Zoran Horvat

Zoran Horvat

  • NA
  • 4.5k
  • 746.5k

Suggestion to Articles section administrators

Aug 4 2011 9:49 AM
Without trying to sound offensive, I would like to raise the question on quality and focus of articles published on C# Corner.

Author guidelines are available to every author and they should be obeyed. If not because that is the set of rules of the house, then because those guidelines are really correctly made if one tries to read them carefully. I have done a little survey and found out that at least 50% (and up to two thirds) of articles published on C# Corner do not meet these guidelines:
3. Submit only original content that is written by you for the article. Do not copy from MSDN or any other sites.
4. Do not submit reworked MSDN content either. Make sure your article reads like an article, not just documentation.

These rules are crucial in any kind of (technical) article. Without them, it would not be the article but something else - blog, tutorial... Every author should be aware of what writing an article means. One definition which serves my point well (taken from http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/article) is this:
Article is a written composition in prose, usually nonfiction, on a specific topic, forming an independent part of a book or other publication, as a newspaper or magazine.

To explain in looser terms, article must have a topic which it covers, and must have a kind of conclusion, or outcome. If author simply writes reflections on some phenomenon, then it is not an article. Text titled "Compare Method in String Class" is not an article. It could be technical documentation, but not an article. It's just because such text doesn't lead anywhere. So what that there is Compare method in String class? What with it? Something like "String.Compare Method in Internationalized Applications" might become an article, depending on articulation of the idea. If it only shows how to use this method to compare localized strings then it could rather be classified as a tutorial. Deeper analysis might as well require more detailed title, something like: Improving String Comparison Performance Using Localized String.Compare Method. Well, that would be an article. Especially if it measures performance and compares it with alternative approaches.

Unfortunately, C# Corner Articles section is often flooded with trivial or obviously copied materials. Some of them could be moved to blogs and tutorials. Some others rejected by moderators on grounds of copy/paste life style.

As a conclusion, I would like to ask moderators to strengthen criteria applied when approving articles. I don't believe that passing everything to the Articles page can help improve hit rate of the site (if that was the idea behind). Even more, I strongly believe that allowing unfiltered materials to the Articles section would in finite time have negative effects on SEO, because such Web site is obviously not visited by a focused population of Web users, i.e. users who come to the site and stay there browsing its contents for more information. It might only attract people on first sight, but they would soon close it and go further searching for solution.

Worst thing which can happen to anyone on the Internet is to search for a solution to a very specific problem and then to open Web sites one by one, seeing same unfitting examples and same incomplete explanations, only to find correct, detailed solution presented somewhere at fifth or tenth page on Google. Placing unfiltered texts to the Articles section might bring C# Corner to second or third page on Google on many queries, but only as a form of e-pig, good to jump over it for anyone taking the matters seriuosly.

Answers (18)