Allow anyone to post articles, but moderate them
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hiya,
Is there a way on wordpress.com to allow absolutely anyone to submit an article? And then if so have them held until approved by a moderator much like you can do with quotes?
I want to set up a blog to be an announcement board for a particular community, with approval needed to weed out any spam attempts.
Thanks for any suggestions.
-james
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This is from the FAQ page How do I add more authors / users to my blog? [screencast]
Teck
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FAQ » What are the different roles?
Also note in the screen cast in the above entry you cannot pick a password for them
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You cannot do exactly what you want with a blog.
If you want an announcement board for a particular community, with absolutely anyone able to submit posts, what you want is a wiki, not a blog.
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teck07: I’m sorry you don’t seem to have read my initial post properly. I want “absolutely anyone” to be able to submit an article. To spell that out for you, it does not include a list of people whose email addresses I know. Absolutely anyone means absolutely anyone on the net. (Hence the need for moderation). I.e. a completely open (but moderated) blog journal. There isn’t a way to put * in the email field or anything!
raincoaster: I recognize that a wiki might be more effective for this. But that is really for collaborative authoring, again a slightly different thing. I don’t want anyone to be able to edit anyone else’s articles, just anyone to be able to post and then an admin to approve/edit the post.
So basically, the answer is no, there is no way to open your blog to allow anyone to post. It is what I thought but disappointing.
-James
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It’s not that a wiki would be slightly more effective. What you want is just not possible in a blog on WordPress.com.
It might be possible with an independent WP install, but you’d need to look over on WordPress.ORG for tips about that.
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Technically speaking, you could post the subject as the Post and then let your authors “post” as commenters and set commenting to moderated for all comments.
Drawbacks: your commenters would not be able to edit their comment once they posted it (but you would). To be fair, you should announce this up front.
FWIW-I’ve seen a couple of weekly poetry challenge blogs that do this.
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Re. justjennifer’s idea: if the association with a particular post won’t do, you can set up a suitably titled page instead, with a note in it explaining the procedure.
You could also set up such a page in which you will add the WP contact form (with comments off).
In both cases, the material submitted through the comments or the contact form can then be copied and turned into posts by the administrator of the blog.
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justjennifer & panaghiotisadam: Both great ideas thanks. I especially like the possibility of setting up a page which might allow users to submit the article. Is there any way to do that and have it automatically added as a comment to a particular post? (My thought being I start one post, and then the announcements are just individual (moderated) comments on it.) Approving a comment is a lot better than copying and pasting into an article, that is why I ask.
Both useful and helpful suggestions, thanks!
-James
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@digitalmedievalist
"teck07: I'm sorry you don't seem to have read my initial post properly. I want "absolutely anyone" to be able to submit an article. To spell that out for you, it does not include a list of people whose email addresses I know."Your best bet is to move away from wordpress.com and get
your own host and install the free wordpress software
then you will have the ability to achieve what your asking
(Just to spell it out for you.)Teck
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@digitalmedievalist: The contact-form material would need copy-pasting. Comments are added automatically, in both posts and pages.
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I expect it is possible with wordpress.ORG, but it would require a massive rewrite of the wordpress files.
How good are you with PHP scripting?
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I just thought of something:
You could make a Contributor-level account yourself and post the username and password; then anyone could make a post, but it would be held for your approval.
I’m sure there MUST be some flaw with this (other than spamming, which is obvious). Anyone?
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@digitalmedievalist, Teck answered the question you asked. Here on WordPress.com, in order for someone to post an article but not be able to publish it without approval first, they have to be added as a “Contributor” on your blog.
Allowing absolutely anyone to “post” without inviting them, i.e. without making them a “Contributor”, then commenting and comment moderation is the only way. You might also want to check out the Prologue theme for this purpose. http://en.blog.wordpress.com/2008/01/28/introducing-prologue/
Those are the only choices I know of here on WordPress.COM
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Hmmmm…@rain, just thinking here on the backend of things, would that also give the contributor access to profile information, like changing a password?
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@jennifer
To answer your question, no. A contributor does only have access to the parts of the blog they can edit, i.e. writing and editing a post. You can see all posts by other contributors, but you cannot do anything to them. As far as profile goes, a contributor has to log in in order to write as a contributor, so he (or she) can only access his (or her) own profile information.
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