Links, projects and what the writer reads
A project is a set of sources on one subject, and articles are written only from what is inside it.
Articles are written from sources you can see, not from whatever is on the internet. A project is a set of sources on one subject, and an article written from a project can cite only the pages inside it. So the quality of an article is set before the writing starts, by what you put in the project.
Projects
Open Projects and create one per subject: "Cold chain compliance", "Our onboarding process", "Industry news". Give it a name that says what it is about. The project's settings set the default kind of piece, the target length, whether to review the plan before writing, and how strict to be about sources.
Adding sources
On a project, add a source by link: paste one address or many, one per line. Or upload a CSV or text file of links. "Why these links matter" is optional; a line there tells the writer what you want from them.
What works well:
- A page on your own site, marked as yours.
- A guide, a standard, a regulation, an official page.
- A news story or a report with dates and figures.
- A list page: elessar sees that "one page is a list of pages" and offers the pages it links to.
What does not: a page behind a login, a PDF that is only an image, a page that is mostly a video.
What the writer reads
Each page is fetched and the text is extracted; the page's menus, adverts and footers are not. Open a source to see "What elessar read from this page". The text is split into passages, and it is those passages the writer cites. If a page could not be read, it says so, and you can hide the pages that could not be read.
A project needs enough text to write from. Until it has it, the project says "Read, but too thin to write from yet". Three to six good pages are usually enough.
When your sources are not enough
If the project's sources all come from one site, or the topic needs more than they hold, research finds a few trusted outside sources on the subject first and adds them to the project, in plain sight, before writing. The Write sheet tells you when that will happen. You can turn it off in the project's settings under "Let research find sources when yours are not enough", and remove any found source you do not want.
Industry news
A project can take in a feed of suggested sources on your industry, a few a day depending on your plan. Suggestions appear under "Recently added sources"; add the ones that fit.
If it goes wrong
- "One page couldn't be read": the site refused us, or the page has no text. Try the page's address without tracking parameters, or another page on the same subject.
- The article cited a page you did not expect: research added it. It is in the project, marked as found. Remove it and rewrite if you do not want it cited.
- The themes on the Write sheet do not match what you wanted: the sources are about something else. Add pages that cover the subject you mean.