Phenquestions
I don't write a lot about things that go on behind the scenes here on Ghacks. We work on the site constantly to improve it and make tweaks to it, but most of those happen in the background and are not exposed to the user interface.
For some time now, I wanted to add a "report" option to posts on the site. Ghacks has nearly 20,000 articles published which landed on the site over the course of 13 years and it is clear that some of these require updating.
I also try to update at least five posts per day but I'd spend 4000 days updating all articles on the site or nearly 11 years not even counting the new articles that get published in that time.
I do update posts when I stumble upon them or when a user leaves a comment or sends an email to inform me about broken links or outdated posts. I estimate, however, that many users don't report posts because it is not overly comfortable to do so (using contact or commenting).
Report Content
Report Content is a new feature of Ghacks that you may use to report issues of particular posts. You can report broken links, request that a post is updated, or report other issues.
You find the new option under any post on this site. It is a yellow "report content" button that you may click on to display a form directly on the page.
Only the issue and details field are mandatory to fill out. Please be as precise as possible in the details fields as it helps me understand why a post needs updating.
For instance, if you noticed a broken link, list the link, to make it easier for me. Also, if you know of an alternative or new destination, post it as well. I will still verify this but it makes things a lot easier.
You can select the following issues currently:
- Update Request -- A general update request, e.g. content is out of date. An example is a tutorial for Firefox 3 that does not work anymore.
- Broken Links -- If the article contains one or multiple broken links, select this option to report them. If you have the correct link, post it as well.
- Other -- Any other request that does not fall into the two other categories. Report content that overlaps to the sidebar, display issues, grammar or spelling errors, or anything else that caught your eye.
I run the plugin as a test to see how well it is received and how well it does on the site. I may pull it again if the response is low or if it causes server load or other issues on the server.
Without further ado: happy reporting.
