Re-Grading of Archived Articles

I have received a few requests to "re-grade" articles that have already been archived. Most of the articles have a grade of 100% A+ because everyone approved those articles. However, those articles may not deserve perfect grades.

Unfortunately, I cannot un-archive those articles and move them back into the newly published list so those who wish to fine tune their ratings can at their own leisure. However, if anyone wishes to change their rating on a particular article and doesn't mind private messaging or emailing me the info I'd be happy to update it for them.

If you'd like to do this send me the title of the article and the following rating info. For each of the 5 criteria you need to provide a rating from 1 to 10.

1. Completeness
2. Clarity / Readability;
3. Technical Accuracy;
4. Appearance / Formatting; and
5. Grammar / Spelling

I apologize for the inconvenience. Fortunately, this issue has only affected a few articles.

Major Update!

I'm pleased to announce the biggest and baddest update to date. In this update you'll find improved graphics, interfaces and many new features. Before I get into the update I'd like to thank Phil Dufault, Frank Lakatos, Guillaume Denormandie, Andrew Stacy and Chris Olstrom for all the feedback they continue to provide.

Here is a summary of what's in the update:

• New, Friendlier Home Page
• Improved Markup / Graphics (Logo, Footer, Buttons etc.)
• Article Publisher (New UI / Look and Feel)
• New and Improved Article Rating System with Extras
• New Article Rating Stats and Traffic Analytics Feature
• Improved Article Listing / View Layouts
• Article View / Author Bio Integration
• Improved Author Pages Look and Feel
• New User Stats and Points Feature
• New "More on ITNewb" Section
• Internet Organizations List
• Open Source / Freeware Software Library
• Complete Database of Indexed / Formatted RFCs (5,000+ RFCs)
• Complete Indexed List of Unicode Charts (BMP)
• Help Central Document Development has Begun

Alright, let's take a look at some of the more important things in this update.

Article Publisher

A new streamlined user interface was developed for the publisher inspired by a rough sketch by Frank Lakatos (franklakatos.com). The publisher has been broken out of the main CSM tab setup and given its own page.

There were a number of complaints that the publisher wasn't very intuitive, so it is my hope this new interface and the "help sidebars" will eliminate any confusion or difficulty using the feature.

New Rating System (aka grading)

Up until now ITNewb has used a simple approve / sink voting system. Articles with a 75% approval rate or higher were archived and everything else sunk (deleted). For most sites, this kind of system is adequate and everyone is happy but it became apparent this wasn't the case here at ITNewb.

So what were the problems? The three biggest issues were that 1) we couldn't fine tune our ratings because the options were only approve 100% or sink 0%; 2) we were unable to easily articulate what we liked or disliked about an article; and 3) authors had trouble determining which areas they did well in and which areas their work needed improvement.

At any rate, Phil Dufault (dufault.info) initially brought these issues to light and helped me hammer out a new system. The end result was ditching the approve / sink system and turning to a more traditional grading system.

Here is how the new rating (aka grading) system works. Articles are given a 1 to 10 (10% F- to 100% A+) rating on 5 criteria: completeness; clarity / readability; technical accuracy; appearance / formatting; and grammar / spelling. Each category is weighted, and a weighted average is used to determine the overall grade given. Everyone can view this data aggregated in a flash chart under the new "Stats" tab.

As before, you may change your rating at any time while the article is still under review.

So what are the extras mentioned above in the update summary? From within the rating interface you can expand a message box from which you can comment, send the author a private message or write on the authors profile.

Rating Stats and Traffic Analytics

A Stats tab has been added to articles that contain 2 flash objects. Each object has 1 or more drop down menus above it so you can control the chart view.

The top flash object displays 6 rating based bar graphs. The bottom chart displays 10 traffic based line charts providing basic analytics including all traffic, traffic breakdown, article traffic, comment traffic and stats traffic as well as a last 30 days and last 52 weeks setting.

Stats were gathered from the apache logs so you'll find these charts already populated with data.

More on ITNewb

You may have noticed a "More" button was added to the main navigation bar. This section of the site will be used for odds and ins, if you will. To start out you'll find an Internet Organizations list, Software Library, RFC Database and Unicode Charts. Soon I'll be adding a TCP / UDP Ports Database and Linux Man Pages.

If you think of anything you'd like to see in this section please contact me.

Coming Soon / Missing

While there is a lot packed into this update, I wasn't able to include everything that I've been working on. Here is a list of incomplete items or things temporarily offline (this stuff will be complete or back online within a week or two):

• TCP / UDP Ports Database (Coming Soon)
• Linux Man Pages (Coming Soon)
• ITNewb Article Search (Incomplete / Offline)
• New and Improved Invite Friends Feature (Incomplete / Offline)
• Help Central (Incomplete)

Additionally, formatting of the RFCs is still a work in progress. That's not to say they haven't been cleaned up, but that some contain minor blemishes and most of the indexes haven't been formatted / anchored yet. This week I'm going to hit the more popular RFCs like HTTP and so on. If anyone is interested in helping with the index formatting please let me know.

Share Your Thoughts

Your feedback isn't simply appreciated, it's very much needed. Once you've had time to check everything out please share your thoughts. Thanks everyone, enjoy!