[Plugin: Assignment Desk] Adding a Freelancer we don't want to add as a user

Hey Tony,
Regarding #1, that’s outside the scope of the Assignment Desk. There are a number of reasons why we’ve restricted participation to existing and new users, and we don’t have plans to change that in the future. There may be other plugins where you can add a byline to a post without adding the user to the system.

Regarding #2, that’s actually an interesting feature request we may be able to satisfy in the near future. There isn’t a way to override that now, but it would be a pretty simple option to add. Let’s talk further this weekend.

Cheers,

Daniel

Okay…sounds good. We’ll chat further this weekend about it.

Thanks for your time. Much appreciated.

I’m an NYU alum and a NYTimes fan…so I’m very excited about that partnership and we want to be involved with this here at UNC Chapel Hill.

BTW, what’s the argument for restricting participation to only registered users of the system? In my mind, it’s so you can register posts against a user ID in the system, and then return all posts against that user in the future or for archival purposes.

My boss, on the other hand, wants the freedom to add names from outside freelancers, but does not want to give them user roles in the system. And, he doesn’t want to return posts against those user names.

He’s the former VP at the Baltimore Sun. He said that you will then have to manage thousands of people contributing to stories, when only a subset of those contributors should be users in the system. You can’t possibly register everyone. And, if you tried, many of those users might not accept the system registration email. They would be assigned, but go unaccepted, thereby not allowing you to post anything with their name attached, for the reasons I gave in the other thread about not being able to change the co-author name if the co-author hasn’t accepted their role.

Per your email:

If the story has already been written, you don’t necessarily need to assign a user. Did you know there’s an ‘authors’ dropdown where you can choose the byline on the post? Or, if you have Co-Authors Plus installed, add multiple bylines?

I know that there are drop downs where you can choose the author, but because we’re pulling the byline from co-authors plus, because we need to have multiple authors. And, as I said, for some reason we’re glitching where we can change an authors name unless they’ve accepted.

BTW, what’s the argument for restricting participation to only registered users of the system? In my mind, it’s so you can register posts against a user ID in the system, and then return all posts against that user in the future or for archival purposes.

This is correct. We require users to be logged in so that we have a unique identifier for every user. Not only is this used for assigning stories, but it’s also required when you pitch a story, vote, or volunteer.

From a data perspective, we need the unique identifier so the record of the users’ participation remains consistent across all of their interactions. For instance, if they try to vote we need to ensure they haven’t voted before. They need to log in to vote to begin with, so it makes sense to use WordPress’ user model than rewrite our own that does the exact same thing. Does explanation make sense?

My boss, on the other hand, wants the freedom to add names from outside freelancers, but does not want to give them user roles in the system. And, he doesn’t want to return posts against those user names.

I understand the product request from your boss. If he’s really set on not having every contributor sign up for an account, which means they also won’t be able to vote, pitch a story via form, or volunteer, then another suggestion I could offer is to have a custom field called ‘byline’ and have that appear on your template instead of the author in the database if there’s a value for it. Would that work?

Thanks,

Daniel

To the second question, yes, we were thinking about adding a custom field. It’s just a bit unconventional to pull author info from two different sources, but not insurmountable.

My only problem with that is that there is no way, then, to pull archival footage that freelancers create. The story becomes lost, and by wordpress default I think there is always an “Author,” we just wouldn’t be displaying it in our theme. Therefore, the posts would go under whoever the “Author” is, which is incorrect. Those posts would still show up on that author page.

If you create a custom field while registering a custom post type, you could actually register a post against a freelance contributor name, without registering that user. However, the non-user will not have any rights in the system, but could feasibly pull up his/her posts. I learned a lot about custom post types and taxonomies. If we register a taxonomy called “contributors”, then registered a taxonomy called “freelancer”, and tied a persons name to those in the system (contributors/freelancer/name-of-freelancer), we could feasibly return all posts tied to that freelancers name by matching the name with any post that the name is pulled by. If you are registering a custom field against a post, then surely the post ID and custom field are matched in the DB.

Hey Tony,
If you’re willing to write a patch with the following functionality, we’re open to considering it. Otherwise, it’s outside the scope of our feature set.

Thanks,

Daniel