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

If you have anything to ask or add, please let me know.

As of 10:15am USA Pacific Standard time on Tuesday, September 26th, the queue length was 300 entries. I'm thinking that at the time of writing this article, the queue statistic hadn't been updated yet.

So perhaps h2g2 is making good progress in getting rid of the old queue. Personally, I think we should increase the rate of entries being edited to 10 per day; that has been done in the past, and I don't know why that can't be done again.

Us scouts are currently sending one article per day to the Towers from the Peer Review page. I presume that when the old queue is gone, we'll ramp up to 5 or 10 per day. In fact, in an e-mail a month or so ago, we were told that the ultimate goal is to have two scouts approving five entries each per day, for a total of 10 entries per day.

The hope for scouts is to have 40 total, for a one month rotation of 20 work days. That is, each scout has one day every month to recommend entries.

Wampus

I report on h2g2's progress on a weekly basis, and I do stick to a particular day and time of the week so I can be consistent. I checked again a little after I posted my entry (12 pm Mountain Time yesterday), and 338 entries remained. So I can only assume my information at time of writing was correct.

It used to be that the queue length was updated at least daily. I remember checking in the past and seeing the number go up and down over the course of a weekday and even during the weekend. If that has changed, I'd like to know about it.

In the end, though, I don't think it practical that I should revise the column's reporting schedule because h2g2 is updating its statistics less often. The column is already turned in at the last possible moment in accordance with the Post's schedule.

I will say that I saw no change in the queue length over the weekend. But this may really have been the case, since it's impossible to add entries to the old queue now and sub-editors may not be reducing the queue during weekends.

On another note, h2g2 doesn't show any interest in returning to the rate of 10 entries per day. At one point, I asked people reading my column to pipe up with reasons it might be better to go with a higher rate. I got almost no response. And meanwhile, the h2g2 staffers were feeling very strained keeping up with the higher rate. I saw typos, weak editing, and just plain misinformation more and more often until h2g2 went down to 5 entries a day. The quality does seem higher now.

In general, I think it got harder to ensure quality as the number of sub-editor volunteers got higher and higher while the number of employed staffers watching over them stayed the same. The employ of the Scouts could be an aid in this, but only after the old queue is gone. Perhaps other steps could be taken to ensure the sub-editors employed in the future are all capable of very good editing. In the meanwhile, I'd honestly rather have 5 solid entries than 10 iffy ones.

"Perhaps other steps could be taken to ensure the sub-editors employed in the future are all capable of very good editing." - This should have been the standard from the beginning, but I'm not going to resurrect an old rant...

Lack of activity by the volunteers? I don't know which group you are talking about, but it seems to me to be just as difficult as ever to find a Peer Review forum that hasn't already been visited by a Scout or two. We've got a fairly extensive database off-site full of entries that we'd recommend, just as soon as the Towers were ready to receive them. There is one thing that does hamper our efforts, though, and that is the size of the Review page's forums. It is so easy for something to get lost in there... it is going to continue to be a problem, and that problem will be getting worse.

Re the "lack of activity," I just report on what I see. If the staffers are doing a lot of things but have no way of letting regular researchers know about it, this is perhaps a problem in and of itself. I would argue that the whole Peer Review process is less reportable because it does not contribute to the statistics on the h2g2 info page.

I do count the number of threads on the Peer Review page, but it would take me hours to see which ones had received replies. And what's more, I'd have to know which replies were from Scouts and which were not. While some Scouts include their status in their name, others don't. I'm sorry, but I feel it would be going overboard to memorize the list of Scouts and then take several extra hours each week to check all the Peer Review threads -- so I can add one more statistic to my page.

In the meanwhile, all I have to judge by is the What's Coming Up page. And to some extent, the Scouts should be adding entries to this regularly if they are doing their jobs. At least, that was my analysis. I assumed that the chances were slim that the Scouts were replying to dozens of threads, and could only find 1 entry worth forwarding to the sub-editors. So somewhere along the line, something isn't getting done if only 1 entry is added to that page in a week. If you have more information, do share it. I don't know the inner workings of the Scouts job or how entries appear on the What's Coming Up page. That information isn't posted anywhere.

Each scout is assigned a day in which to recommend an article. On that day, the article in question is to the Towers, and we are notified of its acceptance/rejection a few days later via e-mail. After that, the scout goes to the respective peer review thread and posts a standard message saying that the article has been accepted, and that the thread can be closed.

The article then goes to the Towers. The next we see it is when it goes on the "What's Coming Up" page, and then (eventually) becomes Edited and goes on the front page. The scouts are not involved in this part of the process.

The thread is "closed" by being moved into the response forum for that article. I personally know of about 3 or 4 that have been moved.

Given the structure of the forums, you can see what ones are about to be closed by looking for the "this article has been accepted" post in recently posted-to threads. However, once it's moved, it'd be very difficult to notice that it's gone, which makes it hard to keep track of progress. Oh, well.

But, by the same token, if you cannot tell who is a volunteer, then it is unfair to say that the volunteers have been inactive. And the volunteers have no control over the "What's Coming Up" page; it gets updated by the Towers whenever they get around to it. The Scouts are currently limited to one recommendation per Scout per month, a limit set by the Towers while they slog through the last of the old queue. We will be ramping up to two picks this week, and they plan to increase the use of our recommendations as the old queue disappears.

I can *tell* who is a Scout because they are listed out on the "Scouts" page. However, I will repeat that you are asking me to to undertake a burdensome task if you are saying I must check every thread on the Peer Review page for Scouts posts weekly.

For any number of reasons, this is a bad idea. I will freely admit that one good reason is that I am human enough to make mistakes during the hours-long task. What if I fail to recognize one of the Scouts at a glance? What if one or more of them is using an alias I don't recognize? What if I simply get tired and make mistakes? What if numerous threads are removed or added as I count?

I also feel you are twisting my words around so you can take offense at them, Colonel Sellers. I think you know I never meant to insult the Scouts, and I think you also know I never meant to sound blase about who they are. I've encouraged volunteerism and being nice to volunteers at every turn. Why would I suddenly become insulting?

Perhaps you are feeling defensive. Please don't. My job here is to call a cow a cow, not to point fingers. I report on the facts as much as possible. I thought I made it very clear that I didn't understand the cause of the week's slowdown.

From Wampus' description, the lack of activity on the What's Coming Up page could be entirely based on inactivity by the paid staffers at h2g2 Towers. I didn't understand this before, of course, because there was no way for me to know. Everything on h2g2's pages indicates that the Scouts are responsible for the What's Coming Up page. Intervention by the paid staffers isn't mentioned at all.

It seems as we move towards Peer Review, we are heading to a gray area where I must do the best I can with incomplete information. If I step on toes along the way, all I can do is apologize. (Sorry.)

But I won't stop writing this column -- nor will I start spending more than 20 hours per week on the task -- because things are not properly spelled out, counted, or otherwise made clear to me. Instead, I will continue to go with the best information I have available. Where the information is shoddy or incomplete, I will point that out too. As I learn more, I will share what I learn.

I'd like to thank you, Wampus, for clarifying the Scouts' role to me. I will be happy to include this information in a future column.