Feature request: Person who FIRST edited the post

  • Resolved TheArcturian

    (@thearcturian)


    8 years, 7 months ago

    Nice plugin. Been looking for something like this, though a weekly/monthly stats would be nice too.

    The plugin makes quite a few mistakes in guessing already published posts at our site. I see that the plugin searches for “who last edited the post”.

    In reality, I think you will have a greater correct hit if you search for “who FIRST edited the post”. That is usually the person who is doing the biggest job with the post as well.

    Also, the person with the most post revisions is also highly likely to be the publisher of the post. Now, I come up way too often as the publisher. I’m the editor and usually polishes the articles after publishing.

    If you use those two guesses instead, your plugin would be much more precise for earlier published posts. I hope to see a update on that. Thanks!

    https://wordpress.org/plugins/published-by/

Viewing 2 replies - 1 through 2 (of 2 total)
  • Plugin Author Scott Reilly

    (@coffee2code)

    WordPress & Plugin Developer

    8 years, 5 months ago

    @thearcturian: Hi,

    Thanks for the feedback!

    Unfortunately, there isn’t a universally successful approach to guessing the actual publishing user of a post from before this plugin was activated.

    WordPress on its own tracks who last edited a post, which is the first fallback for this plugin. WP does not track the first (or any other) editor of the post. Even if it did, the first person (or any Nth person) can’t be assumed to be the publishing user either (it may be the original author or any number of other editors who didn’t actually press the publish button). Granted, the last user to edit the post isn’t guaranteed to be the publishing user either, but I feel its a reasonable and straightforward fallback assumption.

    And while a post may have post revisions, any guesses made from those won’t apply for all people or all posts. I can definitely envision a post getting drafted with numerous revisions by the original author, while the publishing editor does a quick read and publish with fewer revisions. So in this case the user with the most revisions isn’t the publishing user. I don’t think’s it’s viable to assume the publishing user will work on a post more often (in terms of revisions) than any non-publishing users.

    However, I’ve made a note to investigate if it’s viable to infer the publishing author from the revisions.

    In the meantime, if the plugin’s guessing is more wrong for your site than it is right, you can use the documented line of code to disable all guessing.

    Thread Starter TheArcturian

    (@thearcturian)

    8 years, 5 months ago

    I see your points. It’s just different at our magazine. Anyways, after having your plugin running for a few months now, it is only the last month that is interesting anyways and obviously now everything is reported exactly as it is.

    Thanks for getting back to me.

Viewing 2 replies - 1 through 2 (of 2 total)
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