This week, the View includes some responses to the new Peer Review process.

As I write this week's View, there are 708 entries in the queue. That's down from 771 last week -- quite a reduction. And there are 102 recommended entries at the Peer Review page. Last week, there were 51. If we add the entries in the queue to the entries recommended at the Peer Review page, we get a total of 810 entries. That total is 12 less than last week's total.

The average number of entries approved per weekday went down again, from 6.2 last week to 5.4 this week. Again, we must fondly remember the 8 to 10 entries approved in bygone weeks to understand the change.

The downturn began when the Peer Review process was announced. It is possible the slow-down is being caused in part by the necessity of checking and editing very complex submissions in order to clear out the old queue once and for all. The h2g2 staff has committed to featuring at least 5 new entries per weekday, but it seems to be getting harder for the h2g2 sub-editors to fulfill this commitment. We'll be watching this unfold in future weeks.

The ratio of approved/edited entries to entries waiting for approval/editing went up this week. There are 2.3 entries already edited for each new one awaiting h2g2's attention. That's up from 2.1 last week. In the end, the reduction in the total queue made more difference to this ratio than the lower number of new entries featured each weekday. Overall, it looks like h2g2 did somewhat better this week than it did last week.

Of course, it is only natural that the members of h2g2 have wanted to express their opinions on the change to Peer Review editing. In fact, the long-anticipated change in forum structure has merited less discussion at h2g2 -- probably because that change hasn't been as controversial.

Some threads where the Peer Review process has being discussed have been at:

• The Miscellaneous Feedback Page
• The Feature Suggestions Feedback Page
• What's Coming Up Page
• Writer's Guidelines
• The Subbing Process
• Last Week's View From the Queue

When we remove the opinions of the h2g2 staffers on the grounds that they are understandably biased, the opinion at h2g2 on Peer Review is sharply divided. I counted 12 positive remarks to 11 negative ones on a quick foray into last week's conversations.

The more optimistic comments were that the new process is:

• 
  more open
  
• 
  likely to make things more efficient
  
• 
  thankfully capable of pushing people into using GuideML
  
• 
  helpful and constructive because the author is involved more
  
• 
  likely to sort the wheat from the chaff, and
  
• 
  bound to be an improvement over the old system, as we have nothing to lose.
  

The more pessimistic members feel the new process is:

• 
  too open to cheating, politics, and back-biting
  
• 
  full of too many critics that could slow the system down
  
• 
  encouraging researchers who are not qualified to comment like a sub-editor
  
• 
  too difficult to recommend entries to, leaving newer members behind, and
  
• 
  entirely silly.
  

A few h2g2 members have also expressed a mixed opinion, feeling the new system could be both more bureaucratic and more democratic. And some members are simply eager for either system to cause their first entry to be featured.

Some researchers have also stepped into the fray to offer suggestions for improvement. By far, the biggest request is a return to some sort of automated submission process. Several editors have requested that a "Submit" button be used to automatically recommend an author's own entry to the Peer Review page.

Two other suggestions keep coming up. One is to create a page that would display all the entries recommended to the Peer Review so far. The other is to ask authors to post a link within the body of their recommendation post to the entry they are recommending. This would be in addition to including the entry number and title in the post's header.

Part of the reason we are so divided on Peer Review is that we have never seen it in action. We can only speculate on what the outcome of the change will be. To further confuse things, the new process is a manual one instead of the smooth automated process we were used to. h2g2 editor Mark Moxon has indicated that changes may very well be in order for the fledgling Peer Review process.

I should point out that we are indeed planning a much more pleasant and less kludgy system to
replace the current Peer Review page, which is (quite obviously) a manual solution that simply uses
existing tools.

We chose this route because our main aim was to stop the queue from growing, and to do that we had
to remove the Submit button and replace it with something else... without spending too long
programming it.

Some time in the not too far distant future the Peer Review system will be far more sophisticated and
automated... but as with all these things, we need to do it properly.

But first things are first. People with entries submitted to the old system can rest assured that their work will not be pushed aside in favor of Peer Review.

We promise to process all queued entries properly and as promised, and they will all be processed within about 6 weeks, we hope.

And in another thread:

[B]y then there will be no internal queues and no waiting lists, just a guarantee that a certain number of recommendations will be edited per day.

I spent enough time looking over the Peer Review this week to be astounded at the number of different ways people managed to misinterpret or ignore the instructions for recommending entries. Let's face it. Almost anything is harder than clicking on a 'Submit' button. Next week, we'll take a look at how to recommend your entry to Peer Review, how not to recommend it, and what your chances are of receiving speedy feedback there.

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. It explains Peer Review, and looks at the most common writer's mistakes at h2g2.

07.08.00. Front Page

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