CodeProject Article FAQ - Part 4: Common Questions about Article Posting

Table of Contents

• Can I submit an article based on another person's work?
• Can I submit code I've already posted at another site?
• What is Pending status?
• Why is there content moderation at the CodeProject?
• Why is my "Pending" article in "Closed" status now?
• Users are telling me to change my article submission to a tip. How do I do that?
• What is a CodeProject Mentor?
• I can't get the formatting right in my article. What do I do?
• My article was approved and all the votes and comments are gone. Why?
• I posted my article a year ago, and it is still unedited. Why?
• I want to write an article on a third party product. Can I?
• I see something wrong on someone's article, how do I report it?
• How are articles chosen for the monthly competition?

1. Can I submit an article based on another person's work?

   It is OK to use others code as a base as long as you make it totally clear that some/most of the code isn't yours. If you use someone else's code then DO NOT remove their copyright notices. There is a lot of code reuse here, that's the point after all. As far as the articles that are being posted here we expect to see credit where credit's due, in the code and the HTML as appropriate.

   If you are submitting a modification, extension or correction to another persons work then we ask that you attempt to contact the original author first and then try to liaise with him/her to produce an update to the original article. This way we can retain continuity with the original article as well as reducing the number of completely new pages that need posting.

   We take plagiarism seriously at CodeProject. If you copy someone else's work (whole or even a tiny part) without referencing it, OR you cut and paste large sections and simply post a reference link at the bottom, your post will be removed, and your account and articles may be forfeit.

   For further information on how to properly reference material, or an explanation of what plagiarism is, please see our Plagiarism FAQ.

2. Can I submit code I've already posted at another site?

   You are more than welcome to submit code that is already published at another site, provided you own the copyright on that article, and provided you have not given the other site exclusive rights to your article.

3. Why is there content moderation at the CodeProject?

   Certain user-submitted content on the site is subject to moderation. The purpose of moderation is to stop the publication of obviously inappropriate material, plagiarised content or content that is not of sufficient quality to be published at that point.

   Moderation is available to members who have contributed enough to the community that the system considers them a good judge of what is and isn't acceptable. If you suddenly find moderation buttons available to you then thank you - you've done a lot for the community and we would now like to give you the opportunity to do even more.

   If you have either an author reputation of Gold or higher, an Authority reputation of Gold or higher, an Editor reputation of Gold or higher or an Organiser reputation of Gold or higher, you will have access to the moderation queue. It looks like this:

   

   From there you can hover over the checkbox to get the following dropdown:

   

   The way the moderation works is you have to receive five "Approve" items to be published, or five "Report / Needs help" items to reach a different article status. If five members Approve your article it will become live and available for all to see. If five members either "Report" or mark your article as "Needs help" your article status will become "Closed" and you will receive an email notification indicating who closed the article, why, and what to do:

   If you wish to revise and reopen your article based on the feedback from these members then simply go the "Edit article online" in the upper right hand corner:

   

   This will enable you to edit and update your article and will re-open your article for other members to enjoy.

   If an author has genuinely tried to provide a decent material, even if they may need some encouraging to improve it, then the item should be approved by moderators.

   If you are new a member with new moderating privileges and are looking for some guidance on how to moderate, please see Jochen Arndt's excellent rundown here: http://www.codeproject.com/Messages/5110903/Re-Approve-Disapprove-a-pending-Article.aspx

4. What is Pending status?

   Pending status means that an article is awaiting approval from the CodeProject community. The vast majority of new articles on CodeProject need a couple of tiny improvements because they do not sufficiently explain the code within the article. The goal of this is three-fold:

   1. It ensures that articles are detailed enough that the majority of users can learn the most from each article
   2. It ensures the highest quality of articles on CodeProject
   3. It helps the author receive best response possible (highest ratings) on CodeProject


5. Why is my "Closed" article in "Composing" status now?

   Sometimes articles have great ideas but need a slightly different presentation. If your article is in Closed status, look to your article forum and take the advice of your peers to heart. Generally, your article probably needs to answer one of these questions better:

   • What problem does this solution solve?
   • How does this help someone else?
   • How does the code actually work?
   • What is going on inside the code snippets?


6. Users are telling me to change my article submission to a tip. How do I do that?

   If you agree with the CodeProject users that your submission is more of a Tip than an article you can change it using the article wizard. Simply make sure you are logged in then go to update your article using the icon in the upper right-hand corner:

   

   Then go to the Type of your post and change it on the drop down from Article to Tip as shown below:

   

   Then hit "Publish" and your Tip will now be in the submission queue for Tips.



7. What is a CodeProject Mentor?

   We have experienced authors who would be willing to help you with your article, to improve it, and help get it approved by the community. If we ask you if you want a Mentor and you say yes, we then submit your article to the Mentor Forum and hopefully one of our Mentors will assign themselves to it, and post helpful suggestions on your article's forum. You can talk discuss with them how to improve the article, and once they feel your article is ready, will make your article available to the community.

8. I can't get the formatting right in my article. What do I do?

   Contact us at submit@codeproject.com. We're happy to help

9. My article was approved and all the votes and comments are gone. Why?

   Because most new articles require improvements, they receive comments that, once the article is approved, will no longer be relevant. They also receive multiple 1 votes which authors do not like, so we remove both comments and votes. It is permanent. This is also why you cannot reply to some of your initial comments if you were notified by e-mail.



10. Are comments specific to an article revision?

    Comments are tied to specific versions in order to allow members to post comments while author's fine tune their article during the composition and approval process.

    An example is that you post a new article and it's in a Pending state while members approve it. A few members find fault with it, and you make those corrections, and then the article is approved. The comments related to corrections should not be included in the final published version of the article.

11. I posted my article a year ago, and it is still unedited. Why?

    We only have limited staff to deal with thousands upon thousands of articles. We do our best to give them all some lovin', but the sad fact is there are too many. We work as hard as we can. If you can't wait, contact us at submit@codeproject.com so we can speed things up.

12. I want to write an article on a third party product. Can I?

    We do not typically allow articles on Third Party Products and Tools. We will only allow articles on third party products at our discretion and provided the following rules are strictly followed:

    1. Must provide significant innovation and cannot simply be a how-to guide that would appear on the vendor's own help pages or must solve a significant problem common to users of the third party product or library
    2. Must not be an advertisement for the product. We are the final judges on this. There will be no mention of price, offers or coupons, upgrades, trials or anything that would induce or tempt a person to visit the third party site and download the product. This article is purely for those who already use the product.
    3. We reserve the right to replace any links to the product with search-engine unfriendly links. Articles must not be used to promote a product in any form, including SEO.
    4. Must be tagged "third-party"
    5. Articles tagged this way will not appear on the homepage or the newsletter
    6. Must not be written by anyone associated with the company. Self promotion is not allowed.
    7. Author must have written at least two articles NOT on third party products.
    8. Article must not be about a free product, tool, or service that is connected (no matter how tenuously) to a paid version.

    Finally, we reserve the right to make the call on all articles pertaining to third party products. We may allow articles that do not adhere to one or more of the aforementioned rules, and we may reject articles that follow every rule -- each article is judged on a case by case basis. If you discover an article that does not follow these rules, either report the article as spam/abusive, or send us an email at submit@codeproject.com.

    We no longer allow reviews on third party products and tools.

13. I see something wrong on someone's article, how do I report it?

    There is a flag in the top-right hand corner of each article if you are logged in. If you see an issue with an article, place your cursor on this flag to bring the following drop-down, then select the appropriate report from the list:

    

14. How are articles chosen for the monthly competition?

    Each month we do a monthly competition for the best articles (as voted by the community) in six categories: C#, C++, Web Development, Database, Mobile, and Everything Else. The voting is visible on the home page for two weeks. We start the voting for a particular month's set of articles the following month. For example, we would run October's competition in November. We try to start the voting approximately one week after a new month begins to allow articles that were posted later in the previous month a chance to get some votes.

    Articles for the monthly competition are chosen primarily by article rating, article popularity, tags, and how appropriate the article is for the category. In some cases, for example, you may see an article that simply used a lot of C# code in the C# category, but ideally each article is focused as specifically as possible on its category. You can see how article rating is calculated here. Aricle popularity is calculated by:

    $Article Rating \times \left ( \log_{10}NumberOfVotes \right )$

    Tags are fairly self-explanatory. If you want to be considered for the C# category, you must have a C# related tag in your article. Other categories are a little more broad. For example, if you want to be considered for the Web Development cateogry, you must have at least one tag related to Web Development, like IIS, ASP.NET, Javascript, CSS, HTML, PHP, MVC, jQuery, HTML5, Knockout.js, AngularJS, etc.