/
/

Site Navigation

Your Account

Choose Language

Options

Allow guide creators to unarchive their guides (with admin moderation)

I am making this suggestion since it's been something I have thought could be done for a while, with a few precautions.

Before I go any further, here are the precautions I think will work:

  • Regardless of user reputation (an exception may be available for users who have seniority or moderator status), the removal must be approved by a moderator or staff member
  • The request should be looked at by a moderator or staff member
  • If the request is denied, the author should get details on why they were denied (ex: The guide is mostly finished, but it isn't done enough to approve it)
  • Provide information on what it may take to get a request granted (ex: Find hardware to document)

With that out of the way, here's some more detail. I have a lot of older guides, and some of them are archived. While I'm not going to go through every single guide I have made to find links, I will provide one example.

Linux Laptop (2008-2012) is a good one - I made it in 2013 when I realized I went WAY over my ability at the time, and then abandoned it in ~3 months. After that I let it sit until 2014 when I hid it and flagged for deletion (to find it was archived before I got to it). This didn't happen, so I started work on it in 2015 (which took 1 year and 7 months to get to a point I'm happy with the text part). When I got to it, it was stagnant for ~5 years when I got to it, which meant it was going to be a difficult guide to resurrect.

While it is more or less finished, I cannot remove the archived guide flag from the guide. For the example guide, this would be a case I don't need this done right away, but I'd prefer to get it out of the way so I can move on from the text part. I can look into what I want to do for a laptop while it's there and deal with it at a later time. (I got a T420 for the guide, which is potentially part of the Lenovo spying because I found Lenovo Customer Experience 64 on it, which is part of the LSE issue. I need to double check and make sure my machine isn't affected). I already had to deal with the SMM bug, so these Lenovo busts that keep happening are disturbing, but not surprising.

If I could remove it with a moderator looking at it, this would mean I could get that done when I edit out the major problems and have it all done - it would speed the process up instead of the current method where I have to put it out there on Meta to get it done. All I have to do to get it done is flag it for archive removal and then have it granted or denied (with information as to why, as described earlier).

Answered! View the answer I have this problem too

Is this a good question?

Yes No
Score 0
Add a comment

1 Answer

Filter by:
Most Helpful Newest Oldest
Chosen Solution

Options

"Archived Guide" has been used fairly loosely in the past, but we're trying to use it specifically as a designation that "Hey a better version of this guide exists." And that designation requires admin decision to apply. Users hoping to mark their guides as old or not great can use other flags (in progress, missing steps etc), make notes in the introduction or steps, or "worst case" mark the guide as private.

That's how I think things should work, in the mean time we've got some incorrectly applied flags we'll need to take care of by hand. Overall does that make sense?

Was this answer helpful?

Yes No
Score 1

2 Comments:

I'm talking about allowing users to flag their guides for archive flag removal if they brought it back like I did with the Laptop Linux guide in this case. I think going private for the Linux guide while it was in shambles was the better option.

An admin or moderator should be the only one who can remove it, so the idea is a guide author can flag it in a way that says "This guide is fixed and no longer needs the archive flag".

by

I don't think we have the bandwidth to develop a "review my guide" function at the moment, but it's something we've been interested in for awhile actually! We'll definitely let you know if we do start moving in that direction. ;) For now we'll just have to ask users to email us, or post on Meta, so they can get admin eyes on their projects.

by

Add a comment

Add your answer

Nick will be eternally grateful.