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

Why is there an option for the Flea Market on the entry submission dropdown menu? The 'submit' page itself says "Don't choose Flea Market, unless you want your Guide Entry to be ignored!", and the intro to the FM front page says "The Flea Market is where the Editors move entries from other Review Forums if the author 'leaves the building' or abandons their entry for some other reason" and "Please don't submit entries to this Review Forum, as it is only for entries that have been in Review Forums like Peer Review or the Writing Workshop, but which have ground to a halt because the author is no longer around."

Traveller in Time searching for the problem with that
"No problem just read some
[cancel]
i want 2 cancel this account what 2 do

One thing would be moving all your entries to the Flee Market. . .

Just for the utterly polite visitors who want to clean up before they elvish. "

Could you say that again in plain, simple and straight to the point English? Your subtlety and beating around the bush is lost on me. No doubt it's lost on others too.

< F19585?thread=143046 >

n i g h t h o o v e r

Leastways, I think that's how it's pronounced...

Traveller in Time looking for more 'redundant' options
"I guess there are more of these options, once activated while it seemed like a good idea at the time, but only used in infinite improbable cases. <<./>smiley</.>> "

We do clean-ups for the Flea Market just as we do for PR -- not as often, but it still takes time. I'm all for discouraging random, confused submissions to the FM.

On the other hand, I *can* think of specific circumstances in which it would make sense to submit something to the FM. For example, if someone gets halfway through an entry, and loses interest, but doesn't want the work done to go completely to waste -- in the FM, someone else might come along and feel motivated to finish it off even though they hadn't the urge to write the entry from scratch.

But I really don't think that happens all too often around here.

It's also quite useful for testing things.

There have been a couple of instances when I've wanted to know precisely the wording of the stages of the submission process; or who has editing / submission rights over a page. So submitting an entry to the FM is a great way of finding out.

If researchers didn't have that ability to submit to the FM, then I'd have to submit to other forums to test things, and you wouldn't like that.

Furthermore, removng this feature cures a problem that doesn't exist.

In a quick scan of the most recent 200 submissions currently in the FM, all but about half a dozen have been made by one of the editorial team. Of the half dozen that haven't, all but one is from an author saying, "Sorry I don't have time / energy / motivation / etc to finish this. Does anyone else fancy a crack at it?". And that's perfectly OK.

The only one that looks like a random newbie getting it wrong is this on - F74125?thread=417628