harfang's unrestricted Access

Jim,

There has been a long discussion about this. I do believe that resource articles containing only links are valid articles, and everybody agrees when the links are external (e.g. my favourite "how to" articles from MS). For some reason, an article with internal EE links isn't perceived the same.

The compromise was to move this to the Lounge for the time being (although it should be in the Access zone, in my opinion), so it could be published. Let's say its an experiment.

You wrote recently in one of your own articles:

>> This article is part of the app development series, a series of articles on Experts-Exchange.com that explores common application development problems and their solutions.

I think you should create an article to materialise this "series" as well. Each article links back to the "table of contents". At the moment, your introduction has no weight and no reality. The articles are part of a "series" only in your mind, unless you provide a table of contents for it.

I was actually hoping you would write your own table of contents article... What else did you have in mind when writing these words?

(°v°)

Thanks for the feedback.

You are raising the central themes of the discussion around this article among page editors. On one side, there is a need for authors to promote and organise their own articles, on the other, authors shouldn't be *allowed* to use articles for that purpose.

The main reason for not allowing table of contents has to do with points. A reader could potentially click 'yes' on both the article he liked and on the table of contents that allowed him to find it... I don't see this to be a problem, but there were strong feelings about it.

The secondary reasons are those you express. A vague feeling that this type of information should be made available elsewhere (e.g. in profiles), and a strong hope that it can be fully automated (e.g. through tags).

I wasn't convinced.

The present article is what adds meaning and purpose to my attempts at writing articles. It is very important to me, and motivates me. I'm also confident that it will prove useful to readers and fellow experts if I continue writing. The page editors were kind enough to publish it in this zone for the time being, at least until another mechanism is created. Should that happen, I will quite probably continue to defend this page nonetheless.


I understand your point about summarising the articles to provide original content. At the moment, the layout and ordering is the only meta-information. I plan on adding some introductory comments above sections, once I have enough articles to make that meaningful. I also thought about a section "Access Articles by Other Authors", with very brief comments and links to your articles, among others. This idea is currently on hold, as you can imagine.

I have an article idea with only commented links as content. "The Access Bookmark Page" or something like that. I would love this to be a multi-authored work. I wanted to start the project as a question in the Access zone. If that project ever becomes reality, why not mix external an internal links?


> That actually was the original intent of the PE job; to organize and present content.

That should be put back into the charter. It is essential to keep EE as a distinct resource on the Internet. If we don't start soon, articles will end up being just other matches on search engines.

In a way, this is what your "series idea" is about. You write that "the concept is real and the statement as it stands is quite valid."

The concept is real, but only to you, not to the reader. The statement is of course valid (you are writing a series), but the reader can't do anything with that information. I tried asking you this twice before: what do you have in mind?

... A lambda EE user stumbles upon your article. He reads the paragraph and thinks "that's great, I want to read  the whole series". What does he do? Are you going to publish the links to other articles as author comments? Are you going to add "visit my profile for more information"? Will you use a special tag in the series and publish a link to the search page for that tag?

I feel that an article presenting the series -- as you presented it to me and other page editors -- explaining it's aim and scope, with links to each article, and providing a bit of personal information would be much nicer and much more useful. That way, the series becomes real to the reader as well. The series has a "home page", a title (a *name*), authors (if it becomes a multi-authored work), content, and some history.


I urge you to find a viable solution to make your "series" real to the *reader* (and to co-authors). If you don't want to use an article, find another solution. Who knows, you might end up with something I can use as well, removing the need for the present article...


Cheers!
(°v°)