1552 Articles In DRAFT State

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1552 Articles In DRAFT State

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In the early days when things were simple… this wouldn’t have happened.

In our attempt to master our craft and stay on top of things, we identified 1,552 articles that were previously live and accepted (ACTIVE state) on the site that are now in a DRAFT non-live state. 1,002 EzineArticles authors received a segmented mailing today notifying them of such.

Here’s how & why it happened:

Author edits one of their live articles.
He or she SAVES their edit or if they have AUTO-SAVE on (it’s on by default), our system SAVES their changes in so many minutes intervals.
When a live article is SAVED or AUTO-SAVED, it is REMOVED from the live site and goes into a DRAFT status waiting to be RE-SUBMITTED for review.
The author then fails to complete the action for whatever reason resulting in their previously LIVE article is now in DRAFT status where no one is going to act on it.

How to solve this problem from happening: Once you start an article EDIT, complete the action by re-submitting it.

Note: Unlike regular DRAFT articles that auto-expire in 30 days if not submitted; articles that were LIVE and are now in DRAFT state won’t auto-expire (perhaps they should to encourage action on part of the Author?).

We already notify the Author of what’s happening above but I think some Authors think that if they start an EDIT article action and don’t complete it; that their changes will be lost and that’s ok… Unfortunately, that’s not the way the system works largely thanks to the AUTO-SAVE function.

Always open to your thoughts for how we should shape this policy or process to avoid having live articles be dangling in a DRAFT status or do you think this is what the Author intended to happen when they didn’t complete the re-submit action?

Posted by Christopher M. Knight on July 9, 2008 at 5:53 pm

640 views

10 Comments »

Hope Wilbanks writes:

Great tip; thanks!

[Reply]

Comment provided July 9, 2008 at 6:17 PM

Richard writes:

When there is an article that has been aproved that has been saved in a draft form, does that keep the Author from publishing another article until the draft is resubmitted and aproved and published?

[Reply]

Comment provided July 9, 2008 at 6:26 PM

Christopher M. Knight writes:

Richard,

No, that does not prevent additional submissions.

We want to make it easy to submit as many articles as you’d like.

[Reply]

Comment provided July 9, 2008 at 7:04 PM

Remi Engels, Ph.D. writes:

It seems natural to me that if you edit an already published article that you should resubmit it because now it is a new article again that needs to be reviewed by the Ezinearticles staff.

[Reply]

Comment provided July 9, 2008 at 8:13 PM

Frank Froggatt writes:

Thanks for the note an the auto save function. Some one may start to make changes to their article and then change their mind about it. If the don’t resubmit anyway their article will be in limbo. Good word . Thanks

[Reply]

Comment provided July 10, 2008 at 5:32 AM

Richard writes:

You said:
It seems natural to me that if you edit an already published article that you should resubmit it because now it is a new article again that needs to be reviewed by the Ezinearticles staff.

So then you can keep submitting the same article over and over again?

[Reply]

Comment provided July 10, 2008 at 6:57 AM

Christopher M. Knight writes:

Richard,

No, you can’t keep submitting the same article over and over again.

But you can edit your article. We have not put a cap yet on how many times you can edit an article but there is a chance we’ll limit it in the future or make it a premium member only function. We’ve explored this over the past year and even though we’ve got 2 full time people dedicated to reviewing articles that were edited… we’re not ready to make it a premium feature. The argument for why it should be a premium feature is that the high majority of the article edits are purely for moving self-serving links around… which adds no value to the reader unless the existing links were broken or the author abandoned their website (happens quite a bit).

[Reply]

Comment provided July 10, 2008 at 8:09 AM

Carol A Hill writes:

Slap me if I’m wrong-But, I’ve learned the hard way to save the article first in draft form. I make the necessary changes and then submit the article.
I’m getting better. It makes sense to do it that way.

[Reply]

Comment provided July 10, 2008 at 8:51 AM

Hendry Lee writes:

If I use the draft feature, I certainly expect the article to be there until I resubmit or remove it. If you are to encourage re-submission, I would think a gentle reminder when the readers login could help.

[Reply]

Comment provided July 10, 2008 at 9:53 AM

Lance Winslow writes:

Z price of Z success at the eZine Aritcles, hmmm?

[Reply]

Comment provided July 10, 2008 at 12:27 PM

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