KuroshinSubmissionQueueSuggestions

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The KuroshinSubmissionQueue lists 20 items of discussion, putatively problems. These 20 items are discussed in detail on KuroshinSubmissionQueueDiscussion, and the following is a summary of suggested changes arising from that discussion.

How about making the following changed to the modqueue:

Every story posted goes straight to section, no questions asked (unless stamped to be posted at a later date).
When people see stories in a section, they can either recommend it, similar to adding to your hotlist but also counts as a Post to Front Page vote; revise it, which would let them see the article and suggest changes (more on this below); or criticize it, which would hide a story from a user and count as a Dump It vote.

(The author will be able to see the revisions as a special comment that shows each line that was changed, with the revisions in a different color, and can edit his/her story at will. Each time a story is edited, all revision comments will be deleted.)

Let's see how this works against the suggested features list:

The purpose, intent...: No relevance
Authors... edit submissions: The above assumes an edit queue, solving this problem.
Authors... pull submissions: When an author revises a story, let them click a Kill button if they want.
As K5 grows...: Not an issue, everything gets posted. (KMSelf) More to the point, decision time scales with site growth -- there's no "post/no-post" decision being made.
Submissions hang...: Every story would be posted in section at least; bad stories would get weeded out by criticisms, and anyone who didn't want to see a story could hide it for themselves anyway.
Queued... too much topical: Again, this wouldn't be a problem, because stories would be visible at all times.
Queued... too little editorial: Editorial discussion could take place as necessary, aided by the ability of any person willing to post suggested revisions of the article itself, not just meta comments about it.
Categorical feedback...: When users criticize a story, they can have the option of just hiding it for themself, or "voting it down" too. You could disallow people to "vote down" a story unless they posted at least one editorial comment or revision.
Feedback...: This would be easier, because feedback for posted stories becomes the front page; if something's on the front page, it clearly got voted up. Moving voted-down stories to people's diaries is fine.
Sectioning...: Eliminate redundant and ambiguous sections, make new ones with clearer boundaries, and impose limits on certain sections (anything without body text has to be MLP and vice versa, etc.)
Voting preferences... section: This doesn't matter, because users won't be reading the given sections in the first place. Someone who doesn't like PoliSci? won't read the PoliSci? section that was created by number 10 above, and won't recommend or criticize that story. Someone who does will read that section and decide if the story is worth putting on the front page.
The best submissions... dumped: No submission would ever die unless people really didn't want it, and even then it would be moved to their diary.
Moderation... meaningfully: Stories on the front page could continue to get recommended, and the stories would be ranked by their recommendation score. The same could be true for sections, although all stories posted should be kept at the top sorted by date for 24 hours to give people a chance to notice and read them.
Diary entries... site: Diary entries can be recommended just like other stories can; they can get criticized too, although criticisms would have no effect other than stalling a diary entry's advancement higher. If a diary entry passed a certain threshold, it could be moved to a section page, where it's recommendation total would start from scratch, and it could then go to front page if it was good enough.
Queue... authors: Assume a story was posted to section, not diary. If the rcommendation to criticism ratio was 1, the story would be the same as a certain number of 3-rated comments (10? 20?) If the ratio was higher or lower, the story would be adjusted accordingly. Diary entries would count as a smaller number of comments, but as a higher rating (5) if they were posted to section, and from then on would follow the same rules as regular submissions with the exception that criticisms at that level could only reverse the previous bonus.
Queue... history: Assign everyone a number based on the recommendation-to-criticism ratio of their past stories. For anyone who exceeds this number in posted stories, all further stories will go to their diary. Depending on how many diary entries they post, there will be a longer wait until they can post to section again.
A mechanism... author's comments: All editorial comments by the author would automatically go to the top, be highlighted in yellow instead of red, and say [Author's Note] instead of [Editorial]. Any replies to these comments would be redirected to the main story.
Better moderation...: Give a page that outlines clearly when a story should be recommended, when one should be criticized, and when one should be left alone. Because moderation is no longer life-or-death for individual stories, it's not as big a deal.
The Queue... scheduling: I don't quite see how it's being used as this, though it's clear that it doesn't work now. Adding not-until-date and die-at-date would completely solve this problem, although would die-at-date stories completely die or just move into the archives? That would probably have to be an author-chosen option, although I expect the use for die-at-date stories would be rare. (KMSelf): Rusty's commented from time to time that the current queue system means there's almost always something in the pipe. I think it's applying a misfeature to an unrelated problem by accident.
Author profile...: Let people put more information, maybe give more categories and more specific categories. I agree that the search should let you do author separate from keywords, but I think you should be able to specify any number of search criteria; what if I want all stories written by Inoshiro that had comments that cp rated?

Tell me what you think.

- AlexBromfield

How perfect, we're using the best discussion system ever made to discuss how to improve a not-nearly-as-good-but-close one. What if we took some inspiration from Wiki for K5? Namely, give all users editing privileges. Editorial comments are no longer necessary, nor is an edit queue (anyone at any time can fix a story). Topical comments could stay the way they are; the modqueue could either stay the same or follow the changes I suggested above. Most importantly, this would stop good stories from not being posted because they were missectioned or similar.

- AlexBromfield

It is somewhat ironic, isn't it? However, I think the regulars of K5 may not be ready for a Wiki system. :-)

That said, I think it needs a separate queue: an Editing Queue. Submissions in the Editing Queue can be edited and removed by their posters, accept Editorial comments only, and are moved on by the poster. If the submission is edited, comments are flagged as being posted to a previous version. Submissions in the Story Queue can be voted to be sent back to the Editing Queue - when that happens, Topical comments probably should be lost.

Too simplistic?

- WadeBowmer?

CategoryKuroshin