Wednesday, November 15, 2006

Troubleshooting

[First draft at establishing a policy for dealing with problem posts. Let me know if you agree or disagree with this proposed approach.]

It’s important that you are familiar with the design elements of WikiFray, because as a contributor, your posts have the potential to alter the appearance of the blog. It is assumed that prior to posting to WikiFray, you visit WikiFray. Before you post, consider the appearance of the blog. Is everything in order? Is there a problem with the blog?

Hopefully, everything will be in order (no obvious technical issues with the blog). However, if the blog seems to be askew, consider holding off on posting your post until the issue(s) are resolved. The reason for this is your posts have the potential to alter the blog, so if there is a problem with the blog and you add your post regardless, the person trying to fix the blog has to then consider your post as the potential source of the problem (you make it harder to find and thus fix what’s wrong).

That said, WikiFray should mostly be working fine. If everything is looking good, proceed and post. But after you post, check to see that WikiFray is in the same working order as it was before you posted. If it’s not, chances are your post did something to alter a design element of the blog. If this happens, go back to your post and try to figure out what you did that created the problem. If you can’t figure it out (edit the problem out of your post and republish), and you give up, save your post as a draft and email wikifray@gmail.com requesting assistance.

Finally, if your post is the source of a problem, my first action will be to save it as a draft. Time permitting, I’ll follow that action up with help, explaining to the author what the problem was. I may not always have time to do this, or attend to this immediately, so if you find your post was saved as a draft, it means there’s a problem with it. Attempt to identify and fix the problem, or wait for a note from me explaining the problem and how to fix it. The long and short of it is I need to be able to do quick fixes. The quickest fix is to save the problem post as a draft. We each need to be responsible for our impact on the blog. It’s okay to make mistakes, but it’s also important that we each learn from our mistakes. Therefore, I won’t fix your posts. I will, however, help you to fix them.

11 comments:

topazz said...

so in other words, this is why you deleted my post? It was inappropriate to the overall appearance of the whole blog?

topazz said...

nevermind. I just read your email and I see what I did wrong.

sorry 'bout that. I figured it was the same procedure as the other. You can delete it anyway, it wasn't really anything worth reposting.

maximo said...

topz:

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA.

WikiFray said...

I won't delete your post topazz.

topazz said...

Don't you sass me, maxi-boy. Or instead of Marilyn, I'll post your baby picture

august said...

I'm going to be out of commission for the next couple of weeks. Not abandoning -- just suddenly got hit with a major real world deadline. If anybody sees me here, please remind me that I have work to do.

Procedure sounds fine.

Also, I'm all for you folks posting nude pics of yourselves, but perhaps a"Not safe for work" warning?

Keifus said...

not safe for work, or the kids. My computer's in the living room. (Also, someday I'd like to tell the wife how I waste my time.)

Probably the courteous thing would be bury pictures like that in the expanded view.

K

topazz said...

sorry guys. But seriously, if a classic picture of Marilyn gets you a tongue lashing from your wives, well...you can thank me later. As for the bosses and kiddies - well, business as usual. I'm well practiced in the art of screen jettisons, as I'm sure you all are by now.

I definitely have no plans of getting into the general habit of posting pictures with every blog entry, but pictures add another dimension, a definite advantage of blogging, and an advantage of posting here rather than the fray. But inserting pictures just for the shock value or sake of it? I don't see it being a problem.

Ender, what's your opinion?

Keifus said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Keifus said...

Goddammit. I like editing posts, wish I could edit comments...

Yeah, I'm a quick draw by now, it'd just be nice to have a moment to ascertain. But it's no biggie.*

And as for consequences...don't ask.

K

*the picture I mean.

Ed said...

topazz:

Not a big deal I don’t think. I prefer to err on the side of the contributor’s right to post a picture they believe is relevant (for whatever reason), because although I might not always agree, you never know who might be passing through and find any one of our particular takes interesting, compelling, worth talking about. That said, if you want to post a risqué picture but are worried it might be too pornographic, I like Keifus’ idea of hiding it in an expandable post. But really, that’s only in cases with the contributor is uneasy about it. Gotta run…