h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

What....when...I....

I never intended for this to be a guide entry.

Maybe. Someday. But NOT the way I had prepared it.

I'm... I'm nearly speachless.

Ok, don't get me wrong, I think it's FABULOUS that you felt this would be a good entry...but...I could have been notified, or at least told I could tidy it up a bit before someone went over it....

I'm not even sure how I feel about this right now. I am very, VERY upset right now.

I guess this is a potential fault of the Peer Review system. If you let Anna or another member of the Editorial staff know how you feel, and if you wrote and sent them an updated version of this entry, you could get them to update it for you, if you feel that strongly about it.

Personally, I don't see that this entry needs any tweaking. I think it's well-written, nicely structured and well-researched. I'm not sure how you might have been planning to alter it, but as it stands it's fine.

Don't let this put you off writing! I'd be very interested to read anything you might scribe in future and maybe recommend these entries for the Editors as part of my Scout duties...

...when they've reached their final, finished state, of course.

Oooops! I posted in haste there; I'll have to tag on a brief addendum:

At least I *assume* you might be able to have it updated; I can't make any promises, but The Editorial chaps are the people to speak to.

Hello Nexus. I appreciate your response.

Part of why I am very upset about this is that:

1) This was a user page, not intended to be a guide entry. It is far too opinionated and unbalanced to be a guide entry (IMHO), but was instead a sort of research project on the subject that I had started nearly a year and a half ago;

2) I had never intended for this entry (in its current state) to be submitted for approval for the guide;

3) I had never SUBMITTED this entry (in its current state) to be approved for the guide;

4) Apparently, while I was on hiatus, the "Submit for approval for the guide" feature was removed and replaced with a "Peer Review" option;

5) Apparently, this "Peer Review" doesn't feel it necessary to notify or ask permission from a researcher before taking a user page and turning it into a Guide Entry;

6) I am very good friends with most of the h2g2 team, Moderators, Subs, Administrators, etc. I don't understand why this is a new practice around here, or if it is a common one, but I'm sure it will be taken care of with a few well-placed emails/ phone calls.

I appreciate the fact that you felt the entry was "well written", but to be honest with you, I'm not sure how much of that came from me or the changes made to the entry once it was edited (without my permission). I now do not have access to the original page I had created - and in turn, I am not unable to add to/ take away from what I had accumulated. This was RESEARCH, for MY benefit, and it was still a work in progress! It was. No more.

Bummer.

Once the entry has been edited (it's currently pending ATM), and become part of the Guide proper, the original version of the entry (ie Unedited) is returned to your control - it may even be amongst the entries you have yet to 'reactivate'; This unedited version is still yours to do with as you will, and it will not have been changed during the editing process.

Hopefully this should mean that things are not as bleak as they might be.

Personally, I'm just wondering how "rare" an occurance this is, or is this a common practice for h2g2 now? I've been with h2g2 going on two years now... I'd certainly hate to leave because I didn't feel that what I'd written was "safe" from being twisted and exploited in this manner.

Well, I can't think of any other examples of this happening - typically, if a highly-motivated scout (not too many of them about ) finds an entry languishing on someone's page that they think is worthy of inclusion, it will be posted onto the Peer Review page and the author is, as a rule, kept informed.

I'll put a URL for the Scouts' page and Peer Review here, so you can read about what exactly we're supposed to do:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/h2g2/guide/Scouts
http://www.bbc.co.uk/h2g2/guide/PeerReview

Would you mind if I posted the URL of this thread to the Scouts egroup, so that we might have a chance to address your concerns (and take on board the fact that we might not always be doing people a favour by scouting their stuff willy-nilly) as a group?

Hi again Nexus.

I appreciate your help and comments... feel free to post away, but I've already notified Peta, Mark and Anna about this, as well as the person who Subbed it (who denies any responsibility in this matter, which I agree with, but who also felt that the entry was not suitable for the guide and had to re-write a LOT of it (then why accept it???)).

It seems to me that some over-anxious Scout (or someone in that capacity) just didn't feel the need to ASK before shuffling my entry off down the paper trail. Trust me, I NOW know more about how Scouts and the Peer Review system work than I ever would have wanted. In fact, I just submitted my entry on Strokes to be reviewed (and I'd love if you'd take a look ).

My point is, and I think you'll agree, that this system of Scouting and Reviewing isn't going to work if the author isn't involved. If every page a researcher makes is subject to "official" editing and possible submission without notifying the author of those decisions, well, I for one will be writing a LOT less. Only for future guide material. Maybe that's the point.... to alleviate all the rubble on here. But anyway, all I would have liked was a "Hey, mind if I send this entry to the Peer Review for possible submission into the guide?" I don't think that's too much to ask. I'm reassured that you tell me this isn't supposed to be a common practice.

I certainly hope that I, one day, will find out who's at the bottom of this. I'm famous 'round these parts for stringing people up by their toenails. 'strue.

All the same, thank you for your helpful suggestions and advice. I hope that the rest of the Scouts have as professional an attitude about their work on h2g2 as you do.

And do you think that I'm the only person on here so far who has argued this vehemently AGAINST having one of their entries submitted into the guide?? LOL I think I deserve some kind of award for that.

Thank you.

Well, I wouldn't say you should only write stuff for potential Guide inclusion; It might be a bit of a pain, but if you specified on an entry that it's explicitly *not* for recommendation etc, or (as I do) put 'work in progress' at the top of all my unfinished stuff, then hapless researchers or scouts won't pick up on things you don't want them to.

I know this is a bit of a poor solution, but it has to be better than feeling restricted in your writing.

Your strokes entry looks good - I haven't had a chance to have a proper read yet.

And consider yourself the recipient of the inaugural 'Amandapanda Reluctant Contributor of the Month' award.

The original PR thread for your entry is here: http://www.h2g2.com/F48874?thread=69942 I don't think it's been reactivated post-moderation yet though.

Ooops - it's probably been moved to the original (unedited entry) which is why that link doesn't work. I'll track this one down if it's the last thing I do.

LOL! NexusSeven, my own personal watchdog. You're a regular Ralph Nader, you are.

I know, I was wondering if maybe, *maybe* someone had posted to my pre-revision page asking permission to submit the entry. That doesn't change the fact that they didn't get a reply, but still...

Hi amandapanda!

Well, to be honest, I wanted to congratulate you to this really interesting entry, but now I'm not sure, after reading this backlog...

Methinks, it must have been a mistake, that someone took your entry without permission

Nevertheless - it's good to read and interesting as I said before. It's a subject, which always interested me... and the connection between literature and film fascinates me... What is better: book or movie? It's a bit like this question: what was first - an egg or the chicken, hehe!
Well, it's always a problem with literature: here you have the word, it describes a situation, gives dialogs..but as a reader I can take my fantasy to imagine places, people... In a movie you have it vivid - you can see, how it looks like, and this is sometimes difficult to accept, cause it's not your imagination and therefor you say: ooh!! it's not good, I was expecting something totaly different.
On the other hand: I do know books, where I say: ooh! the movie is sooo much better... You gave a brilliant example for this: The silence of the lambs is such a movie for me... or Kubrick's 2001 as well, as Blade Runner (but only the Director's cut).

As I said, amandapanda, this is a good one, although maybe it's a pity, it didn't evoluate in a bigger project, cause I would like to know more about this subject...

Kasia

Amandapanda,

I'm sorry to see about your problems here. It does seem like a shortcoming of the Peer Review process. Basically, there is no requirement that the author of the article has to nominate this article to peer review (perhaps that should change?), but the scouts usually try to make sure the author is there/interested before it goes through the process (often scouts should post on the user page and get a reply or such if there is no feedback from the author). I'm a new scout myself, but I'm sorry that such an unfortunate chain of events has occurred...

Yours,
Jake

The original (untouched) entry is here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/h2g2/guide/A155620 The Peer Review thread is still under moderation, but when it reappears it will be at: http://www.h2g2.com/F48874?thread=69942 It was recc'd for editing by (the then) Lisa (may not be the same person who put it in Peer Review), AKA Feather Droujast, whose page is at http://www.bbc.co.uk/h2g2/guide/U50758. Hope some of that is useful... :-/

Hello,

I just wanted to clarify a point lost in my last posting (I should be more clear). I'm not looking to point fingers. I'm actually wondering if it should be policy that only authors of articles should be allowed to post to Peer Review (problem: great article but dormant author) and/or that the policy of scouts should be clarified for situations like this.

Yours,
Jake

Well, to be honest, methinks, it's not a problem, that only the author should be allowed to recomend his/hers entry... The problem is - noone from the editors, sub-editors, scouts and who-else-ever should be allowed to edit an entry WITHOUT a clear okay from the author. And this is a thing, which should also be in this house rules. IMHO this is much more important, then removing postings in other languages, for example, which I find silly and somehow undemocratic and totally against DA's idea of the bablefish

Thank you all - I appreciate the feedback on this issue. Kasia, I couldn't agree more with what you said on the subject of author notification. In fact, I've started a sort of grassroots movement (very small, so far I'm the only member ) here:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/h2g2/guide/A519969

I went ahead and gave Mark and Anna the a-okay on this entry because... well, it seems that everyone wanted it on the front page but me. And, for the record, everyone else did MUCH more work on this entry than I did--so direct all kudos to Mikey and the editing team, who took very little and made it into what it is now.

I agree that when the Scout's system works like it should, it works brilliantly. But when this happens, and I can say from experience, it leaves a rather bad taste indeed. Hopefully this is the last time anyone has to deal with this issue--if anything, it's opened the eyes of some people who didn't think it was wrong to turn half-finished entries into finished guide products without author consent or feedback.

And Kasia, once more--couldn't agree with you more on the foreign language issue. That was the first thing that caught my eye as I was reading the new-and-improved T&C. I really hope they can work that out, 'cause some of the foreign entries on the "old" guide were really great.