I think I initially posted this question on the wrong forum.... "all things plants", so am going to duplicate it here.

I was reading an earlier idea/article again today and noticed that it did not receive any acorns from "admin". (First time that I've personally noticed that.) This particular article did generate some acorns from readers and had numerous comments.

This had me wondering what is the criteria to earn acorns for ideas/articles?

Are Articles and Gardening Ideas the same thing? This is what it says in the section about how to earn Acorn's.

Gardening Ideas: Write and get published a gardening idea - From 1 up to 50 acorns. Varies depending on the length and quality.

Every article earns acorns. Very very short (like less than a paragraph) articles will get an acorn. Long full length articles get 50 acorns. And then there are other amounts for the in between lengths. The system automatically decides each one based on the word count, and Trish has the power to over-ride that and award more acorns than the system would automatically assign.

My CB4L article yesterday received no acorns because I posted it in the middle of the day. Usually when we do something like that we manually give the acorns but since it was "just me" I decided not to.

Dave - The idea/article was a short one. Often, out of curiosity, I like to look to see who gave how many acorns. (I like to see who the generous folks are giving the acorns.) That's when I noticed that "admin" had not given any to the writer of the idea/article.

The writer doesn't even know I am asking about this which prompted my inquiry. This is the article that I am referring to:

http://garden.org/ideas/view/p...

@Trish will know better on that one. She's the one who assigns articles. If she was late assigning it (meaning she assigned it to the date after the day started) then she has to manually give the acorns. She might have forgotten.

Well, I'm glad I saw this thread because I'd missed that cute article and I enjoyed it!

I'd say that Trish being wife to 1, mom to 7 and all the other things in her care ... she can be forgiven for forgetting to issue acorns once in awhile.

Dave - Thanks! I didn't know who assigned acorns and I didn't know if there was a reason it didn't get any acorns from admin. I was basically inquiring ...

Lin - I liked the article too! One more reason why I want a couple chickens in my yard!

I sure wish I could have chickens here but the HOA would fine us big time for sure. In a couple more years when my husband retires we are planning on moving down your way (my sister and her husband are looking at homes there in Sebastian today!) and our plan is to relocate there eventually ... maybe if we have a place in the country we will have a chicken or two!

Lin -

Yep- all ideas/articles get acorns unless I mess up, which obviously I did here.

Trish, You are allowed to miss something once in awhile.

Thanks, Lin

You are very

OMG -- Trish is HUMAN ?!

Thanks for all you do, Trish!

Weedwhacker said:OMG -- Trish is HUMAN ?!

You caught me

Thanks for all you do, Trish!

Trish - No problemo! If I would have known it was you giving the acorns for articles, I would have just tree-mailed you to inquire. I have no idea who does what here on ATP. Sorry about that.

I really liked pixie62560's cute article! I still want a couple of chickens and had to go back and read some of the comments that others wrote and that's when I noticed ....

"The System" (that's its name) automatically gives the acorns to the writer. However, when the publisher (that's me- I schedule the articles) is asleep at the wheel and forgets to schedule before the 7pm deadline, The System can't do its job. I have to manually award the acorns at that point. In this case, I failed to do that part as well, it seems.

I think I understand how that works. The amount of acorns is both automatically determined by the word count and given at the time the article is published. If the article misses the 7:00 pm deadline then you (Trish) has to release the article for publishing and award the "admin" acorns manually. If acorns aren't awarded at that time, can you still give them later?

I wondered why most of the articles had the following day's date on them when they were published the night before. I didn't realize that 7 pm is when most articles are released by the system for publishing here on ATP. Now I understand. The system is programmed to add the next article at 7 pm each day unless you override the system?

Do all the articles go into a queue and are released one at a time on their scheduled day?

That is pretty cool that this process is basically automatic! (There must be a very efficient and talented programmer writing all this website's software!!! ) I honestly had no idea! I just thought someone else here on ATP was doing it every day. I knew you were approving articles and possibly editing them for errors, but I didn't know you (& the system) were also the one responsible for publishing & awarding acorns. There are many people here behind the scenes keeping this website and all the inner workings running smoothly. And I know there are different moderators as well watching over each forum. I am always amazed at how effortlessly ATP appears to run.

My genuine thanks to you Trish, Dave, and all the other folks here who do their best to make our experience on ATP an enjoyable one!

The article queue flow goes like this:
Writer submits the article- it goes into a "submitted" area.
I approve the article- it goes into a "approved" area
The article is given a run date- it is now "on the calender"
Anywhere during this process, either Dave (but almost never him), zuzu, or I will edit the article.
Anywhere during this time, the author can edit their own article and resubmit it- which also shows up on my screen in the "submitted" area, which I will just approve the edits. Where the article is in the flow doesn't change.

Once it is "on the calender", The System publishes it at 7pm (Central, BTW). Sometime in the next hour, The System will award the acorns to the author for that article. The number awarded is based on the length of the article.

Why 7pm? That is the start of the new ATP day. The System is set to UTC time, so 7pm is midnight UTC.

I schedule and edit articles as I have time to do so. Sometimes I get "ahead" and schedule things a long time in advance (rarely), often I edit and schedule a week at a time, and (more often that I'd rather admit to), I'm scurring to schedule an article at 5-6:00 before publish time. Sometimes I even forget altogether, and Dave sends me an email at 7:10 asking me why there's not a new article on the homepage. At that point, I schedule one (or he does). The System as already run it's acorn giving, so it is manually done at that point and the acorns come from me personally instead of "admin". Naturally I can give acorns at any time, just like you can.

We try to have as many things automated as possible.

As to the "who does what", If Dave and I don't personally do the task, we'll take the blame for it As always, we give credit and appreciation to our database moderators who run the database (more like pour themselves into it!), and our forum moderators who keep their forums clean and oiled You can find out who moderates which forums in that particular forum- most forums don't have moderators- in which case that would be Dave and I.

Hope that clears up how things work a little more.

Thanks Trish for all the information. I certainly wasn't looking to point fingers at anyone, I was just inquiring as I really had no clue. And it also didn't occur to me that 7 pm might be UTC time.