ronald,

That is NOT correct. Sorry.

That only updates your default resource box for your next article submission..

[Reply]

Christopher M. Knight writes:

Cathy,

First, we like PROFIT MOTIVATED members.

Any move to enhance traffic back to your website is a profit motive…and a good thing.

This also tells us that we can make resource box changes a premium feature because there is an ROI involved in it for our members by being able to easily change their resource boxes or saving significant time by making one change for all articles (an un-announced feature).

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Cathy Perkins writes:

Good thought! But would that mean ANY resource box change would be a premium feature? That seems wrong somehow. I know it’s a problem for your editors but could you give x number for free?

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Ronald writes:

Chris,

I hope there will be a new feature like that, to change all the resource box in one click :p

But it’s okay. I have learn many new things and I’m not changing my resource box anymore.

To minimize your work, maybe you can create a script to check which part of the article is changed. So if you know that the only changed part is the resource box, you don’t need to review the article anymore.

[Reply]

Christopher M. Knight writes:

Ronald,

If a resource box changes, we still have to review the resource box change to make sure it meets the guidelines (number of active links, reprint rights stuff, resource box name mismatches with the by-line, etc.)

Cathy,

Nothing is in stone… we’re still sorting this out.

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Christina Sponias writes:

Chris, even if the edits are ‚¬“profit motive driven‚¬, they are necessary.
The best possibility we have in the Internet is to immediately test our ads and the effect that our articles have when they are published.
What if an author wants to test the best results with the same article?

Trevor tried to improve the work already done because it would be a waste to leave it the way it was.

I believe you should not publish the list of authors that constantly update their articles. It should be confidential.
I didn’t like to see my colleagues exposed this way!

I guess we need an ‚¬“author club‚¬ to defend our rights as authors, because you and your team decide everything, while we work for you. We give you the content. We certainly have our rights!
You have to respect us, the authors, and never expose our names this way!

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Cathy Perkins writes:

Chris – I know you are working it out and will do what’s in the best interest of everyone. Just wanted you to have another viewpoint. Thanks for tackling this sometimes thorny issue.

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joe writes:

Chris – thanks for asking our opinion. I appreciate the way you’ve allowed us to influence what’s going on.

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Dr. Gary S. Goodman writes:

Why have I updated so many articles, recently?

There are three types of updates that I do:

(1) I proofread my recently approved articles and correct linguistic errors.

(2) I rewrite titles and change article categories when I believe deserving articles aren’t being read by a sufficient number of people.

(3) I change my author profiles to relfect current credentials and achievements and to mention my new blogs, my website, and to emphasize strengths that will appeal to people who can hire me as a sales, customer service, negotiation, and telemarketing speaker and consultant.

Would I pay money to make these changes?

I would not, because they take a lot of my time to revise and upon revision they benefit readers and the publisher, as well as myself.

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Rajkumar Kanagasingam writes:

Hi Chris & Casey,

As I was asked to explain why I edited number times last month, I like to reveal the following;

My book was released recently:http://today.reuters.com/news/articleinvesting.aspx?view=PR&symbol=%20JKHY&storyID=87587+19-Oct-2007+PRN

Thereafter I edited number of times to link my articles with my book’s Google Search:http://books.google.com/books?id=MrBi0ghiZN0C&printsec=frontcover&dq=german+memories+asia

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Martin Lemieux writes:

Hey Chris,

I too have contemplated having a “global author resource box” editing script for my directory, but it comes with an even greater price.

1) Will you be able to verify the number of links posted within the article body with the number of links submitted within the “global resource box”.

2) Will the content within the author resource box be completely different from that within the article itself?!? You’ll have 1000’s of articles on cooking chicken with links pointing to making mac & cheeze.

3) Would you allow authors to highlight individual articles instead of changing all articles at once?!?

4) PR/SEO managers will eat this kind of tool right up and change the author information all the time for their clients. In fact, i’m sure some pr/seo managers will sell rights to the links with the articles already posted within your site, or create content specific articles to sell the rights to. It would make it all to easy for them to spam your directory full of new links as they please (Even though you add 1000’s of new links every week).

There’s my 2 cents.

I’ve thought about this kind of tool for many sleepless nights with the final thought ending with a “BUT, what if…!”.

What a great topic!

Cheers!
Martino.

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Christopher M. Knight writes:

Martin,

Thanks for your comments…

See an updated thread to this discussion:
http://blog.EzineArticles.com/2007/11/article-editing-to-become-a-premium-feature.html

We’re not ruling out mass resource box edits but we are going to proceed slowly in this area… as in not this year any more.

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Lance Winslow writes:

This is a good line of discussion, if you ever do this sort of thing, I have a suggesting. For instance; I have many articles in many different categories, it might be nice to choose a category for mass resource box changes. So if I have 150 articles on “Business – Franchising” I could update only the articles in that category to my franchising site. Or if I had 40 articles in “Sports and Recreation – Cycling” then I could change the resource box to point to a new website on Cycling. Sincerely, Lance.

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Christopher M. Knight writes:

Lance,

We’ve already determined that when or if the mass resource box edit feature gets rolled out that it will be possible to do it by category.

In a future blog entry in December or early next year, I’ll outline the complex issues that have filled many whiteboards in our office on the mass resource box edit issues… for now, we’re going to only focus this month on getting control of the run-away article edit volume.

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Lance Winslow writes:

Smart Thinking here Chris. Yes, I can see this as an advantage, no one else in the Industry Subsector does this, it would be a good benefit and hopefully save you some Labor, I know how hard the editors work and their time needs to be well spent. And although it is a low priority over all, as it has been the way it is for the duration, it seems like a good thing to put on the “EzineArticles” Upgrade list for sometime in 2008.

I see the challenge that the EzineArticles’ “Success” has caused. I remember when I started there was barely 15,000 articles, now, the number is climbing so fast, soon you have a million. Maybe we ought to have a prize for the person who guess on which day EzineArticles will reach 1,000,000 articles. Say a “Free Starbucks Card for $50.00 or something cool” and I would like to guess by March 14th.

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Syd writes:

If you cancel the option of making changes to articles, then that would put serious limitations on the authors who may want to add some extra insights, or may want to change their links if there are not many clicks on their earlier links.

So it is like putting some serious limitation on the authors who are the biggest contributors to EzineArticles site. Maybe you should give each article 1-3 free edits, and for more edits charge a small amount of money. Or you can give free monthly edits on the author account instead of on articles – for example – you can give 60-100 free edits each month to an author etc.

In the end I hope, the solution that you decide to implement does not adversely affect anybody – be it authors or the ezine editorial staff etc.

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Dr. Gary S. Goodman writes:

Are the authors that are the biggest contributors to the site, and presumably the ones that are changing the most articles, the very ones that are bringing you the most revenue?

If so, why would you want to punish them or in any way discourage their future contributions?

You’re on the way to developing a Creativity Tax, and of course, you’re soaking those that are rich in creativity, first.

This only produces resentment and a population that invests more time with tax avoidance than with real productivity.

Is that what you’re after?

Perhaps you would be served better by reconstituting the work of your editors. When you have trusted authors, those with a track record of hundreds of articles, re-review them only on a spot-basis.

That solves the “problem” as you have framed it.

However, this isn’t a problem to be solved, it is simply a pretext to develop a new revenue stream.

Though I’ have slammed CRM for its excesses, you might want to take a page from its playbook. Identify those “vital few” authors that are doing the most for your site, and cherish them, while making it still EASIER for them to contribute to your success.

Whatever you do, don’t de-motivate them.

Then, take a long look at the 70,000 others that occupy the space with 1-2 articles and ask how they can pay their own freight.

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