1552 Articles In DRAFT State
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?
Great tip; thanks!
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