It's been a few weeks since the last Public Access Weekly newsletter, when I mentioned we were working on some significant changes to Public Access in order to make our community better. I'd like to share what's been happening behind the scenes since that last update.
We spent a lot of time reading through the more than 2,600 articles that have been published on Public Access, discussing the volume of articles that are awaiting review in Pending status, and the number of incoming registrants who want to join the community. We looked at page views, social shares, how many articles each member has published and how many members has never published a single post (or even logged in once accepted). We went through all the articles, removing and rejecting those that ran afoul of our community rules, and looked at how many members had been disciplined for violating them. In doing so, we came to a difficult, but necessary decision that it's time for the great Public Access experiment to end.
The official announcement will come on Monday, but we wanted to let our members know first. On Thursday, March 9th we will shut down Public Access in order to refocus our community efforts and resources into other areas.
What does that mean for you? It means there will no longer be a Public Access page on Engadget, or a log in to access your Public Access profile or articles. Stories that have already been published will remain live, but only accessible via URL -- so if you want to hold on to your work, you'll need to copy the links to your articles (as that will be the only way to read and share them going forward). There will no longer be any Public Access author profiles, so please save the individual links to your stories!
If you have an article in Draft status, you will have until Thursday, March 9th to snag it out of our CMS. If you have an article in Pending status, your article will be published or returned to you by Thursday, March 9th. We will no longer be sending back edits or corrections to articles, and will not review articles that have been re-submitted after being returned.
If you have registered to become a Public Access member, you will be receiving an email with the details, however we encourage you to sign up for the Engadget community. Currently, members can comment on any Engadget story and create product reviews for any and all gadgets they have. However, additional tools and features are in our plans for the community, and signing up is the best way to stay informed as we roll them out later this year.
We are, truly, so very grateful for all the members and authors who helped to make Public Access what it is -- we are proud of the excellent contributions that were made to the page, and we hardly imagined that it would grow to its current size. It's been a real pleasure to work with you on publishing and promoting your stories and growing the Public Access community, and I look forward to seeing you all in the next phases of Engadget's community plan.
Oh, and one last thing -- the publicaccess@engadget.com email address will stay open for anyone who has questions or needs assistance.
