Opportunities to help with the magazine

[porwig]

There are many opportunities available for those who want to help with the magazine. If you are interested in helping in any of these areas, please add a post here regarding what area(s) you are interested in helping in. Also, feel free to ask questions here about any of these roles.

Here are some of the areas where there are opportunities to help with the magazine:

Editors: Propose article ideas, review and edit submitted articles, follow up with authors about upcoming submission deadlines, help define and support magazine policies and guidelines, manage overall publishing workflow. Current members: Paul Orwig (porwig), nant, rleathers, greenx, Raghav Tomar (raghavtomar).

Webmasters: Manage content in multiple media formats, content categories, user accounts, supporting extensions, publishing process. Current members: Paul Orwig (porwig), Airton Torres

Authors: Submit articles, either as single contributions or on an ongoing basis. Articles must meet content guidelines. Note: All article categories have not yet been fully defined. Please contribute to Content Structure thread to share your ideas on what article categories should be in the magazine! Current members: Open to anyone.

Design team: Help work with Komrade design team to develop the design and layout for the magazine. Update and manage changes to the design and layout. Current members: Ron Severdia, Paul Orwig (porwig)

Editor/Author review teams: Write individual reviews on different Joomla! related subjects (extension categories, template frameworks, etc.), contribute to comparative team reviews, develop ideas for upcoming review subjects, monitor community voting results. Current members:
Hilary Cheyne (co-lead), Neri Valentin-Macias (co-lead), Saurabh Shah, Brian Sullivan, Norm Douglas, Miljan Vujosevic, Ahmad Alfy, X5Creative, Nicholas K. Dionysopoulos, Bo Astrup

Other: What other roles do you feel should be added?

[Edit: Updating with current names as people come and go in different areas.]

[mandville]

prrof readers.. speel ceckers...?

[OnTheMarkDesign]

prrof readers.. speel ceckers...?

Not only are those both critical roles, having someone "proof" the technical part of the articles will be important too!

The "proof readers" and "spell checkers" would seem to fit into the "Editorial Team".

[porwig]

Thanks mandville. Mark is right in that as currenty envisioned, it will be the editor's job to proofread and spell check submitted articles. Hopefully authors will do a thorough spell check before submitting an article. We should also publish a pretty detailed style guide so authors can deliver articles that will follow the magazine's style conventions.

There was an early suggestion that articles should undergo a "peer review" step in advance of a regular editor's review, in order to hopefully insure the accuracy of facts. There was some dissent on the "peer review" step along the lines of "it's too much extra work for a volunteer effort". So that "peer review" step is not in the publishing workflow as of now.

I think if we get a large enough group of volunteers then it would be nice if we could add a "peer review" into the workflow. Or if it ends up that there are a lot of problems with factual mistakes in articles, we may not have any choice but to add a "peer review" step to the workflow.

[mandville]

thanks for the clarification. it was just an obvious (to me) thing/phrase that seemed to be missing.
I agree that people should submit as "near perfect" submissions as possible.

[euoceo]

thanks for the clarification. it was just an obvious (to me) thing/phrase that seemed to be missing.
I agree that people should submit as "near perfect" submissions as possible.

Ditto. I've written for Compute! and a couple of other long gone magazines. Used to have a monthly column too in a local magazine focused on computer issues and various platforms (gone too).

Editors LOVE you and will ask you back (or give you a column) if your work requires little editing.

[leolam]

Paul,
I am game if you and Dex want my support on Editors

Leo

[nant]

Also available for editorial tasks.

[rleathers]

I would like to volunteer for the editorial team. Time to put that journalism degree to some good use!

[porwig]

Leo, nant, and rleathers,

Thanks to you all for volunteering to help as editors, we can definitely use your help! I will add your forum names to the list in the first post of this thread.

There are some things which need to be better defined that the editors need to discuss and decide on, such as:

Help define content structure: Please catch up on the Content Structure forum thread and contribute your thoughts on what content categories the magazine should have. Also be thinking in terms of what area(s) you would prefer to work as an editor for.

Article submission process and workflow: We need to figure out the best way for authors to submit articles that will simplify the editing process and overall workflows. For example, should we create a user account for every author (even those who might just submit a single article) and allow them to log in to submit their article, or do we create a public form that anyone can use to submit an article? Think about how this will impact the workflow. For example, what happens if an editor needs to notify the author that the article needs to be revised and resubmitted? Do we need to keep track of those actions or do we just handle the resubmission as a new article? There are other questions to be addressed in this area as well.
[Mod: Created new topic "Article submission process & workflow"]

Style guide: Helping to make clear for authors how to format their articles to minimize the editing workload. I believe Dex has done some work in this area, she can help clarify that. Also, some aspects of the style guide will be driven by work done by the Komrade design team.

[greenx]

I would like to volunteer for the editorial team. I edit a web site, www.linuxnewsnow.com

regards

Greg

[porwig]

Great thanks Greg, and welcome to the forum!

I have added you to our list of editors. I will add a new thread soon about some tasks that the editors need to tackle. I'll PM you and the other editors when that new thread is added.

[severdia]

Hi Paul, put me down on the design team...

[porwig]

Hi Paul, put me down on the design team...

Great thanks Ron, you are on there!

I think we're very close to getting the K2 security audit completed, which has been the main predecessor to starting work on the design. In my mind, defining the content structure (IA) for the magazine isn't a predecessor, but it will be one of the first issues the Komrade design team will want to address with us. I think we've got a pretty good start on that in the Content Structure thread. I think it's certain that ideas for magazine features will come and go, so hopefully we'll come up with a flexible design/layout that can easily accomodate those changng features over time.

[raghavtomar]

Dear Paul,
I was really excited to see you calling people for magazine support. I have been using Joomla for about a year now and love to make people aware about it! (I am trying to do my bit in the Joomla Forum these days for that exact reason!).
Anyway, I am considered pretty good at editorial jobs (by my superiors). So if there is anything to do, I would like to help you with it!
Please feel free to contact me.

Regards,
Raghav Tomar

[porwig]

Great thanks for your interest to help Raghav! I have added you to our Editors team.

I will start a new thread here soon about "Editors Issues" so we can start thinking about and discussing those subjects. I will contact you and the other editors at that time to request your participation in those discussions.

[raghavtomar]

@Paul: Thanks a lot for that! Looking forward to doing something productive for the magazine!
Regards,
Raghav Tomar

[normdouglas]

Paul, just wanted to clarify that this is the new official thread of the magazine? In which case I'm just confirming that I'm keen to be a part of the Extensions team, and a "Non Joomla stuff" area.

Cheers

[porwig]

Hi Norm,

Yes this is the official forum for the magazine. Have you connected with Hilary or Neri yet? They are the co-leads for the extension review teams. If you haven't connected with them yet, please send me a PM and I will give you their contact information.

Thanks,

paul

[seointexas]

I have some time available to offer some web development services if needed. I am a big user and fan of !Joomla and use it almost exclusively now in my web development services. Count me in if you need me!

[himanshu981]

Hi Paul and Ron!

I am ready to help you in graphics part. I have expertise in Photoshop and CorelDraw.

[porwig]

Hi himanshu981,

Thanks for offering to help with the magazine! However, we are now almost complete with the design, so we don't need more help in that area at the moment.

Perhaps you would consider submitting an article for the magazine? If so, please read this blog post about the magazine's upcoming launch and if you are still interested in submitting an article, take a closer look at the links about submitting articles in that blog post.

Thanks again,

paul