The Mailer Review/Volunteer/Remediating Articles

A Guide for Volunteer Digital Editors

Written by
Gerald R. Lucas

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Abstract: A digital editor’s guide for translating print articles to digital for The Mailer Review.

Welcome, volunteer, or Assistant Digital Editor. We’re glad you decided to lend your expertise and time in helping to grow our Digital Humanities project. This guide is written specifically for volunteer digital editors who want to help in moving, or “translating,” our print version of The Mailer Review to the digital version here on Project Mailer. Please read this document in for specific directions on translating your article to be used on the screen.

We use the word “translating” here to emphasize that reading on paper is a different activity than reading on the screen. In fact, we might say that we don’t really read articles on the screen at all: we use them. So, how do we translate a document from a medium that emphasizes a sit-back, passive activity to one that promotes a lean-forward, active one? Documents meant to be used on the screen should have different qualities than paper documents. This guide breaks down the qualities we should consider when creating a digital document on this site. We try to cover most items, but being a digital editor often requires us to make it up as we go along.

When we translate, we should always keep this question in mind: what is the most logical way to make this document fit the expectations of those who will be using it? Let’s try to detail our current approach.

Get Started

The first order of business is to request an account and get your first article for editing. These are both accomplished by sending an email to editorprojectmailer.net; they both could be done in the same email.

If you’re brand new to MediaWiki, the software that runs this web site, you should take a couple of tutorials to familiarize yourself with some of the basics. Begin with Wikipedia’s Help:Introduction which will take you through a series of tutorials designed to familiarize you with the essentials. Take the tutorials on the source editor (not the visual) which uses wiki markup, as that is the only available editor on PM.

Get Your Account

First off, you need to request an account. If you have a particular user name in mind, let me know. Mine is Grlucas, but yours can be anything you'd like. I will create an account for you with a temporary password using the email address you sent the request with. You will need to confirm your account, log in, and change your password. Then, you’re ready to edit.

Get Your Article

Begin your journey by requesting an article from the editor. If you have no preference, just send an email to editorprojectmailer.net and ask for the next article, or request a red link article (meaning it needs to be added), being sure to give the volume number.

Sourcing

There are two approaches to sourcing, depending on the complexity of the author’s citations. If the article has just a handful of sources, you might just include them in the body of the article and will just use a “Citations” section at the end of the document. If there are many sources, say over-ten, you should have a “Citations” section and a “Works Cited” section and use the shortened footnotes approach.