Comments/Ratings for a Single Item

A question or two for Fergus, or another CVP editor:

How does one go about submitting an article of the type this one is to CVP (notice that it shows here and there within a small icon of a book with a question mark to indicate it's a CVP 'article' perhaps, but I'm guessing even at that)?

How does one submit a 'CVP review page' e.g. of the type Tim O'Lena wrote long ago for McCooey's Hexagonal Chess (it is linked within the rules page for that game, in that case - it has a small icon of an opened book to indicate its type)?

Are there other kinds of such things that one is not told anywhere how to do on CVP (it seems)? I noticed, for example, an icon of a camera for special entries displaying digital photographs of something or other, given in the Main CVP Alphabetical index.

Also, I cannot find any indication on CVP of how one gets an 'Updated' indication on something one has previously submitted, in the way of a rules page that has been modified since then. In my own case, I've never bothered since I didn't feel the need, but other people may wish to know.

All these little odds and ends above that I've been unable to find out where to read about have been something I've just accepted, but why does there have to be such mysteries to solve, even if one is not a newcomer? A list explaining every sort of icon included the in database that a contributor might one day involve himself with might be helpful, unless it would somehow be far too long, and that is what I think I am mostly getting at with my above questions and comments.

It was recently mentioned here that you can post an article in any format, by writing all text in the 'introduction' box of the submission form, and leaving the other sections empty. You would have to take care of your own section headers in that case, obviously, but the edit boxes allow you to do that even without having to touch raw HTML.

I think the icon that gets associated with it in the index (and elsewhere) is decided upon by an editor at the time he approves the submission. E.g. my Interactive Diagram article has the book-with-question-mark icon, but I never did anything special myself to get that. My 'Checkmating Applet' similarly has a black square with a white P on it.

@Kevin:

The icon for page types correspond to the Item Type (see the query forms to get a list of them).  The submission form doesn't currently give you all those choices, but an editor can change the page Type later.  I could look into adding other Types to the scripts; the main issue is whether the page layout and database information would need to be highly customized for any of them.

That reminds me, you posted earlier about pages' item Types and I forgot to respond.  Unlike game Categories, a page can only have one Type, so sometimes we just have to pick the subjective best fit.

The "New" and "Updated" icons are generated automatically, when the content's creation date or modification date are relatively recent.  (But the rest of your comment makes me think you meant something else, that I don't understand?)

It wouldn't take long to compile the list of image icons and their associated Types.  On the other hand, some of the Types are so infrequently used, and possibly are better off being deprecated.  There are other oddities of the site, arising throughout our history (like pages with multiple games, and attempts to index each game therein) that would be difficult to remedy but should probably remain obscure.

Kevin,

Reviews should be written as comments, not as pages. The review you mentioned was written before we had a comment system in place. To distinguish your comment as a review, give it a rating, and do not rate any of your other comments on the same page. When you favorite a game and write a review for it, a review link will show up for it on your personal information page. You will also find a link to a listing of reviews on the What's New page.

@ H.G. (and everyone): Thanks. It might be useful for contributors to have the instructions on how to write a CVP article linked to somehow from the CVP main page, rather than them gradually getting buried in the Comments section. Either that, or, better yet, have a 'Do you wish to submit an article' question posed in the general submission form that pops up normally when you wish to post your own game (or a preset page, etc.).

@ Ben (and everyone): Thanks. I had thought of the 'Updated' symbol as perhaps yet one more icon in the database, but I didn't know. At this point, though, I'd like to point out that whenever I have modified one of my Rules Pages for an invention of mine, it never shows a note at the bottom afterwards saying that I have modified my submission, and hence I get no 'Updated' symbol (nor showing on the What's New page is my submission icon, as a newly 'updated' item) as a result, it seems.

@ Fergus: (and everyone): Thanks. In looking at Tim O'Lena's old review of McCooey's Hexagonal Chess, it's rather long, and perhaps is not suitable for posting as an ordinary review/comment. It's more like as if it was a special review made by someone who really knew the topic (he posted links); perhaps there could still be a place for special review pages, as opposed to review comments by the average poster who may not have sought editorial approval as perhaps Tim did (I don't know). In any case, to do the sort of review Tim posted would I think now be best to do as an Article, if special review pages are no longer to be allowed to be submitted on CVP all the same.

Tim indicated much about the strategy of the game in question, which is perhaps beyond what a normal review would be, but rather it might have made for an Article instead nowadays (e.g. compare that there's an Article or two on Kriegspiel in the database, already). I'm running out of gas as far as fresh game invention ideas are concerned, and I'm toying with the idea of looking for other ways to contribute later on (hence looking at 'Items'/icons list could help rule things in or out faster). There is an old CVP Page called `How can I help` linked to somewhere, but it is now in an obscure place, and does not mention submitting e.g. Articles.

For possible future Article(s) by myself, I'm thinking about the idea of discussing strategies for a given CV(s), if I feel I'm sufficiently skilled at them to give such advice one day. Ironically I'm a chess master, which is not quite strong enough to give great chess strategy advice in print for beyond a certain level, but for little-tested CVs a certain amount of my chess skill may carry over, more usefully perhaps. Regardless, I'm not quite sure what's hoped for by editor(s) when writing a CVP Article. Maybe a policy statement about Articles could be linked to from the CVP Main Page, eventually.