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

Put a list of links to them on a non-review (regular entry) page, & when you do the announcement, urge people to check out if they have an entry which was languishing in there which they'd forgotten about.

Remove them all is easiest. Perhaps put a 'thread moved' message on each one, though - that way all the people who might be interested will get notified...

Do it slowly, though, or people with lots of WW threads will have several pages of conversations with nothing but!

Peer Review gets banners - the others don't. We need to rotate banners for diferent review forums. What about doing it for review forums, and:

1. Read
2. Talk
3. Announcements

Whoami?

Apparently with the advent of the next skin at some point the banners are going to go to advertising community things other than peer review... like clubs etc, I believe.

I've got an idea. How about you start the ball rolling by making an announcment (on the announcments page) that you are planning to abandon WW, and ask everyone to check whether they have entries in WW, and get them to remove them themselves, and re-post them to peer review if they still want them to be reviewed. If you did that as soon as possible, then whilst we decide exactly how we want to do things, people will (hopefully) be moving stuff from WW. It also might avoid the problem that Lucinda brought up of some people getting loads of 'thread moved' messages, as people would do some of the moving themselves.

Also, perhaps you could stop new entries being put into the WW, by altering the submission screen, to indicate that WW is being made obsolete, or remove WW from the list of possible review fora to submit to.

Or alternatively, promote the WW. At the moment, it's effectively a dumping ground from PR - it's seen as a type of purgatory. Why not give it a facelift and make it into what it was supposed to be?

Whoami - I think we discussed that alternative fairly thoroughly already. Do you really think a replacement to the WW could succeed where the beginner's writing workshop failed?

Heck, we *almost* had some kind of consensus there...

- The perils of skim-reading the backlog whilst being pestered for help by so many other people in the IT rooms...

Whoami?

I personally think that there really isn't much of a problem with WW. I personally use WW directly, for almost every single one my entries. All of you speak of outside persons involved in these actions, which suggests to me either that your a hypocrit, or you have really never abused PR.

Besides, even if WW is a dumping ground for failed PR, then so what? Entries not worthy of WW could be transfered instead to FM or CWW.

Whoami - having now read the backlog, what do you think?

Indeed - I thought we had a consensus too!

It can't happen straight away for the reasons described, but we can still make a decision, to be implemented as soon as it's possible...

There's a certain advantage in having just discovered this conversation (thanks very much for the email alert, Bossel!) - it means you read all the backlog in one go rather than over the period of fully two months since it started. It's very interesting to see how the discussion shifts and changes over that period of time and in the course of 130 postings.

I've only been here a few months, and until recently I have been spending my time here concentrating on the EG itself, writing entries for PR, generally hanging out in PR, subbing, that sort of thing. It's only recently that, having joined the scouts, I have started to hang out a bit in the Writing Workshop. So I don't bring to this discussion the same legacy of frustration, annoyance even, that some of you have.

Clearly, the WW is not working as it should. Probably hasn't for some time. Maybe it never has - I wouldn't know. But is that a good reason to just scrap it? I don't think so.

Firstly, the WW is obviously of value to some people, who have posted here and told us so. Unfortunately those postings were in the early days of this thread, and those voices seem to have been drowned out as time has gone on and the topic has drifted. For example:

Posting 2: I think the potential of the workshop to be occasionally used as it's intended makes it worth saving, even if most people don't use it for anything

Posting 5: To me, it seems that the problem with the writing workshop isn't that it shouldn't exist, because I think having a no pressure area where people's work can be reviewed is very valuable

Posting 6: I think there is a place for the Writing Workshop, although it does not seem to be functioning correctly at the moment ... I think that we need a place for entries which are only starting off and where the author does not know how to proceed.

Posting 8: Come to think of it, I left my entry for the Ann Arbor Hash Bash in the Writing Workshop for a while. It got some good feedback from people. When I finally got around to revising it, I followed their advice, made some changes, and it was quickly recommended from Peer Review, slipped into the Edited Guide with few changes. Probably not an example of what commonly happens to entries in the Writing Workshop, but it worked well that time. I guess I'm still looking for what the harm would be in leaving the Writing Workshop open. It's an eyesore to experienced h2g2 researchers, but may help a few underconfident people.

The discussion then seemed to move away, towards things like the technical aspects of moving threads, editorial tools, the other forums, and so on.

I am broadly in agreement with the views I've quoted. I suppose you could argue that those in favour are in a minority. But a) that would only be a minority of those who commented here, not necessarily an overall minority, and b) minorities can be worth supporting anyway.

Moving on to
Posting 91: I want feedback on entries that *are* intended to go into the EG but *without* going through PR. As things stand, WW is intended to cater for this need

This was of course in reference to the rather specialised topic of Uni projects, but it illustrates a general point about the function of the WW.

Then we come to
Posting 106: What we appear to require is a "writing feedback" thread to which people actively submit any EG-bound entries which they do not think (for whatever reason) should be picked but want feedback

This speaks to my situation, or would do if you delete the word 'EG-bound'. There seems to be an unwritten, unspoken assumption that everyone who puts an entry into a review forum hopes that one day it will be in the Edited Guide. But this is not necessarily the case. For example, I have recently come to the conclusion that the Edited Guide process is not for me at the present time. Never mind why. Anyway I removed the last entry that I had in PR, have written a couple of entries since, but not put them into PR. In fact they are in the WW at the moment. I do enjoy writing entries, have lots of ideas for more entries, and the ones I have written so far have been well enough received. No complaints there. But if the WW was scrapped there would be nowhere for my entries to go. They are not 'Alternative' and they are not really Post material - at least, I don't think so.

I've also met other people who, not necessarily for the same reasons, are staying out of PR although they have written entries that are interesting and important and deserving of a wider audience than just leaving them on their PS is likely to give them. I understand how they feel.

The experience of entering the WW was to me like leaving a busy, noisy highway and entering a quiet country lane where for the first time you could hear the birds sing. PR is of course the fast track to the Edited Guide, but the WW is a haven of peace where a weary Researcher can rest a while, gather a few comments on entries, and work on them some more, without the threat of having them mown down when the clock strikes midnight and the Grim Reaper comes along with his scythe.

WW is other things too. In the short time I've been there, I've come across several excellent entries which are obviously destined for PR but which were not put into PR because of some hesitancy or lack of confidence on the author's part. A few encouraging comments in WW first can give them the courage to take the next step. We need something less scary.

Furthermore, not everyone has a constructive time in PR. Some people find the process really unfair and unkind, and reading some of the threads I can see why. Especially when people hijack a PR thread for their own purposes, with completely off-topic conversations going on and interfering with the poor author's desire for constructive comments. So if PR doesn't always work as it should, is that a good reason to abolish PR as well? Of course not, but it is a good reason not to abolish a viable alternative in the shape of the WW.

I think it may be that at least some of the people who advocate scrapping the WW haven't ever put an entry in there.

If the WW was abolished, I don't know what I would do. If an entry is a Researcher's baby, the WW is the bath-water.

Bels

'[A place where you] could hear the birds sing' - if silence and easy-going is what an author is after then they could post to the conversation and just say so. Something like 'thanks, I'll keep that in mind once I get around to amending the piece.'

There's no upper time limit for a thread to stay in a forum. My point is that the conversations ought to be *alive* from both sides, the author and the peers.



Bossel, Grim Reaper

For example, what's the point in this conversation hanging around?

F57153?thread=140644

I appear to have arrived five weeks too late.... just got directed here by Lucinda... for what its worth, I just said over at Peer Review full of nonsense thread:




"I too would really like to see some action in the Writers Workshop, and less guff in Peer Review... a few full moons ago now in a conversation about banner add redundancy Jim mentioned he had toyed briefly in a not very serious fashion with the idea of changing the Peer Review add - how about creating a link to the WW instead?

It could be part of a Guide-wide effort to make better use of the differnt Review Forums available - might even be worth considering drastic action the WW as default choice is a nice wee start, but you could even make some time in the WW compulsory before entry into PR is possible - might not be neccesary now, but given rate of h2g2 growth, such a measure may not seem so extreme in a few months time...

The simplest, least workload increasing way of working it would be to have simple time switch, so that entry can be put into PR after a week in the WW no matter what has been posted.... that way the entries which get posted and then never visited again by their authors would be filtered out before PR... it would also neccesitate people to frequent the WW....

just an idea, but not necessarily a bad one..."

I posted that yesterday, before reading the backlog in this here conversation...

I shall leave my compulsory WW suggestion here for now, and come back in a bit when I given a bit more thought to things - there was me thinking to promote the WW as a solution, and 5 weeks ago you guys already decided to let it die

> "I think it may be that at least some of the people who advocate scrapping the WW haven't ever put an entry in there."

I've put an entry in every review forum we've got, so there...

-Lucinda

Lucinda, that remark was not directed at any individual. It was a general 'If the cap fits...' comment, and if the cap does not fit in your case, why then, you don't wear it!

In Posting 12 you wrote:
"...there's no reason anyone should go to the WW, when they could go to PR instead."

I've now tried to suggest some reasons for going to the WW.

You wrote:
"The entries [in WW as compared with PR] are of the same type, and you can make the same kind of suggestions, but they're not as good, the authors are less responsive, and they take longer to get into the Edited Guide, and they're less likely to get into the Edited Guide."

These do sound like generalisations, difficult to prove or disprove. What I would claim is that there are plenty of authors in Peer Review who are unresponsive, and plenty of entries there that are unlikely to get into the Edited Guide. Whether the WW is 'better' or 'worse' in this respect is a subjective judgment, and I am not sure that it matters very much which is 'better' and which is 'worse'.

To judge from the number of people who scribble something, anything, and just put it into PR (often with some smug comment), there's a case for saying that putting an entry into WW might sometimes suggest a greater seriousness of purpose and a more genuine desire for quality.

As for the time taken, by definition entries in the WW do probably require more time, since they do not have to be 'considered finished', but this is all about nurturing and encouraging good writing, and I don't see it as a negative thing at all.

You went on to write:
"Charity would work, but would be a tremendous waste of energy that might be better used in other ways."

I'm not sure quite what you meant here, and the view that charity would be a waste is an interesting one, but my view is that h2g2 is about collaboration and people helping each other. There may be a point at which collaboration and help become 'charity' in some pejorative sense, but that is a Researchers' judgment call in the context of their willingness to help, the time they have available, and the sort of light they can see at the end of the tunnel.

As you suggest, there are lots of different ways to help; but I think such diversity is a good thing, since it gives a Researcher more choice and makes it more likely that an individual Researcher will find some way of helping that is particularly congenial. Although in theory it may seem that reducing the avenues for help might concentrate the help available, and channel it into areas which in your opinion are more worthwhile, I'm not at all sure that things would work that way in practice, since it doesn't necessarily follow that someone who enjoys helping in WW would be interested in Uni projects or the other examples you give.

I'll make some more general comments in my next posting.

Bels

Indeed. I'm sure your reaction would be similar if I said that some people with four-letter names beginning with B have the intellectual capacity of a smallish gnat.

> "Whether the WW is 'better' or 'worse' in this respect is a subjective judgment."

Right. And Researchers have made that judgement, independantly of each other, and they've almost all decided that Peer Review is where it's at, and left the Writing Workshop to rot. Which is the original problem that brought us here, right?

My comment on charity was in response to a suggestion that volunteers be encouraged to post more often to WW to make it more active and solve this problem. It's my view that there are better uses of volunteer energy. I wouldn't want to *forbid* any volunteer (or other Researcher) from contributing to the WW, but equally I wouldn't want to *encourage* them to do so.

> "it doesn't necessarily follow that someone who enjoys helping in WW would be interested in Uni projects or the other examples you give."

Yes, but I've yet to meet anyone who actually enjoys helping in the WW. Of those who do contribute to WW, they all contribute to PR rather more than to WW.

-Xanthia

Regarding the general question of scrapping the WW without putting anything in its place, my most fundamental misgivings are twofold.

Firstly, when things or people don't behave in the way you'd like them to, attempting to alter the behaviour without dealing with the structure that underlies the behaviour is usually not the best way forward. Scrapping the WW may seem like getting rid of what to some people is a nuisance and an annoyance. The problem is that it is not a detached building but part of a much wider complex, and bulldozing it is bound to have knock-on effects (no pun intended). It isn't easy at this stage, however, to predict what all those effects might be, except that it's on the cards that at least some of them will be unintended and probably undesirable. I say that because in my experience that is generally what seems to happen. That is not at all to suggest that all change is undesirable - far from it - but that a more rounded, holistic approach is likely to give better, more satisfactory long-term results.

The second misgiving is that, like Peer Review, the idea of having a Writing Workshop is a brilliant and inspirational one that is within the spirit of this place, and helps to mark h2g2 out as something special and valuable. And not only that - the whole ethos of h2g2 is to create and support and nurture, to persevere and polish and encourage, not to tear down and trash and destroy.

That the WW is not working as it should is common ground. The easy way out would be to get rid of it. That is what this whole thread is predicated on. But there is always another way of looking at things. Instead of planning its destruction, we could take up the challenge. We could really look at what is going on with PR and the WW, how they are promoted, how people are expected to comment, how authors should deal with being in a forum. There are straws in the wind concerning the PR banner, for example. Changing that is going to bring about changes in how the review forums work. That will need time to settle down so that we can then take stock.

So now is not a good time to be bringing in the demolition squad.

Bels