View From the Queue
Created | Updated Jun 21, 2003
View From the Queue looks at h2g2's progress in approving new Guide entries. This week we take a good, hard look at the new Peer Review process. We also sample some entries from the queue to uncover the most common mistakes made by h2g2 writers.
This Week's Queue
As I write this week's View, there are 771 entries in the official queue. However, there is now an unofficial queue with 51 entries in it. I will explain this more later. In any case, we can safely add them together to get a total of 822 entries. That's 26 more than last week.
There are 69.7 h2g2 members for every 1 entry waiting for approval1. That's actually down from last week's 71 users per entry in the queue. This difference is fairly small, but we'll keep an eye on it as the weeks go by.
Meanwhile, the number of approved entries to entries waiting for approval has gone down. Last week, there were 2.2 approved guide entries for every entry in the queue. I predicted the ratio would be 2.0 or less within three months. I was surprised to find the ratio drop down to 2.1 just in the last week. My prediction may come true sooner than I thought.
Finally, the number of entries approved on the average weekday went down to 6.2 this week. This is a drop from the range of 8 to 10 per weekday that we experienced in recent weeks. The h2g2 staff was understandably busy launching a number of site improvements last week, one of which was an entirely new process for editing/approving entries. In any case, h2g2 is still safely above the 5 entries per weekday that the staff has committed to.
The Old Approval Process
I aired a rumour last week about changes in the editing process. Boy, was I on target! I actually had no idea how extensive the planned changes were. To understand, we should first look at how the old approval process worked.
The author writes the entry.
The author clicks on the 'Submit' button on their entry editing screen. The entry is placed into the Queue.
A sub-editor is assigned the entry.
The sub-editor checks the entry for several things including completeness, factual accuracy, adherence to h2g2 guidelines, and proper spelling and grammar.
The sub-editor approves or rejects the entry. If the entry is rejected, the author is informed by email.
If the entry is approved, the sub-editor makes any changes to it they deem necessary.
The entry is featured on h2g2's main page. The author receives an email to inform them of the happy event.
As h2g2 got larger, the h2g2 staffers were forced to recruit more and more sub-editors. As the number of sub-editors grew, it became harder to control the quality of the process. Some entries took much, much longer to get approved than others.2 In rare cases, there were obvious problems with the spelling, grammar, or factual accuracy of a particular entry.
The New Peer Review
You can read h2g2's official reasons for changing the editing process here. I also recommend checking out the Peer Review page to check out the official word on how the new process works. But allow me to break down the new process for you.
The author writes the entry.
The author pops over to the Peer Review page to recommend their entry. Alternatively, another member of h2g2 can recommend the entry. The Peer Review page acts as a sort of new-system Queue.
Other h2g2 members reply to the recommendation, giving their feedback on the entry.
The author may or may not respond to the feedback and/or change the entry.
If the entry is worthy of being edited and featured on h2g2's main page, the h2g2 Scouts pass the entry on to the sub-editors. Otherwise, they phrase their unwillingness to do so in terms of feedback and suggestions.
A sub-editor is assigned the entry.
The sub-editor may read the feedback on the Peer Review page.
The sub-editor checks the entry for several things including completeness, factual accuracy, adherence to h2g2 guidelines, and proper spelling and grammar.
The sub-editor makes any changes to the entry that they deem necessary.
The edited entry is placed on the What's Coming Up page where h2g2 members have one last shot to look over the entry and suggest last-minute changes.
Any last-minute changes are made by the assigned sub-editor.
The entry is featured on h2g2's main page. The author receives an email to inform them of the happy event.
The new process encourages regular h2g2 members to participate in the editing process. This should theoretically increase the accountability of the edited entries. Also, there is a greater likelihood that poorly written entries will be spotted immediately. However, several steps to the process have been added and this could theoretically slow down the editing process further. Only time will tell whether the process changes are democratic, bureaucratic, or both.
Terminology Changes
The h2g2 staffers felt the old terminology used to classify entries was too elitist. For that reason, they have introduced new words that sound more egalitarian to them.
Guide Entries are still Guide Entries. These are the entries that have not been submitted or recommended to the sub-editors of h2g2.
Submitted Entries are now Recommended Guide Entries. These are the entries which have been submitted or recommended, but which have not made it through the editing/approval process yet.
Approved Entries are now Edited Guide Entries. These are the entries that have run the gauntlet of either the old or new editing process at h2g2.
Please note that you do not submit your entry for approval anymore. You recommend it for editing. And the terminology is the same whether you are recommending your entry or someone else's. I will be using both the old and new terminology in this column for a little while as everyone gets used to the changes.
My initial concern is that Recommended sounds much more official than Edited does. It will probably be unclear to new h2g2 members that the word Recommended means the entry was recommended to the h2g2 sub-editors. They may assume that the people at h2g2 have Recommended the entry to them.
Top Mistakes Writers Make
I reviewed 25 random entries from the queue to determine what the most common mistakes are. Writers can easily improve their chances of getting through h2g2's process by eliminating these common errors from their entries.
Grammar and Spelling
13 entries had trouble with basic grammar and spelling. In many cases, the errors were easily corrected. But in at least 4 entries, the problems were so endemic that a sub-editor would likely reject the entry rather than spend the time necessary to correct all the problems.
The most common grammar and spelling errors included: numerous run-on sentences and sentence fragments, extraneous use of punctuation marks3, common spelling errors, and inconsistent spelling. Many of these could be avoided by running the entry through a spelling and grammar checker, or alternatively by asking someone else to look over the entry. The sub-editor's time is at a premium with so many entries waiting for approval, so they are understandably hesitant to spend it to correct grammar and spelling.
Organization
9 entries had serious problems with organization. Of those, 3 were so poorly organized that a sub-editor might easily decide to reject the entry.
The most egregious organizational error was failing to divide a very long entry into paragraphs. It is very difficult to read 1000 words without a break. And when it is possible to write an entry in text-only mode where carriage returns form easy paragraphs, there is little excuse for this.
Also common were entries where the author wrote whatever came to mind first and never bothered to organize the paragraphs in a way that would make the most sense to readers. Sometimes chronological events were not put in order, or sometimes similar subjects were placed apart. Authors should look back over their entry after writing it to make sure it is clearly organized. In an ideal world, the author would include section headers for all but the shortest of entries.
First Person/Opinion
While the Guide does allow first person entries when the author has a unique and valuable view on the subject, slipping into first person mode when it doesn't benefit the reader is frowned upon. 7 entries used first person perspective and/or personal opinion for no reason other than their own self-aggrandizement. 2 would probably have been rejected for this reason, while the others might have been edited to remove the first-person references.
I saw two things endemic with first person entries. The first was that the author sometimes seemed determined to stroke their own ego by tenuously associating themselves to a famous person or event. The other problem was with authors who presented their biased personal opinion on a controversial subject, purposely attempting to give the false impression that theirs was the 'official' opinion of the Guide. In the worst cases, this was done at the expense of any factual information the entry might have offered. Authors should try to remember that the approved/edited Guide is primarily about facts, not opinions.
Plagiarism
I was surprised to find that 5 entries included plagiarized information or other copyright infringement. Of those that did, 4 would definitely have been rejected.
The most common type of plagiarized entry was the cheap internet joke. These are the types of jokes that get circulated around the internet forever without credit to their originators. h2g2 has a policy against approving or formally editing short jokes, and they are certainly unwilling to give an h2g2 member 'credit' for creating the joke in question.
Other common violations I have seen include: attempting to republish copyrighted work by Douglas Adams, republishing extensive information from pamphlets or textbooks, and including logos and trademarked images in graphics and photographs. Never misrepresent work as your own, and never copy whole works for republication unless they are clearly in the public domain.
Coding
It is possible to submit an entry without knowing any GuideML or HTML. Simply type the entry as you would like it to appear. Nevertheless, 4 entries included problematic and unnecessary GuideML or HTML coding. The number rejected would probably vary depending on the patience of the sub-editor.
Common coding errors include lots of bold or italic type, extremely large type size, broken images, and use of colors that are hard to see in Classic Goo or Alabaster skin. There is no reason to include special coding in entries that are going through the editing process. If you would like to code your entry to make it look more professional, use only the tags that have been marked as approved by the GuideML Clinic.
Missing Information
3 entries failed to include basic information pertinent to the topic at hand. Whether any of them were approved would have depended on the sub-editor's willingness to work with the author to correct the oversight.
The most common problem was failing to define the subject matter. A good author never assumes that all the readers already know what they are writing about. If nothing else, providing a definition can be a fun exercise in centering yourself on the topic.
Other Errors
The other problems I saw came up rarely enough to be anomalies specific just to a particular entry I hit upon. They included the use of a language other than English (without any English translation), the submission of short jokes, and a duplication of an already approved entry that added nothing to the subject.
Conclusion
Only 3 of the 25 entries I reviewed avoided all the common errors I listed.
All the mistakes above are covered in the official Guidelines for Writers. The guidelines were updated just last week, and many of the issues above were added to the list. This is great news. If writers begin following the new guidelines now, more entries will be approved instead of rejected. And if the average entry requires less editing, the average length of time for approval will shrink.
Next Week's Queue
...will be shorter. Really!
Next week, we'll see whether the new Peer Review process has picked up steam. Will the number of approved entries per weekday go back to normal? Will the What's Coming Up page start to show some activity? Or will the h2g2 staffers and sub-editors concentrate on entries submitted to the old system?
If you have an opinion on the new process, please share it below.
Written by Fragilis the Melodical
Opinions expressed in this column are my own, and do not necessary reflect the opinions of h2g2 or the Post.
Go here for last week's View.
