Running Weblogs with Slash

Managing Authors

As the arbiters of officially sanctioned material, Authors command tremendous trust. They must balance several simultaneous factors, whether they know it or not. Who is the target audience? Does it matter who posts a Story? How much personality should Authors expose in their Stories? Who wrote the Story? It’s OK to have an opinion, and some sites demand it. Even those that make no claims to do journalism should strive to be fair and even-handed.

There are three major sources of good Authors. They may be the site owners and administrators, or employees of the site owner (in the case of an Intranet site). They may be respected members of the community which the site serves. They may also be trusted site users, promoted from within. In general, the less formal the relationship, the more trust Authors require.

From a practical standpoint, recruiting an Author with expertise in a Section is an easy way to divide responsibilities. In each Section, the Author could be the final authority. This does not necessarily preclude Authors from sharing the work between Sections.

Public sites that purport to have a serious purpose need to create a set of Author Guidelines. These can be as informal as three rules in a block somewhere or as formal as a signed and notarized document. (A simple page will suffice for most sites.) Having written (and understandable!) guidelines in place before trouble surfaces can head things off at the pass.

At the very least, site owners and ...