This, and other similar statements, say one thing to me: You're harnessing some users well, but missing out on the contributions of the vast majority of casual, but useful people. The fact that you need to push your work through the system creates a large barrier to entry, when there need be none. Doing part of an analysis, writing the outline of a guide and working out how it should go roughly, fixing up a few things here and there, this should be easy and natural. Instead users without the time and dedication to get through the whole peer review system themselves are unable to get content on site, and it goes to waste. Massive amounts of effort from good faith potentially useful contributors goes to waste.The difference between my case, and the many other of stuff which - to use your same wording - "rot in C&C" for months, is that I wrote my article at very fast speed, without leaving a worthless WIP skeleton up for months, and I took care of the HTML process myself. If you are serious about your contribution, you can get your content uploaded 1 month at max from the day you started writing it.
means I have to write an article before it goes on-site, then yeah, I had to push it. /sarcasmThe fact that you need to push your work through the system
Smogon clearly produces a lot of good content and I have never disputed that, my claim is that the system fails to take advantage of a large proportion of available resources by having a very closed contribution system (the initial investment for a user to learn the system and make something for smogon is massive, and they are often discouraged by having work which could easily be brought to standard by communal editing simply binned) and handles what it does use wastefully.Eric, I do not intend to call out anyone in particular, but do I have to show you how many analyses and articles are still looking like the index of a book after over a month since they were posted?
With a reasonable content management system the idea that a single author needs to push something through a lengthy peer review process vanishes (I'm not saying change the peer review system, it's good at what it does, it just does something that should be taken care of naturally by a well structured site). This has been demonstrated on many very successful sites, and lowers the barrier to entry to about as low as it gets which means more people helping out! This is especially important for a site such as ours where a large majority of the people who could lend a hand really don't have time to mess around with our peer review systems and just want to get something useful on site or fixed/updated.Once the authors wrote their stuff, the C&C process is very efficient in checking and processing their work. But you can't expect your article or your analysis to go on-site until you... well, until you write it!
I'm not blaming the C&C mods for the fact that they aren't there. I'm arguing in favor of posting articles directly to the website by using an example of some very stagnant analyses. If this feature was available, capable members would be able to add such articles while they are still relevant.That is in no way C&C mods fault about the vgc analyses. We can't put them up because we physically can't without a certain feature.
Agreeing 100% with this. I understand the Pokemon analysis deal (even though its been what, a year?) but couldn't you just put a separate tier in and upload the VGC analyses like that? Sure, it wouldn't look good, but at least they're on-site and you can merge them when you do get the coding or whatever. Of course, I don't know anything about the tech side of the main site, so take that for what it's worth.vgc analyses never get uploaded post
Why should we use a system that blocks one of those groups? Most contributors start off as casual and build up, if they are discouraged at the early stage far fewer of them become the kind of powerhouse contributor that is most useful.Sorry EE, but in the case of strategy analysis: Dedication from a few good writers/players > small nitpicks or bits and pieces from a ton of half-assed users anyday, 100%.
That is working around the problems of a system which should never throw up those problems in the first place. It's inefficient, can be insulting, and does not happen enough in a reasonable way to cover the problems (as shown by the large amount of binned work).And as Oglemi said, there's no problem handing skeletons around or re-assigning analysis, so there you go.
I'm sorry but this isn't true. UU analyses were initially put on hold because of the same problem but UU mods eventually started to upload them because it's better to have them ugly than not to have them at all. And fate said he asked Alaka and cosmicexplorer (the VGC leaders afaik) and it was their choice not to upload them. So this isn't a C&C problem (as you pointed out, Ubers and UU are doing this without tags).well the reason it's not done is because c&c as a whole seems against using tags on analyses. the thing I don't get though is that we do that all the time, we just don't call it tags. I remember reading the singles terrakion analysis and seeing "Ubers Choice Scarf". if we can do it there, why not now for this? we already have the stat matrixes anyway, it would just require us doing what we've apparently already done for ou and uber.
.Why should we use a system that blocks one of those groups? Most contributors start off as casual and build up, if they are discouraged at the early stage far fewer of them become the kind of powerhouse contributor that is most useful.
That is working around the problems of a system which should never throw up those problems in the first place. It's inefficient, can be insulting, and does not happen enough in a reasonable way to cover the problems (as shown by the large amount of binned work).
@VGC analyses:
Yes, say it's not your fault if you like, the tabs should have been done 2.5 years ago (for such a necessary and fairly simple change (or would be for any site with a programming base which could be edited and active people working on site code), begged for for OVER TWO YEARS by literally hundreds of people working absurdly hard for free.. it boggles the mind how Smogon's still king.), but you cannot defend a system which allows such horrific waste of effort. If you honestly cannot put VGC analyses up, why get people to write them. And you know what? You can put them up. Any badgeholder can. But they fear retribution for breaking process, and expect someone else to deal with it, because that's how things work. There is no Be Bold on Smogon, so four pages of good quality analyses, representing the work of many writers and even more checkers amounted to.. almost nothing. At least compared to what it could have done.
Yes, giving all users access to the SCMS may not have solved it (though it may have caused more people to question why we aren't putting these up sooner, or more realistically they would've been written on-site eliminating the issue entirely), but it's got the same cause. The lack of appropriate, resilient, and adaptable content management system.