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

All part of the joys of a text-only conversation medium, Mina. No worries.

A long time ago, when we were discussing the update proposal(A760402) I think, the subject of a "picked by" link on Edited Entries came up, giving a link to the Scout who picked it. Here, in fact: F90511?thread=185420 - but also somewhere else that I can't find. Dang.

Anyway, my comment then was that Scouts, like Subs, should take pride in their work, and a 'picked by' link on Edited Entries would be part of that. It also left the system more transparent and open, and I think openness is a useful end in itself. At the time, other people (inc. at least one Scout) in the thread seemed to agree with me.

That's a slightly different suggestion to making the Scout Recommendations page public - but if Scouts here are unhappy with even that, then there's obviously no point in going further. What do you think?

-Martin

My tuppence worth:

I agree entirely with Blues Shark (now there's something I don't type very often ). Assuming for a moment that all Scouts always behave as described in their Code of Conduct... the system works very well. Making it more open, more public, would most likely lead to problems. With the best will in the world, I'd be curious to know who'd picked my entries. And with the best will in the world, I'd start to wonder if one Scout in particular never picked an entry by me (mind you, I'm pretty prolific, and I've not written as many entries as there are Scouts even now.) On the other hand, again, with the best will in the world if I knew Scout X had picked entries by me a dozen times before I'd be very tempted to pester them to try to get them "onside" if I was having trouble getting an entry picked. They don't need that.

For that reason, I disagree - keep the system closed, it works better that way.

H.

Hmm.
yesterday Zagreb agreed with me about politics.
Today it's Hoovooloo about Scouts.

I don't what it means, but I think I find it quite scary.

There are scarier things, but Mina's not here juat at the mo

and my My penny's worth ( Hoovooloo is worth two of me )
I think the system should be kept closed,They are volenteers and they do it cos they want to and they should be allowed to enjoy it here,and I dont think they would if they knew that every time they logged on that they was going to be pestered about picking this or not picking that,
even in the real would every one has a place that they can go to for a privat chat about things,they should not have to answer to the whole site, just to the PTB,

well thats what I think

manda

Now that we've got some good discussion going on, I've asked Anna to come and comment.

Dear All

When this tool was being created for the Scouts we made a conscious decision not to have their choices publicly available for the reasons stated here.

* To prevent Scouts being pestered.

* To prevent Scouts being hassled and being pressured into picking picks.

* To prevent retribution or witch-hunts. It wouldn't make Scouting a particularly pleasant job in that case.

It's no secret that there are semi-private discussions away from h2g2 on the volunteers groups. These exist to allow volunteers to ask sensitive questions such as 'I think this entry has been plagiarised' or 'I can't make sense of this sentence at all what does everyone else think?'. It exists to save the feelings of those involved. It wouldn't do to have questions like this up on site.

As Whisky says, getting asked by Researchers why he didn't pick their entry, puts Scouts in a difficult position because the answer will be because it's not suitable, because they preferred something else or because something else has been waiting longer.

In addition, Scouting is a learning process. I don't think it would be fair to have a new Scout's unacceptable choices up for public scrutiny when they're getting to grips with the process.


Dear Blues Shark

> It remains an option for individual Scouts to post in the thread in PR to say they have picked an entry, as has happened a couple of times with my entries.

Actually we recommend that Scouts don't say 'I have recommended this entry' in case we then have to reject it. We wouldn't want to build up anyone's hopes to have them dashed later. Though it does happen.


Dear Lucinda

> Anyway, my comment then was that Scouts, like Subs, should take pride in their work, and a 'picked by' link on Edited Entries would be part of that. It also left the system more transparent and open, and I think openness is a useful end in itself. At the time, other people (inc. at least one Scout) in the thread seemed to agree with me.

As you say, it's a slightly different suggestion to making the Scout Recommendation page public. A 'Picked by' link on an entry might be a good thing at the stage when an entry's going up on the front page, but I don't think it would be appropriate at the point when we're making decisions.

Anna

Now that's more like it! Good ideas and points, Anna, as always. That's not because I'm sucking up, but rather because you just saved me spending 20 minutes posting most of the same stuff.

That's cool Anna

Bels mentioned certain data being made available privately on the Scouts list too - I don't exactly to what he was referring, but I also wondered (as did he) whether there were good reasons for that being private too.

Thanks for the clear answer
-Martin

Dear Whisky, thanks for the and

My thoughts here all helped by everyone's contributions to this thread

Dear Lucinda,

I think that the data which Bels is referring to the Unscouted Peer Review List which lists everything that is in Peer Review in order of the date it was put in. Longest serving entries at the top.



Anna

Oops sorry, stuffing my face with chicken with basil and chilli sauce with sticky rice at the moment and missed your question!

Mark used to pull out this list once a week, but I don't have access to those stats directly. It was the Unscouted Peer Review List which lists the entries according to date, with the longest standing entries at the top.

I don't see a reason why we couldn't put this list on site as a new feature (can anyone think of a reason why not?)

Anna

At one point Mark used to pull of information from the servers that listed the whole of PR, as anna just said.... I suspect he had to do this manually and the result was a *.txt output... Since DNA was implemented, the same information has been available to everyone, simply by clicking on the correct button when using Peer Review.

Oops simulpost Anna, I yield to your superior knowledge....mainly coz I don't think arguing with someone with their mouthful of chicken, basil and chilli is a very good idea.... could get very messy

Oops yes simulpost

Mark did have to do this manually and yes, I had forgotten, everyone now has access to this, albeit in a very untidy way, so perhaps a new feature request is needed.

That chilli chicken was yum

Anna

So *that's* what I was talking about! Thanks, Anna. I remember now... I used to get these long emails. They were from Mark so I knew they were very important. But I was such a dim Scout that I hadn't a clue what to do about them, except I knew I had better keep them, in case they came in useful one day. But the other Scouts, who did know what they were doing, thought they were pretty important. So I sort of vaguely assumed they must contain more data than you could get from Peer Review. But if that stuff is available onsite anyway, why bother sending the emails? There must be more to it than that...

There is, Bels,

Actually I should probably be sending out the emails as it's a safer (for the servers) and more straightforward method of seeing all the entries in one go. Thanks for the reminder! Must go and talk to Jim about pulling out the info.



Anna

Anna, yep, I know that as well. I was just pointing out that it has happened, and will happen in the future.

With at least one of my edited guide entries, I'm pretty sure that only the scout, sub-ed and ed read it. And I only know the scout did because he posted to say he'd picked it.

There were *two* lists. One of them was a complete list of threads in PR, sorted by age, oldest first. You can have that now on site by going to <./>RF1</.> and clicking on the table headers until you get it sorted that way. Or use this link RF1?skip=0&show=25&order=dateentered&entry=0&dir=1 which is one of my bookmarks.

The second and more important list was the one titled 'unscouted threads' which was there to identify threads that had sunken down unnoticed by a Scout. This feature is still missing.


H., 1/40 of the information you requested (who picked what, etc) can be found here: A794018

Hi Bossel,

Thanks for that

You know the 'unscouted threads' emails? I can't seem to find an example of it in my backlog, do you have one to hand that you can send me? I can see the Review Forum Sizes emails, but not the unscouted threads. I want to be able to send an example to Jim so that he can help me set it up again.



Anna

What other handy bookmarks do you have like that one Bossel?