Recently the number of entries being approved into the Guide each day has risen dramatically. This is mainly due to the hard work of the Guide's editorial team, but also to their new set of editing tools. So, have you ever wondered what these new tools look like? We did. Mark Moxon fancied showing them off, and here is what he had to say on each of them:

'Firstly the
In Boxes. When Sub-editors return subbed entries, they are
automatically processed by the system and each entry is put into one of the three main in-boxes: 'Awaiting Approval, 'Awaiting Rejection' and 'Unsure'. The internal staff can then channel these off into their own personal in-boxes where they do a final edit, before sending them forwards to the 'Waiting to go up' box (see
separate screenshot). In this tool we have access to the in-boxes (in this shot the contents of them have been changed to prevent showing rejections - we thought that'd be a bit harsh) and to the individual in-trays of Sub-editors, which show which entries they are currently processing.'

'The second picture is a view of the
Entry Editor. This is the main entry editor where we can edit the contents of an entry, change its status, the researchers, add graphics and so on. The left-hand side is exactly like the normal entry editor on h2g2, except we can change the status, editor and researchers and also look at the edit history for the entry (as every change is logged). The right-hand side allows us to add blobs (the technical in-house term for graphics), do a search (very handy when editing), and preview and categorise the entry.'

'The third picture we have is of the
Approved Articles waiting to go up into the Guide. This is where entries go when they have been edited and marked for approval. Here we can allocate a day to each entry, and the artists can create graphics for the one we choose to be highlighted on the front page (here you can see that we've chosen 'How to ride a motorcycle' as the front page entry for Wednesday, 8th March, and Sri, one of our artists, has done a graphic for it). When the day arrives we write the front page section for that day (see separate screenshot) and promote the entries from this list to being full Approved Entries, sending out an email to the relevant researchers in the process.'

'The final screen shot is of the
Front Page Editor. This shows a section of the front page editor. Essentially the front page is made up of sections, each presented to the user with a BOX tag, and this editor enables us to shuffle the sections around, adding new ones and deleting old ones. We can also
schedule front pages to appear at specific times in the future, by typing in a date at the top of the tool. In this way we can have the front page change when we're on holiday or over the weekend; this is how the front page managed to change over the Christmas break, even though the editorial team was celebrating at home.'

All in all these are some pretty nifty tools that they have got here and I'm sure that they will help in the smooth running of the Guide. But what I am wondering is, why does Mark have a 'Jobs' section in his bookmark list?

Pastey

13.03.00. Front Page

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