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

It might be a stupid question, but I have been wondering what happens to Entries when you have written one and done your best to draw someone's attention to it. How can I know if someone has seen it? Where do they disappear to between "Peer Review" and "What's coming up"?

Writing an Entry:

Does it appear on another list somewhere? Do I get notice before an Entry disappears from my page and goes through the system to come out as an Edited Entry? Can I insist that an Entry I have made does not get Edited (i.e. unalterable) for example if it should be a living thing, such as a planned "Notice Board" for the German Community or the Musician's Guild Link List.

Reading Entries:

The difference between "Edited" "Recommended" and other Entries is not very obvious. If I am looking for a word in the Search I just click all three choices, so I get the maximum result from my search. When I then click on a title in the list, I can't tell if it's edited or not. And what difference does it make if it is? How can I tell? If the Entry is Edited, who can guarantee that the information in it is correct?

After you submit your entry to the Peer Review, you are stuck waiting for someone to comment on it. Eventually, an h2g2 Scout *will* come around to give you feedback. Other members of h2g2 may also pop in to discuss your entry.
The entry doesn't disappear from the Peer Review page unless it gets moved to the What's Coming Up page. However, it might get lost among the hundreds of other entries there. There is no guarantee that anyone's entry will necessarily be edited and featured on the main page. In the old system, you would get a formal rejection letter or a formal acceptance letter after several months of waiting. Now you are simply put on indefinite hold. A Scout may make it clear the entry is unsuitable for h2g2 to feature, or they may be less than clear.

Historically, many researchers have turned in entries that violate the writer's guidelines in the most basic ways: one-line jokes, ideological rants with no purpose, copyrighted works not by the author, and so forth. The old editing system got hopelessly bogged down with issuing formal rejections to these sorts of submissions. The new system already seems to be faster, but the trade-off is that the author may feel they haven't been given a sufficient response.

If you do not want an entry to become Edited, simply don't submit it to the Peer Review page. If it is a page that changes frequently, I doubt anyone else will be silly enough to recommend it for Editing either. Once an entry has been Edited, it is in a less flexible format that the author can not change on their own.

Nobody "guarantees" that anything at h2g2 is correct, except perhaps the legal notices about operating the site. If an entry has been Edited, it is far more likely to be factually correct and easy to read. That's really about it.

To see whether a particular entry has been Edited or not, look at the information box on the right-hand side of the entry. If the entry has both a Researcher and an Editor listed, it is an Edited entry. If only an Editor is listed, the entry hasn't been Edited.

I hope that helps to clear things up for you!

Yes, thanks. But what exactly is "indefinite hold". Can I make changes for the entire time? I think I'll just wait and see.

What I meant by "indefinite hold" is the author is waiting to find out whether his entry will be Edited or not, and nobody ever tells them. You can always make changes to the entry while you are waiting.

In fact, I'll explain it better. If a Scout recommends your entry to the Sub-Editor, the Sub-Editor will create a copy of the entry that he can edit. You can continue to change your original version forever. But it is the Sub-Editor's version which will appear on h2g2's main page, and which will show up first in h2g2's search engine.

Aaah!