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

Being one of the "Old Geezers" around here, I was a bit intimidated by this "Peer Review" thing.

I did everything "by the numbers" on a new Article and found it is going well...so far.

I had a couple of comments on the piece which corrected mistakes and helped make the Article more accurate. I must say, a Scout reccommended it soon after and it is now in the Sub-eds' hands.

I was, at first, quite skeptical of the proceedure. Now I find myself leaning toward support. I'm sure it has it's glitches(which time and experience will correct), but so far...in my humble opinion, it beats any method which has come before it!

Good Article in The Post.....I'll keep an eye out here for further info on this subject!

NM

I am still a bit skeptical of the whole Peer Review system....
But then, as I seem to be one of the ones that it seems to be ignoring, I'm not surprised

<BB<

Fairly Strange, I'm glad you've had a good experience with Peer Review so far. Of course, you can read previous issues of this column at http://www.h2g2.com/A416026

As for Bluebottle... well, he's proof that not all of the experiences out there are so great.

I can understand that! I was a bit bothered by the backlog thought, myself. That seems to be something which needs corrected.

It wouldn't take much to become so buried in there that an Article would die from it's depth in the forum! Perhaps an old trick from my MOPARTS board could work.

If you find yourself getting buried, "re-submit". Might piss a scout or two off.....but it would put it back at the top so, at least, the interested civilian researchers might notice it!

NM

Or just see if you can find the original submission for that article and post something beneath it.
One of the reasons that the problem is how it is is because that people have submitted their articles more than once into the Peer Review system - there should be a more organised approach to moving the articles off.

On a positive note, since this article was written, Anna has decided to edit my "Paul McCartney Death Clues" article personally - which I believe shows that everyone in the towers reads this. Hopefully it'll be edited and approved soon - it's at the recommended stage, which isn't bad, after 10 months of it not doing anything....

I think that the peer review system should work in tandem with the old queue idea - as a way of recommending people who have left h2g2's articles for inclusion, and are not likely to submit them themselves. We have all pretty much found people who haven't been on h2g2 for a year who have written wonderful articles that should be included - and that, I feel, is what the Peer Review system should be there for.

One thing which no-one has, as far as I know, addressed yet, is the question of user pages. Anyone who has ACEd or greeted new researchers know that a lot of them start off by writing the equivalent of a guide article about the home page as their user page's introduction. These often have the potential of becoming useful guide entries, yet no-one seems to suggest them - partly because of the fact they are user pages, but often because they also include jokes, a description of who the researcher is etc...

I'm not against Peer Review as such, but I think it should be worked at, and a more organised approach to looking at all User Pages and articles could be adopted to look for lost gems. It concentrates too much on the here & now.

<BB<

I wouldn't recommend resubmitting your entry, Fairly Strange. Your second submission will likely be moved to the Sin Bin, where it can't be considered for the Edited Guide. And your first submission may be moved there as well! Also, there are a few h2g2 Scouts who patrol the less recent submissions on purpose. One of them might pick your entry up.

If your entry is languishing and you can't resist the temptation to boost it up to the top again, do as Bluebottle suggested. Post a reply to your own thread. If at all possible, say something other than, 'Hello! Anybody there?!?' Ask for feedback and nitpicks, or make an adjustment to your entry and then describe the change you made in your post.

Bluebottle, I agree that a more organized approach to sorting the entries would be nice. But I think we are headed in that direction already.

As for the worthwhile content on user pages, I agree with you. I will likely include some information about resurrecting good content from other authors in my next column. One of the ongoing frustrations is that very few people have submitted gems other than their own to Peer Review. So I'll include a mention of the user page phenomenon.

Earlier I wrote the following, but I made a typo so it doesn't read write or make sense. So this is a re-written, and hopefully understandle, version:

"One thing which no-one has, as far as I know, addressed yet, is the
question of user pages. Anyone who has ACEd or greeted new
researchers know that a lot of them start off by writing the equivalent
of a guide article about their home town as their user page's
introduction. These often have the potential of becoming useful
guide entries, yet no-one seems to suggest them - partly because
of the fact they are user pages, but often because they also include
jokes, a description of who the researcher is etc."

<BB<

Thanks, BB.

For a bit of fun recently I posted a light-hearted fictional yarn about "The Twenty-seventh Letter" at Peer Review. I was inundated with comments (for and against) from Scouts and other researchers. Some wanted to send it to the sin-bin, others were horrified to think that was to be its fate.

I pointed this out to Mark at the Feedback Soapbox forum and he said (to paraphrase) it was always in the plan to include fiction and humour in the Edited Guide once a critical mass of factual stuff had been included. That time may have arrived.

BB and FS, in my opinion, one of the weakest things about Peer Review is the age (generally pretty young) of the Scouts. In the main, they tend to pick things of interest to younger people, which, I suppose, is human nature but not too good for us o-l-d and s-e-n-i-l-e folk...

I can relate to o-l-d and s-e-n-i-l-e!!!!!

I'd like to try my hand at a humor(humour) piece, but...alas....I am quite accused of not having the talent!

NM

The thing with peer review is that is all subjective. Imagine two fictional articles submitted there:

A12345 - London, UK.
London is quite a big city on the river Thames. There is a castle there called "The Tower" and a nice bridge over the river called "Tower Bridge".

A54321 - Zaphodville, UK
Zaphodville is quite a big town on the river Zaphod. There is a castle called Zaphod castle and a nice bridge over the river called "Zaphod Bridge".

No matter what the content is, the one on London will receive a lot of attention because it is somewhere that people know - they know what to include, where mistakes are made etc, and will be interested in reading it.
The one on "Zaphodville", no matter how good, will pretty much be ignored because people do not know about Zaphodville, and all they can really say is "good article" and comment on the spelling and punctuation. So an article like this will pretty much sink to the end straight away, whilst anything written about London or anything else that is popular or experienced will remain at the top.

<BB<

BB, I agree, up to a point, with your well-argued thesis.

There have been a few instances where Scouts have recommended yarns that have been copied from elsewhere and a couple of instances where the articles they have recommended have been fictional. When either of these things happen Anna points it out on the Scout mailing list and asks the Scout to pick another one.

No doubt, in the future, these Scouts will stick to recommending stuff they know something about.

Which, of course, doesn't explain why I have had little trouble getting yarns about things unique to NZ accepted. I am the only NZ-based Scout. I don't think there are even any Australia-based Scouts.

Perhaps people are curious...?
The articles on Antarctica were very popular, and a lot of people read them and asked questions about them, and there is onkly 1 researcher from Antarctica on the guide that I know of. So perhaps it works the other way too - people are prepared to read about places that they know nothing about if it makes them curious and wonder what it is like - IF it is out of the ordianary.
Perhaps no-one cares much about an everyday English town, for example, because they're pretty sure what an English town is like. But something about New Zealand, Antarctica or somewhere seen as "exotic" probably would be more popular...

I don't know - what do the rest of you think?

<BB<

I think you might be right, BB. A lot of people at h2g2 seem interested in world travel. They might not be able to practice it, but they at least enjoy thinking about it.

But even entries about relatively boring places seem to get a better reception. It could be that Scouts feel comfortable recommending entries about places because they have seen many such accepted entries and have a general idea of what h2g2 is looking for.

With entries on more esoteric subjects, they may feel unqualified to judge the entry or unsure whether h2g2 wants the subject to be included. Probably the path of least resistance is to recommend articles similar to what has been done before.

Thats' a scary thought!

NM