Wikipedia talk:Article a day queue

Article a day queue

I have a question: How frequent do you want a new article in your mailbox? Once a day seem a lot for me. I like it come in 2 or 3 days. --Toan


 * If it's less than once a day, it won't be an article a day, though! ;-)  That's just a joke.  I don't care, really.  What do you all think?  I think once a day might be a nice routine, especially if the article is sent in the morning (many people look at their e-mail first thing in the morning).  But once a day might get old fast...hmm? --LMS


 * The morning sounds like a good idea, but I can't find where to put by timezone on the subscription page -- GWO


 * Well, sending it out at 2 AM servertime pretty much ensures everyone from the west coast of the U.S. to the middle of Europe will receive it sometime in the morning. --LMS


 * I think once a day is fine. --Pinkunicorn

- I've now gotten two mails from this. The first was Horse-breaking which looked fine, except that there was a list of unsubscription links at the bottom for a number of people (all subscribers?). The second was History of England, which was empty. --Pinkunicorn


 * I didn't get the horsebreaking one. History of England came with a link to the article; I was expecting the text of the article in my mail.  --KQ


 * Ah, there's a link. I missed that. Well, if the article itself isn't sent out then I think this whole feature is pointless. --Pinkunicorn


 * We're still working the bugs out. The text of the article should definitely appear in the e-mail.  Today's posting was perfect, as far as I can tell, which bodes well... --LMS


 * I just got the H. G. Wells article. There are a couple of problems with it. The year links have gone in the text version, so years are missing. Links that have different text from the link name gets both in the text version ("England|English").


 * Also, some more formatting should probably be done. :-indented text could be rendered in plain text as well. Articles using bold for headings look a bit weird in text form as well. --Pinkunicorn


 * The two bugs mentioned by me in the paragraph above are still there. Also, it seems to be time to start adding more articles to the queue or we'll soon run out of stuff to send. --Pinkunicorn


 * Pink, good idea to keep adding articles, and we really appreciate your pointing out these bugs. It would be nice if we could expect somebody to fix them as soon as they're spotted.  But...the paid employees who are working on the project have many other projects they're working on.  The volunteers (like Magnus) have only so many hours in the day.  :-)  At this point I celebrate the fact that there is "running code" at all.  :-)  Eventually, almost all the more obvious problems will be fixed.  Maybe you yourself will be able to help.  I think all the code (open source, of course) is now running on Nupedia's CVS system, but don't quote me on that. --Larry


 * If you can point me to the code for the article-a-day script I can have a look at it. I assume it's in Perl. No promises, but a look won't hurt. --Pinkunicorn


 * I'll ask Toan to put up the code somewhere (preferably, the CVS). --Larry


 * Addition: international characters seem to be stripped. --Pinkunicorn

Is it just me or does anyone else think that adding the casualty list from the terrorist incident to the article-a-day queue is inappropriate? --Robert Merkel


 * Not initially, right off hand, but maybe it is. Does it seem disrespectful to you? --LMS


 * I dunno. If I was personally affected by the tragedy, maybe I wouldn't appreciate yet more reminders of it crowding my inbox.  Then again, maybe I would appreciate the opportunity to add an orbituary so that people researching this in the future can get a sense of the human tragedy.  I'm no psychologist, I don't know.  It seemed at least worth querying before it starts hitting people inboxes. -- Robert Merkel


 * Well, the intention is certainly not disrespectful. However, I think it will be better to link to the main terrorist attack page. Then you can decide yourself if you want to face the casualty list. --css


 * I'm going to heavy-handedly change it to the In Memoriam page. -- TheCunctator

I'd suggest someone to write a script to extract the 7 oldest or least visited articles from the database and append to the queue every week. That would keep the queue going even when user nominations dry up. The Brilliant prose, Recent changes and New topics already bring readers to the fresh articles. We need a way to stir the pile and let the stale ones come to life too.

I haven't received an article since Anarchism on October 19th. I resubscribed on the 22nd, and still no new articles in my mailbox. ---Jagged


 * See also : Wikipedia