Knowledge Level for Articles

  • Hey guys,

    This suggestion comes from the MSDN site. I would think it would be nice to be able to rate the assumed understanding of the reader for articles. By this, I mean a rating (like 100 - 400) as to how much the reader must understand to be able to follow an article. For example, if a respected author writes a "Reindexing 101" article, experienced readers can see that it is a level 100 article and ignore it (if desired). Likewise, if there is an article on the contents of a data page header, then the newbies know that they need a good understanding for this. Other benefits, I believe, would be a more even-handed rating for articles. I believe a good number of seasoned DBAs get annoyed reading an article with obvious information to them. If they knew it was something not useful to them, they can ignore it if they so choose. Let me know what you think.

    Thanks,

    Eric

  • I'm not sure how well this would work. It's one thing when someone intentionally writes for a level, which is what MSDN does, but another when someone is just writing on a topic. We tend to get lots of content at a variety of levels and I worry this would be another source of complaints that it's not a 300 level or a 400 level article because it has xx in there.

    We could conceivably allow the community to rate it separately from voting, maybe a "rate the level" along with rate the quality?

  • Steve Jones - Editor (9/28/2008)


    I'm not sure how well this would work. It's one thing when someone intentionally writes for a level, which is what MSDN does, but another when someone is just writing on a topic. We tend to get lots of content at a variety of levels and I worry this would be another source of complaints that it's not a 300 level or a 400 level article because it has xx in there.

    We could conceivably allow the community to rate it separately from voting, maybe a "rate the level" along with rate the quality?

    You have a good point about it being hard to write for levels. I, personally, would like a better way to pre-filter articles that are old news to me. At the same time, I hope article writers do not get discouraged when they write a decent beginner level article and all of the old hands rate it low.

    As for your idea about community rating, it may work, but at the same time, post-publishing may be too late. At any rate, I appreciate you looking into it, but it seems that this would be more of a process change, so it may not be very feasible.

    Thanks,

    Eric

  • Steve Jones - Editor (9/28/2008)


    I'm not sure how well this would work. It's one thing when someone intentionally writes for a level, which is what MSDN does, but another when someone is just writing on a topic. We tend to get lots of content at a variety of levels and I worry this would be another source of complaints that it's not a 300 level or a 400 level article because it has xx in there.

    We could conceivably allow the community to rate it separately from voting, maybe a "rate the level" along with rate the quality?

    mod -1, flamebait.

    Oh wait, wrong site. :hehe:

    ---------------------------------------------------------
    How best to post your question[/url]
    How to post performance problems[/url]
    Tally Table:What it is and how it replaces a loop[/url]

    "stewsterl 80804 (10/16/2009)I guess when you stop and try to understand the solution provided you not only learn, but save yourself some headaches when you need to make any slight changes."

  • Ouch, yikes, hey, this isn't Slash-Whiney-people-that-want-to-complain-dot!

    Actually I like Slashdot and this made me smile this am.

    Pre-filtering might make sense, but we're kind of in that daily publishing model. We hope you hit the newsletter or front page for 10 sec, find something interesting and read it or move on. I try not to do too many similar articles/scripts/QODs on consecutive days for this reason. Don't want you to get 4 things on replication in a week when you don't like it.

    Hopefully the editorials move around enough to be interesting as well.

    It's worth debating. If you have more thoughts, let me know. I'm not sure that we want to pre-filter too much. That's a debate we had a long time ago, looking at letting you get newsletters for just DTS, or just T-SQL. However it gets you into the "trees" view, sometimes forgetting the forest. We want to be here to give you tips, ideas, thoughts, keep the whole platform in your mind with little reminders.

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