Experiment

So it looks like we're going to try a little experiment these next two weeks...I've given Ctein Admin status (called "Guest Author") here on TOP, and he's going to be posting several columns and moderating the comments to his own posts while I'm away moving. Note that the pace might be quite different from the usual—he's likely to write fewer posts, albeit substantive ones, perhaps to include his review of the new Retina iMac.

I haven't explored these options before. There's also a status called "Junior Author" (an unfortunate term, since it's sort of automatically belittling) which allows other authors to create their own posts which would then await my final editing and approval before posting.

That sounds a lot like the almighty Ed. is jealous of control, but not necessarily. Any publication has what's called a "style sheet," meaning all the standard ways that the myriad usage, punctuation and formatting issues that come up in written language are consistently handled. For instance, to name just a few out of hundreds, we follow classical American typesetting in using commas and periods inside quotation marks, "like this," instead of the European style which is "like this", and, in quotations, I allow British spelling but I regularize punctuation to site style.

Allowing "Junior Authors" to write their own posts to await posting by me would allow me to apply site style to all the posts, keeping the publication as a whole consistent despite having different authors.

I might try this when I get set up at TOP Rural Upstate World HQ. Could be fun.

Mike, who is on vacation and isn't supposed to be posting

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Comments

[James Weekes]

I hope your new digs has room for your new staff.

[Peter]

I like the junior author idea Mike. You could adopt the style of letter-format British scientific journal articles that start with "Sir, ..."

Slightly more seriously, this could be a once-a-week opportunity to expose the audience to the writing of one of our own, and give you an extra day for value added TOP activities that preclude being chained to you keyboard. That's gotta sound appealing to you!