There is no visible difference between an unpublished draft and a published article. I am not the only one who has written an article and wondered why it seems to have drawn absolutely no response, then remembered there is this feature of not publishing immediately. I then hunted around for something to click called “Publish”. In fact you have to click “Edit”, even if the text already says exactly what it should, and publish from the edit page.
Proposal. When viewing multiple articles on a page, each article (down to its summary break) is currently followed by a block with “Comments (nnn)” at the left and a set of links (“Edit”, “Save”, etc.) at the right.
An unpublished draft cannot usefully have comments. Therefore, replace the comments link by the words “Unpublished draft”, in the same text style (but not a link to anything).
Add to the series of links at the right, one called “Publish”, which will immediately publish the article. ETA: Web conventions might indicate that “Publish” be a button rather than a link, since it Does Something rather than Going Somewhere.
Unpublished drafts also show up on the user’s “Submitted” page. But they are not submitted, so they should not be displayed there.
There is no visible difference between an unpublished draft and a published article. I am not the only one who has written an article and wondered why it seems to have drawn absolutely no response, then remembered there is this feature of not publishing immediately. I then hunted around for something to click called “Publish”. In fact you have to click “Edit”, even if the text already says exactly what it should, and publish from the edit page.
Proposal. When viewing multiple articles on a page, each article (down to its summary break) is currently followed by a block with “Comments (nnn)” at the left and a set of links (“Edit”, “Save”, etc.) at the right.
An unpublished draft cannot usefully have comments. Therefore, replace the comments link by the words “Unpublished draft”, in the same text style (but not a link to anything).
Add to the series of links at the right, one called “Publish”, which will immediately publish the article. ETA: Web conventions might indicate that “Publish” be a button rather than a link, since it Does Something rather than Going Somewhere.
Unpublished drafts also show up on the user’s “Submitted” page. But they are not submitted, so they should not be displayed there.