This note has been placed by people who want to invigorate the Edited Guide.
We invite you to join us.

What you're about to read is a plea rather than a call to arms. It's based
on a feeling of missed opportunity rather than one of concerted anger. It's
not an 'either/or' proposition. It's a 'why not this too?' proposition.

The proposition is a simple one, as well. It's that the Edited Guide needs
to be more stimulating, varied and inclusive, that's all. Hardly needs
saying, does it? The trouble is, the community's stewardship of the Edited
Guide is enforcing the exact opposite on all three counts. Peer Review is
encouraging safe and samey Entries from within the crowd, and they aren't
very interesting to read. That's what PROD thinks, anyway.

PROD stands for "Peer Review, Only Different". We aren't proposing to change
a single Guideline, only to use them with a new discretion. We aren't
advancing any radical agenda for fiction or poetry, because those styles
have their own place within h2g2. We aren't seeking to chastise Scouts or
experienced critics, because everyone here cares deeply about our shared
project, and nobody owns the soap-box.

Here are a few alternative perspectives on our Peer Review World. They're
not meant to be prescriptive, just thought-provoking :

Different is Good

The best of hootoo is its creative writing. Much of it stands comparison
with just about anything you'll find anywhere. Whether in the UnderGuide,
the Edited Guide or the just-plain-Guide, the Entries that reward reading
are the products of original thinking and presentation. There are gems in
Personal Spaces, in Journals, in Convos, in collections like the Post or
AGG/GAG/CAC. You can find these gems everywhere that Researchers drop their
inhibitions, and they'll always make your spirits leap.

Let's cherish them. Let's acknowledge that writing of that kind is at the
heart of all this.

Content

Some people want to write encyclopaedia articles. That's cool.

Some people prefer to write instruction manuals. That's cool too.

Some people want to write dramatic fact-based Entries. Some people want to
inject a little humour. Some people want to explore perceptions and opinions
rather than the events themselves. Some people want to leave a few loose
ends for the reader to tie up. Some people want to write outside their
experience, and to speculate a little. All cool.
(There are limits, of course. We're not trying to re-shape the Edited Guide
completely. But boundaries are always interesting places).

And of course some people want to try all these styles. They want to make
their next Entry fresh, and completely different from their last one.

They're the coolest of all.

Mission-Drift

The web is a familiar place these days. Our newbies are less often net-shy,
and they didn't come here to read Guidelines, thank heavens. Many of these
newbies know the work of Douglas Adams well. Quite a few are refugees from
places like Get Writing, where creative writing is actively encouraged. Such
people have preconceived ideas of what a site called h2g2 must be about.
Before we rush to disabuse them, perhaps we should stop to consider whether
the preconceptions are more sensible than the reality.

The Next Generation

One of the regurgitated mantras from the Help Pages tells how tired we all
are of amateurish Adams-homage. A few of the more vindictive low-numbers in
PR recite this tune very adroitly, more's the pity, and some of the new
generation of Scouts are picking it up all too readily.

Well, here's a shocking reminder for us all. All babies stink periodically.
The alternatives for our species are to potty-train, or to go extinct.
Accept this, if you accept nothing else here. If your put-down turns a
newbie off this site, then you've done us all a disservice. So please say
something constructive somewhere in your posting, and prove by what you wrte
that you've given the Entry individual consideration, rather than a generic
knee-jerk label. If you can't do this, then maybe you should just leave it
to others to do it instead.

Challenging Ourselves

Another harmful notion is the one that encourages a kind of
lowest-common-denominator inclusivity. It's our own little example of
politically-correct mediocrity. A decline in EG standards through a
prevalence of lightweight Entries is the inevitable consequence of this
trend, and one of the nicest ironies is that some of the PR diehards are
nowadays railing against just this.

'Lightweight' in this sense means three things. It means shallow in terms of
content, flat in terms of style and trivial in terms of effort. Evidence of
any one of the three redeems writing, but a worthwhile Peer Review will
demand such evidence.

It's too easy to write a banal Entry, and it's not as if we have to. There
are a few million worthwhile subjects to wrestle with first.

True Community

This is not an appeal for elitism, note. For starters, elitism is the domain
of the critic, not the writer. Elitism is a form of pack behaviour, in fact,
and we don't want a PR in which every comment is a re-phrasing of the last
one. Whether we're putting the boot in, or showering with praise, it's all
useless as long as it's all the same. Look for the different angle, and dare
to disagree, because Peer Review only works when it covers all the
viewpoints.

And if the contributor has invested genuine effort in their offering, then
recognise that, regardless of EG-fitness or quality. It's better when the
suggestions of relocations appear a few replies down, rather than a first
retort of "this-is-not-suitable-for-the-Edited-Guide". It's important that
such suggestions are appropriate, because Pass-the-Misfit is a very sick
game. And, for heaven's sake, let's leave the spelling to the sub-Eds, or at
least until well into the second page of comments.

Stimulating. Varied. Inclusive

When something is enjoyable to read, the virtue comes from within the piece
itself, not from its conformity to a specification. Checklists are for work,
not for recreation.

Surprise happens when something departs from the expected pattern. Surprise
is the precursor of delight.

Everyone can play, and the role each one of us knows is our self. Whatever
we make, we always make it best in our own style. Guidelines are only
guidelines. Our instincts and our experience are the beacons we steer by.

Persuaded? If so, please sign the petition in the Conversation below. This
matters; it really does.

A final thought? OK. Here's a model for what we mean.

h2g2 is more like a city than a library. We live in it, rather than refer to
it, and it's alive in a way that no individual can control - not even the
italics in City Hall. If you think of all the written contributions here as
buildings rather than books, you'll find an analogy for the way that you
receive them.

Every building in a city is functional, but most were built for someone
else's purpose. Many are someone's home, for example, but they're not your
home, and so the place where the resident is comfortable could be a place
that you find bland, or vulgar, or unwelcoming.

In every city, on the other hand, there are buildings that fill us with joy.
We discover new ones all the time, quite naturally and easily in a place as
vast as this. We remember the ones we love, and look out for them whenever
we're in the neighbourhood.

And you know the best thing of all? Your cherished buildings and mine,
they're different.

So let's celebrate the whole City.

And as we do, let's relish the certainty that Douglas would have understood.

What Can I Do?

If you've read this far, you're probably interesting in making h2g2's Edited Guide more engaging, interesting and stimulating (or you're looking for things to pick a fight with). So how you do this?

Well, first of all, for god's sakes don't be part of the problem. Try to avoid writing entries that you wouldn't want to read (and perhaps those which you wouldn't want to meet the sort of person that would want to read it), but don't write entries only you would find interesting. Try to make every entry different from the previous one, and experiment with new techniques.

Next, please join us by putting your name in on the thread below. One voice shouting at the top of its lungs can often be ineffective, and is easy to deny. However, a united crowd is a difficult thing to say no to. Please give your name, U-number and gender in the post.

Recognize entries that the author spent time on. If it's thoroughly researched, witty, original, stylistic or anything you can't see anywhere else in the guide, they deserve laudation. Whether it's suitable for the Edited Guide or not, a well written entry is a well written entry and deserves all of our attention. If you're a scout, you may take a stand and recommend original, stimulating entries before run-of-the-mill ones.

Updates

May 2, 2005 - PROD page originally created. Written in a collaboration between Brothers Pinniped and Jodan and Sister Waz.