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

"Currently" meaning almost three weeks now, and not a single Entry mentioned yet...

Honestly, this page gives an impression of no Sub-editing going on at all. However, I find this extremely improbable...

Either start filling this page with Entries (or Articles) currently being Sub-edited, or deleate it. The way it looks like right now, it is not exactly encouriging... makes you think getting an Entry submitted will take for ever - or even longer...

I agree with you. There seem to be lots of articles to review on the Peer Review Page, making this page seem a bit redundant. Why not just link from the front page straight to the Peer Review Page instead of to this page?

My 2 cents worth.

I think the Peer Review scheme is an interesting idea, but there are so many things that could "go wrong". . . I suppose there must be a discussion going on about that somewhere.

Hello.

From what I gather, the system will work thus:

Scouts will mooch about the h2g2 community looking for entries that catch their eye, whether the entries are on the peer review page or elsewhere. They will try to get a discussion going on the peer review page, to get as many opinions as possible.

Every day, scouts will submit the entries that caught their eye to the editors, who will accept or (probably very rarely) reject them.
The accepted entries will then be passed onto the subs for editing, and they will be 'the entries that we're currently putting the finishing touches to'. As such, they will appear on this page.

Thats how I see it anyway. Sounds complicated, but I reckon it will work. Don't forget there are thousands of researchers writing thousands of entries - the old system of submission would have meant the editing team disappearing under a huge pile of submitted entries, and the whole thing coming apart at the seams.

Of course things could go wrong, as you rightly point out; but isn't it more fun trying new things?

- Adam

Yes, but as far as I can see on the front page, there HAVE been several new entries edited recently, but they never showed up here first, so why have this page at all???

Perhaps those entries that went up recently are part of the 16-week backlog of entries submitted under the old method.

So why not display the "old method entries" here as well? Rather than have this page "currently empty" for another 16 weeks?

Adam,
Yes, it will probably be much more fun. It is a rather daring system to implement, I think, which naturally makes people uncomfortable. It is daunting to think of the possibility of "anybody in the world" reading and reviewing one's writing. But in my brief (two weeks)experience here, I've noticed that people seem to be a lot more polite, patient and reasonable in their comments than I have experienced elsewhere on the web. I think this general "niceness" gives the peer review system a good chance of success. I suppose I will find out when I get my first entry written and submitted. It will be exciting to see the system work.
Virginia

Gooday all,

I agree with Titania. Moreover, I am having trouble with the Peer Review page, which doesn't appear to list the entries. Is it me failing to understand the otherwise bleeding obvious? Can someone please enlighten me?

Walter.

Walter, did you try clicking on 'Click here to see more Conversations' at the very bottom of the Peer Review Page?

Could we try to encourage people who submit articles to the Peer Review page to include a link to the article. Some do, and these are the articles I am most likely to visit as I just click on the link. With the other articles, I have to type the URL into my browser's address or location bar (depending on whether I'm using IE or Netscape). Links make life so much simpler.

I'll second that!

Hm. We aren't putting old school entries up on this page (the ones in the queue) because roughly 70% are being rejected. I doubt people would be happy to see their entry up on this page only to have it rejected a couple of weeks down the line.

555 entries in the queue last time I checked.

We should link entries we recommend on the peer review page. That's my yes vote.

There's two entries on it

Hi there - and apologies for the longer-than-anticipated wait for things to appear on this page. It wasn't intentional, but we found setting up the Scouts scheme to be somewhat more time consuming than originally predicted. Blame it on the summer holidays... Anyway, some points:

* The entries currently appearing on the front page are from the old queue system, which has nothing to do with the Peer Review system. We're getting through it as quickly as we can, there's loads of subbing going on, and it's just a fact of life - we still have 555 entries in the queue to process, which is no mean task.

* The Scouts only started picking entries today, so from now on you *will* see entries appear on this page. Initially they are picking seven entries a week to put up here, as otherwise we'll simply end up with an internal queue and things will be no better than they were before. When the old queue is gone we will be picking between 5 and 10 a day to add to this page. Things will be pretty busy then... but it won't be sitting empty for 16 weeks until then. Also, bear in mind that it will take a little while to get the Scouts scheme working like clockwork, so it might appear a bit spasmodic to start with, but it should settle down pretty quickly.

* The new scheme is a change from the old one and yes, some people won't like it. However the fact remains that the old scheme was proved to be impossible to run in anything approaching a scalable manner, so regardless of which scheme is better (and I believe the new one is superior anyway), the old one *had* to go, like it or lump it. I like to think of it as progress, and although there will be challenges, we're humans not machines, and I very much hope we can rise to the task.

* I've edited the Peer Review page to ask people to put links into their postings. Hopefully this will help - it's certainly a good idea.

* The proof of the pudding is in the eating. Tuck in!

Mark

Hip hip hooray!

* - SHAZAMM! - self-refillable champagne glasses appearing on nearby table*

Let's celebrate the 'What's coming up' now presenting articles! Cheers!

*grabs a Y of champagne*