Some are just awful...

Question

Some are just awful...

Jeff Moden

SSC Guru

Points: 1004434
More actions
January 14, 2008 at 9:59 pm

#202345

Jeez... Steve, if you're gonna point us at articles on other sites, you could at least pick some good ones... lot's of them have been just awful, lately. Unless they're sponsored which means you guys make some money at it, you might want to consider publishing more articles from the folks in SQLServerCentral.com.
--Jeff Moden
RBAR is pronounced "ree-bar" and is a "Modenism" for Row-By-Agonizing-Row.
First step towards the paradigm shift of writing Set Based code:
________Stop thinking about what you want to do to a ROW... think, instead, of what you want to do to a COLUMN.
Change is inevitable... Change for the better is not.
Helpful Links:
How to post code problems
How to Post Performance Problems
Create a Tally Function (fnTally)

Viewing 5 posts - 1 through 4 (of 4 total)

You must be logged in to reply to this topic. Login to reply

Steve Jones - SSC Editor SSC Guru Points: 736603 More actions · Answer 1

Sorry about that. I scan lots of other sites and try to pick up all the SQL Server content that there is. It's kind of a hit and miss, just like the articles here. Sometimes hard for me to decide if it's just me that doesn't like it or if it's bad.

Any specific complaints?

Jeff Moden SSC Guru Points: 1004434 More actions · Answer 2

Of course... but I guess I'd rather keep it professional (or at least try to salvage some semblance of professionalism on my part after my initial outburst) by not citing individual articles or perceived faults.

I guess a more important point than flaming on those articles is that I understand that there's a 4 to 8 week backlog of articles written by the good folks on SQLServerCentral.com... personally, I'd rather hear/see what they have to say in their articles than those from other sites. There's a huge amount of talent here... if they knew that an article would be published sooner than later, they might be more inspired to write a thought provoking article or an article on a recent bit of good code they've had to deploy along with the thought process they went through to develop the code.

Heh... if I wanted to read articles on other sites, I wouldn't spend so much time here!

Now that I've said that... all of you other folks that have such great posts (you know who you are) and you "lurkers" and "newbies" with an idea or technique... do some research on a subject (helps a lot if you're right) , write an article about it (even if it's been covered by someone else in a previous article), include some POP code (proof of principle), and submit it! All ya gotta do is click on the "Write for us" link on the left side of this page, then click on "visit the Contribution center" at the top of the next page, click on "Contribute Article", and you'll be taken to a nice little editor to write your article with (instuctions included if you click on the question-mark Icon). You can save a copy without actually submitting it so you don't have to write it all in one sitting. Or, you can write it in something like WORD and paste most of it.

The side benefits of writing such articles are huge... To start with, you can point a future employer to a couple of the articles and say "Look, I'm published". Better than that, when you're doing the research/testing to write an article and build some POP code (if it's a code related article), you'll be absolutely amazed at how much more you'll learn on the subject than you intended to write about. AND, you'll find that your writing skills (an essential form of communication in the workplace) will increase making you even more valuable to employers than you already are! Last but not least, they throw you a small but satisfying bit of money for the article! We might even get Steve to start giving extra points for articles based on the rating of the article (what do you think, Steve??? 50 points per star and 1/10th of a point for each read in the first 30 days?).

--Jeff Moden

RBAR is pronounced "ree-bar" and is a "Modenism" for Row-By-Agonizing-Row.
First step towards the paradigm shift of writing Set Based code:
________Stop thinking about what you want to do to a ROW... think, instead, of what you want to do to a COLUMN.

Change is inevitable... Change for the better is not.

Helpful Links:
How to post code problems
How to Post Performance Problems
Create a Tally Function (fnTally)

Steve Jones - SSC Editor SSC Guru Points: 736603 More actions · Answer 3

Good points. And I'd love to see more articles from people in the community.

And our backlog has been as low as a week, as long as 5 weeks. For some reason it's longer now, though after about 4 or 5 weeks, I'll double up on some.

The problem is if I put every article out as soon as I get it, I'll have some newsletters with 5, some with none. It's the battle of a publisher to ensure that they always have something to put out there.

Jeff Moden SSC Guru Points: 1004434 More actions · Answer 4

Heh... understood on the scheduling thing... not a predictable "tide".

--Jeff Moden

RBAR is pronounced "ree-bar" and is a "Modenism" for Row-By-Agonizing-Row.
First step towards the paradigm shift of writing Set Based code:
________Stop thinking about what you want to do to a ROW... think, instead, of what you want to do to a COLUMN.

Change is inevitable... Change for the better is not.

Helpful Links:
How to post code problems
How to Post Performance Problems
Create a Tally Function (fnTally)