One line per story: the backlog that articles are made from.
Rewriting shows the enriched news items that have not yet become an article. Anything already written, covered by dpa or merely a duplicate never makes it onto the list.
What you can do with it
- See how many enriched news items still have no article.
- Search by title, company, ticker and tags, and narrow by recency, from today to the entire backlog.
- Read a news item in full before you decide whether it should become an article.
- Count on each story being offered only once, even when it arrives from many sources and in several languages. Once an article on it is written, it drops out of the backlog.
- Count on items that dpa already covers, or that belong to a directors' dealings or earnings record, not being up for selection.
The thinking behind it
On a single day, one big takeover produced 76 news items, in German and English, as rumour and as confirmation, with three different prices. In the past almost every one of them would have been a candidate of its own. Now they form one story, and once an article on it is written, the system stops offering the rest.
Anyone who still wants an update, say after the union reacts, writes that item deliberately on its own. The system then asks for confirmation.
The backlog should only show what is genuinely worth writing. Whatever dpa already covers, or a dedicated record tells better, does not belong in it.
Improvements
Writing follows the assignments
The writing run takes article type, author and tonality for every news item from the editorial assignments, including RSS and dpa items it used to skip silently. If an item cannot be matched, that shows up as an error.
Pool and run follow the same rule
The list follows the same rule as the writing run: items covered by dpa are left out, researched dpa items are in. “Already written” means the same everywhere: there is a finished draft.
The list loads again
The list of news items not yet written had stopped loading and works again. A test now guards it.
Each story only once
Items from the same story are no longer offered one by one. Once the story has an article, no second one is offered, across languages and wordings.
No double work next to dpa and records
Whatever dpa already covers, or what belongs to a directors' dealings or earnings record, is no longer in the backlog.
One event, one candidate
Only one item per duplicate group counts now. Measured, that meant around 41 % fewer candidates.
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