Spring Cleaning results

I’m making a note here: HUGE SUCCESS. It’s hard to overstate my satisfaction with our first-ever spring cleaning challenge. Readers have spotted issues with roughly one-third of our 1,440 posts, which we’ll be resolving over the next few weeks.

We’ll be keeping the spring cleaning flags available another week or two, but I consider the contest portion complete. More than 40 different users submitted reports. Thanks to all of them.

In the end, our top ten spring cleaners caught 92% of the bugs:

Lauren Ocean and Tyler Leisher were the top two throughout, pulling far ahead of the pack. They’ll both get Related Schwag Prizes, with Lauren getting first pick.

The biggest issue readers encountered was link rot. Many utilities can detect when a link is dead, but it takes human eyes to recognize when a functional link is now pointing somewhere unintended, such as a general catch-all page. This often happens when a domain is sold, or the underlying CMS changes.

In most cases, we’ve simply removed the bad link. Other times, we’ve found a better source for what was there.

A thornier issue was what to do with posts that were out of date. A one-sentence post from 2008 explaining that I was too sick to picket doesn’t seem have a lot of value. No reader is likely to find that useful on its own. But as part of the larger context of all my posts about the WGA strike, it has some historical value. So I’ve kept it.

Some older posts had formatting issues arising from a long-ago change in character encoding. These are the happiest problems, as global search-and-replace can work wonders.

Several users wanted the opportunity to rate articles, so that other readers might come across the “greatest hits.” That’s certainly something we’ll try.

It’s also clear that the site’s blogginess can make it harder to find answers to very basic questions, like “How long is a screenplay?” I have some ideas for addressing this Screenwriting 101 material in ways that won’t dumb down the site for normal readers.

Sincere thanks again to everyone who participated in helping polish the site.

Flagged for Spring Cleaning

View the original article here

Spring cleaning

This site has 1,440 posts, stretching back to 2003. Unlike many blogs, most of these articles are still relevant. The basics of screenwriting haven’t changed much in a decade.

Yet some problems inevitably creep in with age. Links break as external sites vanish. Formatting glitches arise. Graphics get misplaced.

To help fix these issues, we’re doing a few days of Spring Cleaning on the site. And if you have some free time, we’d love your help.

At the bottom of this post is a list of articles that need checking. (It generates a fresh list each time.) Click on an article, read it, and look for mistakes or issues. Repeat as often as you choose.

If you notice any problems (typos, missing graphics, broken links or other mistakes) click on either the “Flag for Spring Cleaning” button at the end of each post or the Send To button. This will send a report to Ryan, who will verify and correct.

Use the "Spring Cleaning" links at the bottom of each post, or in the "Send to" menu.

Once a post is marked “Flagged for Spring Cleaning,” you can’t send additional reports on it until Ryan checks it out.

Yes, private, this is a bug hunt. Twice daily, we’ll be posting results showing who has caught the most mistakes.

Ryan is the final arbiter of who gets credit for what.

UPDATE: You can see the leaderboard here.

We originally had a checkbox marked “Outdated,” but too much was getting flagged. Some posts are old and not exactly actionable (e.g. anything related to the 2008 WGA strike). That’s okay. History counts too. The publication dates are there for a reason.

As with the Scene Challenges, the winner gets public acclaim and bragging rights. But I’ll also happily send the victor his or her choice of movie swag, such as a signed script, DVD or poster.

I’m sure there will be issues we haven’t yet considered. Feel free to ask questions in the comments. Thanks, and happy hunting.

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Flagged for Spring Cleaning

View the original article here