Guide to the Publisher
Why Do We Need A Publisher?
NewsTalker’s underlying platform provides native support for three types of articles: Blog, Discussion and Group Discussion. Blogs are for authors (or columnists) to produce and publish original content. Discussions, in contrast, are less formal. A discussion can be original content or it can be a seed. A seed is an article whose original content was written by a third party author. Seeds always reference the original content with a link. Group discussions are like discussions except that these are localized within a group. Only group members can participate in group discussions.
The three types of articles are handled very differently by the platform. This makes it difficult (especially for new members) to figure out how to publish articles on NT. It also makes it difficult to access one’s collected works.
The publisher unifies the three types of articles (blogs, discussion and group discussions) into a single concept – an article. It provides a central spot to manage one’s collected works and to create, update, delete, lock, unlock and discard articles.
Publisher Menu
On the main menu you will find a Publish menu item to the right of Track. This menu provides four options:
- Collection: Manage your collected works
- Discussion: Create a new article as a discussion
- Blog: Create a new article as a blog
- Group Discussion: Create a new article as a discussion with a group.
The Discussion, Blog and Group Discussion options are largely self-explanatory and will be treated later. We will begin with the first menu item: Collection.
Collection
Collection is basically one’s collected works on NT. It is your NT ‘book shelf’. It holds all ( up to a maximum of 500 most recent articles ) blogs, discussions and group discussions and provides a convenient means to manage your collected works.
At the top right are three buttons to sort the collection in various ways:
- By Recent – Reverse chronological order by update date and time
- By Title – Alphabetically by Title
- By Type – Grouped by article type (blog, discussion, group discussion). Within each type, original content work will appear before seeds .
Click a button and the collection will be sorted accordingly.
Each item in the collection is an article. The image is the identifying image for the article. Click on this image to navigate to the published article (where others can add comments).
The action buttons are on the right - one set of buttons for each article. The buttons are as follows:
- Lock – Lock the article. (When an article is locked, this button will read as ‘Unlock’)
- Update – Navigate to the update page to edit this article
- Discard – Remove this article from the collection. (The article will still exist.)
- Delete – Permanently delete the article.
The Discard function only affects the Collection. If you discard an article it will no longer appear in the Collection. It still exists and can be accessed through history (or other means). Discard is useful when you have articles that you no longer want on your ‘bookshelf’ but you do not want to throw them away. If you change your mind, simply edit the discarded article and check the ‘Add to Collection’ field.
Creating an Article
The remaining main menu functions enable creating a new article as a discussion, blog or group discussion. The functionality is largely the same for all three, so we will focus on the most common usage – the discussion.
When you click on the Discussion menu item the system provides an empty form for you to create your new discussion:
The fields are mostly self-explanatory, so we will skip to the ‘Seed URL’ field. This is where you paste the URL of the external original work you wish to seed into NT. This must be a fully qualified URL (e.g. https://www.somedomain.com/somearticle.html ). By including a URL you implicitly inform the system that this is a seed (rather than original content). In turn, the system will wrap this URL into a button on your article that offers a convenient (and obvious) way for your readers to go to the seeded article. The actual button is shown below:
If you leave the ‘Seed URL’ field blank (for discussions), the system will consider this original content and will include it as your most recent work in the Columnists section on the home page.
The ‘Add to Collection’ field is automatically checked. Leave it checked and this article will be included in your collected works. Uncheck this field if you do not wish this article to be in your collected works. Usually one will leave this checked.
The ‘Article Image’ field is where you select the image that identifies your article. All three types of articles now can associate a distinguished image.
Updating an Article
With the Publisher, every request to update an article will bring you to the unified forms of the Publisher. Here is what will show when you hit the update (gear) or press the Update button on the Collection:
Summary
Blog, discussion and group discussion are the three types of articles supported by NT and the Publisher. The Publisher unifies the treatment so that everything is logically an article. It also provides main menu access to create a new article and to manage existing articles via the Collection.
Here is where Beta team members can register issues and ask questions.
Hi TiG. I like the concept. It seems like it will make things more efficient and easier to manage. I'll have to try publishing an article to get the feel for it.
Excellent. We want to make sure this is robust and friendly before unleashing it to everyone.
By the way, did you notice that when people view an article (e.g. to enter comments) the image shown is the image of the article (rather than the author/seeder's avatar)?
Hi TiG. Well...here we are again. Another great Beta to test. Is there a way to import my current articles or discussions, or do I need to create new ones for the test?
Hi Raven. Yup, here we go again. :)
No importing functionality, but we do not want that anyway. Probably the most important functionality to review is pretending one is an author writing a new article and then going back to edit.
Got it. Wasn't sure what part of the Beta you wanted tested first, so no I have my marching orders and know where to start.
Ok...I have created a seeded article. Please check to see if it has been done properly and provide any feedback, corrections or assessments.
I found no problems in creating the article or with setting up the URL for the article source, or attacking the image. All worked smoothly.
OK....I have now created a Blog and Discussion. I tried to do a Group Discussion, but, as there are no groups listed in the drop down to select, and it would not allow me to type in a group in that bar, I am unable to create the Group Discussion. So perhaps you need to add some group names in that list for practice purposes. Then I will try again.
Thus far, everything has been working as I understand it should. I will await your review and assessment of the two I have already done, and for names in the drop down for the Group Discussion.
Go ahead and join any groups you wish. Quite a few are available. The groups you join will then appear in the selection list.
Ahhh....OK...will do. Thanks for the info.
I have now done an update on both current projects. The update completed without issue. Very clean process.
Ok...I have put together a seeded article in the Group Discussion. However, it will not allow me to update the article when I tried to change the related image. I do not get any error message, it simply won't update. At the top of the update page it shows "Update Article In Group "Marx Brothers", after I click on the Update tab. But, other than that, it shows nothing. When I go to the Marx Brothers group I see the first see it posted, but, it does not have the updated image.
Not sure what it preventing it from updating with the new image. With no error message it is hard to try to find a cause. So, hopefully you can check from your end to find a solution.
This is the first issue I have found with the Beta. Hopefully, it can be resolved easily.
You definitely found a problem Raven! There is some weird requirement of the platform here that works fine for my account but not for standard member accounts. This will be tricky so hold off on group discussions while I try to figure this out.
Will do. Let us know when we can try again.
I am close. This was a nightmare to address. (Actually the publisher is a nightmare in general because it unifies the various rules imposed by the platform on discussions, blogs and group discussions.) Still have some more verifying to do since this can very easily creep over and disrupt other functionality.
Take your time, don't rush. Time to double check everything. The creep over is something I have experienced as well and it is indeed a real nightmare.
I have applied the changes. Will continue to test given the underlying complexity involved. Feel free to continue with Groups if you wish. Thanks for finding the issue.
Good work! And you are welcome. I'll test out the Group Discussion image change again and see if it will work this time.
Ok, the update with the change of image worked fine this time. Good work!
Now....I just noticed that the image on my Blog is not the image I added, it is showing my own Avatar. As I understand the functionality as explained, the images added to the seeds/articles are supposed to be the ones that are displayed, not our Avatars.
Here is the image that should be showing on that Blog:
If my understanding is incorrect, please correct me so that I better understand the workings of this project going forward.
Good.
The trick now is to identify side effects. Unfortunately even though this issue was minor from the user experience perspective, it was absurdly complicated under the covers because of the way the platform was designed.
By the way, another area to investigate is creating and updating articles from the standard platform points (the way we have always done things). For example, using the gear, using the UPDATE button, etc. All of those points are now ( magically ) redirected to the Publisher's unified mechanisms (Under the covers, grabbing the appropriate URLs and rewriting them to the new URLs used by the Publisher).
Your understanding is correct. Will investigate.
I looked, what you are seeing is correct.
We did not change the fundamental design of the original pages. Just tweaked them. The blog page shows your avatar, but the image you select should also show in the body where your blog content appears.
Just tested and that is what showed for me. If that is how yours works then that is the intent.
OK...I checked by opening the Blog and indeed the image does show on the article itself. Thank you for investigating and further explaining the details of the Image aspect. I've now got, and will keep that in mind moving forward.
I have just tested updating the article using the gear on the top right of the article itself as requested. I was able to update the image and part of the text. Both worked fine.
Next!
What area or feature would you like for me to test next?
In principle, I am looking for people to challenge the Publisher from a perspective that I have not considered. As hard as we try, developers are necessarily biased and will tend to not even consider things that are illogical (from the perspective of one who understands the internals). Thus we need other eyes who do not have this info or bias.
To wit, I think the main thing is to just use the functionality as a normal NT user might. What I am looking for are conditions that I did not catch during my testing. Users will be able to access the Publisher functions through legacy (currently available) methods. When one clicks the old UPDATE button (or the gear) that is simply another (legacy) path to the new Publisher. Every unique way of accessing the Publisher has the potential for an issue.
( For example, I discovered a problem that only occurred when we directly access the Group Discussion menu item when the user is positioned on someone else's profile page. It is weird conditions like this that necessitate a robust Beta. We need people who look at this very differently (from me) to uncover paths I may have missed. )
Of course the first thing is to ensure the core functionality works for you. Creating, updating, locking, etc. for all three types of articles. Using the functionality of the collection. Once we are confident that the Publisher, in and of itself, is performing properly we want to ensure (per the above) that it works when we flank it from various points of existing (legacy) functionality.
In short:
Comprehensive verification that all Publisher functions work properly (and sensibly)
Comprehensive verification that the Publisher functions work properly when accessed from existing (legacy) points in NT (such as the UPDATE or LOCK buttons, clicking from the home page, ...).
Understood. I have not created any articles/seeds here on NT in a very looonnng time. So it will be a refresher course for me. Also, I don't do Blogs, so this is new to me. Group Discussions I am familiar with, so this will be easier for me.
Now that I know what you are looking for/at in this project I will have a better idea of what to watch for and test.
Thanks for the heads up and directions.
Regarding the lock/unlock articles/seeds. I noticed that there is no Lock/Unlock feature for Group Discussions. Is this meant to be this way? If so, I think there should be such a feature there as well. Having the feature elsewhere and then not in the Group Discussions can be confusing for Members, as it is for me. Not sure why the feature was not carried out in this area.
Please clarify.
I like the 'New Value' feature, however, it is only offered on the Blog creation layout. Is there a reason that it is only a feature on the Blog layout and not the others? This is another area that could be confusing for Members. Features such as this should be available in all the creation layouts to eliminate confusion for Members.
Just my thoughts.
The lock feature is not new with the Publisher; it is something that exists on NT. The old user interface (that which currently exists on NT) only allowed lock for Discussions. With the Publisher we have extended the locks to Blogs and to Group Discussions. The lock and unlock functions are part of Collections. So it is consistent within the domain of the Publisher but not within the domain of legacy NT.
Eventually we will phase out the legacy (and inconsistent) methods in NT and just use Collections.
The reason is: that is how NT currently works. Part of the trick with the Publisher is to retain critical functionality of NT (even when it is odd). I would have loved to toss out the three types of articles and just have one, but that would not work very well with the existing operations. The Publisher is an incremental improvement to NT and, as such, needs to play well with legacy functionality of NT.
I see. I can understand the need to stay within the current parameters and functions of the current format and functionality. I was not sure why the various functions were limited to only certain types of articles/seeds. Thank you for the clarification.
I agree Raven. The trifecta of discussion, blog and group-discussion has been a real pain for me since day one. Lots of problems (internally) dealing with the many inconsistencies. But that is how the platform works so there you go.
One of the major features of the next generation of NT will be unification - everything will simply be an article. Some articles are original work, some are seeds, some are within groups, some have RSS feeds, etc. The Publisher is actually the first step in that direction. You can see that it is starting to move things to a single notion of 'article'.
Yes, I did notice that, but, thought perhaps it was just my own thoughts. Glad to know that it how it is the direction it is meant to gravitate. And that would simplify things a great deal. There are some other changes I would like to see in the new version of NT, but, I will hold on to them at this point for future discussion.
Are there any other areas or features what you would like to have tested in addition to those you have already mentioned? So far, other than the areas of concern that have already been mentioned by myself and others, the Publisher appears to be working quite well. However, I am sure that there are some areas that are left to be tested for functionality and ease of use.
From a user perspective, what I suggested is pretty much it:
All other testing is what I must do since it requires verification of underlying data states, etc.
Ultimately, the trick is to imagine what a normal NT user might do to accidentally break the Publisher. For example, I discovered a problem where if one created a new Group Discussion while on the profile page of a different user, the Group Discussion would be attributed to that profile (that user). Now that is unexpected! (Fixed, by the way.)
I see, then I will continue working with the different functions and features and test out all the areas to make sure they are working well with the current NT. Thanks for the info, it is very helpful.
I've noticed that there is no ability to insert a video here in the Beta. I wanted to add a video to a discussion in Group Discussions, but, there is no function to do so.
Is it possible for there to be such a function added? The reason I ask, is that this is one of the functions many people here on NT seem to have problems with. So we need to make sure that there will be no issues with this function in order to make sure there there is no more confusion than already exists.
Your thoughts?
The reason is that I have not added to Beta all the modules that are in production NT. The Publisher does not have anything to do with the editor so there is no need to test the editing itself - images, videos, etc. are all functionality within the editor.
Beta for the Publisher would focus more on the article itself.
Ok...Got it. This far, all functions as expected. I have not found any more issues with the various functionality of the Beta regarding the Discussions, Blog and Group Discussion other than has been noted already.
Updating of the Discussion, Blog and Group Discussion areas are thus far functioning well, as is the updating of the images.
At this point, I have tested, retested and retested the various features that are available in the Beta, and have not encountered any new issues.
I very much like where you are going with this. What I did not see was a more direct easier quicker way to access publishing or seeding an article. Frankly, it is hard to navigate to which probably explains one reason more diverse articles are not published.
Maybe I missed it but what I would like to see is a publish button on the home page to take one directly to the publish function without navigating to an article, to topics, to a specific topic and then to publish. That is too many steps and if service is slow causes those attempting to navigate to publish to just give up.
I always publish the URL of my source on seeds but have noticed that is not universal and hate it when I must go looking on Google to figure out where the seeded material originated. Requiring that info to publish would be a big improvement.
Not to Johnny One Note it, but editorial control of content is the hallmark of all successful publishing ventures. The first impression The News Talkers if giving now is too often, well, embarrassing. No doubt having both sides of the political divide represented is important to a news site like The Newstalkers but too much that is being seeded today is fake news and too often foreign sourced propaganda intended not to inform but rather to misinform, aggravate and divide based upon misrepresentations of The News. Social media is under the spotlight right at this particular time and it is plain that if social media does not begin to regulate itself regulation will be imposed upon social media and I do not think that is what anyone wants. Perhaps if more people authored and seeded more articles it would help in this regard but to be successful someone is going to have to exercise some editorial control over content. It is not censorship when the editors of The New York Times decide what makes the grade and it would not be on The News Talkers either.
A few notes:
The epicenter for publishing is the Publish menu item. It is on the main menu HOME TRACK PUBLISH ... This takes you to your collected works (where you can take further actions). The other (sub)menu options enable one to create a new article (as a discussion, a blog or a group discussion).
The URL is required to be considered a seed. If one publishes a seed without including the URL, the article is considered original work. The moderators will act on authors who represent seeded content as original work.
I know Perrie has been all over this for weeks. ( Quite a bit of content that would be on the home page is not visible due to her management of the home page. ) But I would need to leave further discussion of this to you and Perrie. Maybe a chat?
Agreed (and so does Perrie). (see above)
The Publisher is fully functional here on the Beta site.
I have since found the publish function and will try another article to see how that function works...
Are we testing groups now again?
By the way, is this the 'working' comment window?
Yes. Everything is open for testing.
TiG is this the area for general questions about beta testing? If not, where?
1. On the Collection of Articles > Images are links to the articles. What about Title will this column link to articles?
Yes, this is the best place to answer questions and make suggestions.
I added in a hyperlink for the Title in the Collection.
Great work!
And, do you intend to put "hover overs" on the articles' Update wheels?
Update wheels came with the platform and should still be there. Not sure what hover-overs you are referring to. Collection provides a hover over on the article image.
In general, the Beta is what is intended to go production. There is no additional functionality (in this phase) that was planned. As you know I will make changes to improve usability and of course address problems, but this is what we intend to release to NT production once we (the Beta team) are comfortable that all is working well.
For example, on this article; RSS > Topic Notification symbols above. Hover over, Topic Notification, the description appears. Hover over, RSS, no description appears. Do you want symbols, buttons, links, and the like to have appropriate (uniform) descriptions? That is all I am asking. I do not know if this matters to the team or the larger experience.
By the way, how is the testing going along? Are we, the testers, covering all the areas you need?
Yeah this might be difficult to distinguish. There are a lot of little things like that in the existing platform. The RSS feed symbol, for example, is not part of the Publisher but rather is a legacy function. The Beta necessarily has most of the existing functionality of NT (and its underlying platform) so as to host the Publisher.
The new functionality (at least that which is visible) are the items on the Publish menu. So everything on the Collection page as well as the Create, Update pages for articles is brand new (even though it was purposely set up to look like the rest of legacy NT).
Of course it is beyond the scope of this project to address all the little nits of legacy NT.
Yes but I think we need more people involved. As I noted to Raven, what we need are people to use this functionality differently than I would. - thinking differently than the developer (who knows this from the inside and naturally has biases based on that info).
You may need a larger group of samples, yes. However, what areas are this group missing out in the sampling? Or it is just tasking the program that is missing? What should we be looking to falsify? One thing I have not done yet: Delete anything I have put up.
I have only described an approach to testing. I do not know everything that the Beta team has done. Ultimately we want to ensure that when we move this to production NT that no member will run across a problem. How we accomplish that is part of the magic of quality assurance.
Certainly, at a minimum, test every function you see. The perspective is indeed one of falsification -- assume there is a problem somewhere and try to find it.
In all seriousness, chances are very good that something is awry somewhere. The Publisher (under the covers) has a lot of complexity interfacing with the existing code and complexity is the mother of error.
Okay. I just "Discarded" a blog article ("The One About FAITH"), what I notice is it discarded without any dialogue box appearing asking me if I was certain this is something I want to do. Should we have a 'Are you sure' last chance option? Like what pops up on articles?
Will people expect one to appear?
Discard is a harmless operation -and- it is reversible. What it does is remove the article from your 'bookshelf' (collection). The article still exists in your history and you can always go back to it (later) and return it to your 'bookshelf' by clicking the 'Add to Collection' button.
So in this case it is better to avoid the pop up and simply discard on demand. Delete, however, needs a confirming pop-up because it is a destructive operation with no user-means to reverse.
'Add to Collection' button? Where is that one? Thanks.
It is one of the fields available when you update an article:
I see it now. It is a memory lesson to keep up with what can be done with different types. Oh well. (Smile.)
I've fiddled around quite a bit. It all seems to work fine.