G'day Tim,
I worked on a site where most of the content had serious potential legal consequences, so almost everything going on the site had to be cleared first.
The way that worked was that the reporters adding content couldn't publish. Each section of the site was "owned" by an editor or legal adviser and the work flow was that the journalist would write the story, submit it to the system and get on with the next job. An email would go to the subeditor to notify that there was a story to be subbed. That subeditor would be responsible for supervising the journalist, but also to check spelling, grammar, usage etc to make sure the 'tone' of the story met the organisation's standards and that the accompanying illustrations matched the standards and 'look' and 'tone' of the organisation. The story was cleared by the subeditor or rejected back to the journalist's "todo box" with a checkbox and submit button.
Once the sub editor cleared a story, an email was sent automatically to the "owner" of that section of the site, adivising there was a story ready to be cleared. At that point all issues like presentation, language, grammar, fact checking etc should have been taken care of, so the 'owner' of that section was responsible for looking for legal issues and getting them cleared by the organisation's legal advisors and checking the story agreed with the organisation's general policy on the issue being discussed. (it's not a news organisation but an activist organisation). Once the "owner" cleared the story by clicking the box in the CMS, the story went live.
In addition there was a web site editor (called a content manager in most places I think) who had overall authority to overrule anyone in the process, and had the authority to send anything live at any time, regardless of the rest of the workflow process.
So the workflow goes like this (all enforced by the security access privileges assigned to each username)
Process 1 (designed to be the 'normal' process)
[1] Journalist writes the story
[2] Subeditor vets the story, grammar, spelling, artistic stuff, illustrations going with the story
[3] Section "Owner" double checks and gets it cleared for legal and policy
[3] Section "Owner" double checks and gets it cleared for legal and policy
[4] article goes live.
Process 2 (designed for trivial things or 'emergency' use)
[1] Journalist writes the story
[2] website editor approves it and sends it live.
Everyone sat within sight of each other, so it was rare that anyone was asked to approve a story they didnt already know quite a bit about, but the system was set up to make it impossible for anyone to write something and get it live without at least one person in authority approving it.
HOWEVER .....
In practice that's not what happened. In practice these checks and balances turned out to be cumbersome and too slow. Because the whole editorial and policy team was only 20-30 people, most everyone knew what was being worked on long before the stories were written. The subeditors knew the stance the journalist was taking with any story long before the story came to be approved. They'd already adivised against that stance or got it cleared with legal in the face-to-face process that had been in existence for 40 years or more.
In practice, after a few months, they ended up giving everyone nearly full authority and let the inter-personal and other management controls keep a check on what went on to the site.
What I'm advising, based on this experience is this .... by all means put lots of checks and balances in the CMS, but if they dont match the culture of the organisation and if they arent convenient for the users, they'll find a way to cut the corners and make it work the way they want to. I have heard of many CMS where they have lots of checks and balances built in, but short-circuited, because they didnt work in practice.
Happy to tell you more on the phone if you want.
Cheers
Mike Kear
Windsor, NSW, Australia
Certified Advanced ColdFusion Developer
AFP Webworks
http://afpwebworks.com
ColdFusion, PHP, ASP, ASP.NET hosting from AUD$15/month
Mike Kear
Windsor, NSW, Australia
Certified Advanced ColdFusion Developer
AFP Webworks
http://afpwebworks.com
ColdFusion, PHP, ASP, ASP.NET hosting from AUD$15/month
On 9/1/05, Tim McAuliffe <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Tim,
>
> Do you work in the Government Sector?
>
> If you do, then you may find that asking the same question on the yahoo =
> group "Intranet Peers" to be of some use.
>
> Cheers,
Hi Scott,
I'm working in financial services at the moment, but thanks for the tip.
Cheers
T.
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