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.
