Reading Articles¶
This page explains what an article is and how it relates to the lesson built from it.
What an article is¶
An article is a single markdown document written by Mention from your organization's own source material. Your audience's owner wrote an entry for it — a name and a prompt saying what it should cover — and Mention wrote the document to satisfy that prompt.
Articles are shared: everyone in your audience gets the same document. There is one per entry in the audience's contents, and the Hub groups them by what each one is for — whether you came to learn something end to end, carry out a task, look a detail up, or understand why it works the way it does.
Each article also has a lesson — a short sequence of exercises built from it. The article is what you consult; the lesson is what makes you know it. Finishing the lesson, not reading the document, is how you finish an entry. See Working Through Lessons.
Your contents list¶
Opening an audience shows its contents — the entries you're expected to work through, grouped by what each article is for. Each row shows the entry's name and where you stand on it, and a Lessons strip in the page header tells you how many of the composed lessons you've finished. A row you have already finished opens its article, and so does one whose lesson hasn't been composed yet; a row with an outstanding lesson opens the lesson.
If your audience's owner hasn't added anything yet, the list says so. There is nothing to do until they do.
Reading is never held back¶
You get the whole document, always, whether or not you have finished its lesson. An article is reference material you may need before, during, or long after the exercises — the day you are handed a live case is not the day to discover the policy is locked.
What changes with the lesson is only which half the contents row opens, not what you are allowed to see. While a lesson is outstanding the row opens the lesson, and each exercise offers you the passage it was written from under Look it up, with a link to the full article beside it. You can also reach any article directly by its link at any time, and on an entry whose exercises you haven't done it carries a Practice this prompt above it — an invitation, not a gate, with the document right below it.
What the lesson tracks is separate: reading a document is not the same as knowing it, and only the lesson records that you do. See Working Through Lessons.
Reading one¶
Click an entry to open its article. The document fills the page; read it top to bottom at your own pace. Links at the bottom of the article take you to the previous and next entry in the contents, so you can work straight through.
An entry you open may not be a document yet:
- Still being written — Mention is working on it. It usually lands within a minute or two; the page picks it up when it does.
- Needs more sources — Mention could not write this article from the material connected so far, and says which part it was missing rather than making something up. This is not a bug and not something you can fix from here. Tell your audience's owner — connecting the missing material, or narrowing the entry, is what unblocks it.
- Write failed — something went wrong producing the document. Your audience's owner can ask Mention to write it again.
An article that exists but has no lesson is a normal case too — some entries are pure reference, with nothing in them to exercise. You read those, and there is nothing to finish.
When an article is rewritten¶
Articles change as their source material shifts. When an article is rewritten, its lesson is built again from the updated document.
Your progress survives that. What you have passed is recorded against the material, not against a particular exercise, so a rebuild keeps everything you knew that hasn't changed. Material that genuinely changed comes back to be earned again, which is the point.
Asking about what you read¶
Your audience has an Ask tab for grounded Q&A. Put a question in your own words and Mention answers from your organization's source documents, showing which sources it drew on. Follow-ups stay in the same thread. See Asking Questions.
When an article is wrong¶
If an article says something that is factually wrong, outdated, or missing, tell your audience's owner. Articles are written from your organization's connected sources, so a wrong article usually means the sources behind it need correcting or extending — which is the owner's to do.