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

I think it's been an incredibly successful competition. When I first heard about the Stretcher, I really didn't expect it to take off like it has. I've been very impressed with the effect it's had on the quality of writing here. Don't sell yourself short, Rich. If a goal of the competition was to stimulate quality writing and writers here, it was a resounding success. Thanks to all concerned for the reading material.

Was I selling myself short? Maybe. Not about me though, is it? A wise man once said 'It's all about the writing', and I reckon he was right.

Some of the writing that has been produced has been the best I've read on h2g2.

Well, sure, but let's not pretend that the Stretcher sprang fully-armored from the forehead of Zeus. It was your creation.

I didn't read all of the Stretcher entries, of course, but I read a good part of them. They were a few notches above the regular AWW and PR material. If we can attribute this step up in quality at least partially to the fact that people tend to work harder and come up with more rewarding material when they know that honest, *real* criticism is awaiting them, I wonder what h2g2 would look like if we all imagined ourselves as Stretcher Judges in the review fora? Maybe insufferable, but maybe also more real and more stimulating.

The problem with that is that PR has Criteria. When a piece meets the Criteria it gets accepted, so there isn't a need in general for people to excel themselves. The beauty of the Stretcher was that everyone challenged themselves personally, wanted solid crit, tried to take comments on board and made an extra effort each time. I think changing people's attitudes to their own writing is far more important than changing the way pieces are reviewed, but maybe that's over-idealistic.

The reason the Stretcher was a success was that everyone who entered really did try to become better writers. Before we started, I'd have been astonished to think that the likes of dmitri, Tibley, Alex, Danny or mvp could have improved. But they have. They all have. In every piece, they've pushed themselves on a little further, and their desire to do that has been inspirational.

So you're right in a way, but the bar in PR tends to be 'is it good enough?' and if the answer is 'yes', it's going to get picked unless the writer really, really wants to improve it further. It tends to be a process that decided what *has* to be done rather than what *could* be done. If we 'all' reviewed as Stretcher Judges it would make PR worth reading again, but can you realistically see that happening?

I think that more involved criticism is exactly how to change people's attitudes of their own writing.

Do I realistically see that happening? It could happen. It takes someone courageous to lead by example, I think. But there are plenty of good reviewers, so maybe that's not true.

And if you want a manifesto of how hootoo can be improved, that's a good part of mine. I'd love to see someone have the courage to challenge me on not just factual grounds, but on pretentious wording and a metaphor that doesn't work. If I experienced that, maybe I would have less trepidation about challenging the author of the next piece I reviewed. I would like to see, just once, a comment like you alluded to, one posted to an established researcher (maybe myself), "Does this meet the basic requirements? Yes. Is it really good enough? I don't think so." Or "Not your best, Jordan."

That's a mindset that the UG and Post (I'm sure) have, and practically every publisher and magazine in the world, but one that's absent in PR. Maybe because we're so eager to fill gaps or keep friends that we've lost sight of our strengths. The Stretcher was a valuable reminder of this.

I've had such conversations with the Eds. Why is something acceptable for the EG when it would be rejected by a magazine? The answer was: "anyone" can write for the EG, regardless of any specific calibre or skill.

Simple errors and repetition which should be pointed out is discouraged so I no longer do this. It presents poor efforts on the FP though, unless the sub-ed is a bloody good rewriter.

Well done indeed to all judges and contestants. I shall think long and hard before casting my final vote.

Now why didn't I read this sooner?

Jordan, Rich, I agree - I think you're on the right track about what needs to be changed in PR.

I've said it elsewhere and I'll say it again here - I like the fact that the UG doesn't pick up everything merely because it's been in the AWW "long enough".

In Peer Review, there seems to be a fear of offending people - which mostly comes from people *acting* offended when someone tells them their entry needs improvement. Or worse, the idea that you can't tell someone they could do better because they've already got more EGEs than you do. But PR should be more than a spellchecker and applause factory.

Grammar, spelling, even repetition and correctness of facts, are all things that can be objectively judged, and so they're the things we cling to while reviewing.

Style is much harder to judge. Are the facts not merely being written down, but presented in an interesting way? Does the topic lend itself to an interesting Guide entry, and if not, does the author manage to pull it off *anyway*? If it *is* the right topic, is the way it's written up just not doing justice to something with potential? Is there a "hook", or is the mere fact of the entry's existence supposed to be enough to make us want to read it?

What annoys me the most are those formulaic entries that are more or less well (or at least thoroughly) researched from third-party sources but seem to skip the writing phase entirely, so that the author seems to be merely copying and pasting names and dates and statistics they've found, without regard as to what's actually important or interesting, and linking them with standard phrases. Instead of "here is something interesting", it becomes "here is some information".

But how do we start changing that? How to we get people willing to give and receive criticism without having the "offended" party go off and (worst-case scenario, but seen before) write snarky journals and strike the honest reviewer from their friends list? Is letting someone with the potential for more remain complacently mediocre really doing them a favour?

I've tried honest, *real* criticism on your entries in Peer Review, Jordan, but you just ignore it and get all stroppy. So I've given up reviewing your entries.

Well, Gnomon, I'm in no mood to get into an argument right now. So I'll just say this. You've announced this policy (which you don't really adhere to) of yours repeatedly, and I can only say that while we apparently tend to disagree on damned near *everything* , I've never ignored your criticisms. Truly. You're a good writer and researcher, and if it seems like I'm ignoring you or getting stroppy (I have no idea what that means, but I can guess) then I apologize for that. If I get defensive, it's only because I've usually given the matter you're bringing up some thought myself.

However, there's really nothing that bothers me more than when an author changes a non-trivial (or something that might not have a correct answer) aspect of his or her work at someone's request, then changes it back when another researcher disagrees. I've seen "votes" go over in PR, which I don't understand. Maybe it's a quicker way to get your entry recommended, but it almost seems to compromise an entry's authentic voice.

Thanks, Jordan. I'm glad to hear that you at least consider my point of view. Not sure what you mean about "votes", but it sounds like a bad idea. A distinctive voice is important and we've been told many times by the Editors not to stifle it.

...got to go now. See you all in two weeks or so.

'I like the fact that the UG doesn't pick up everything merely because it's been in the AWW "long enough".'

Yeah - and the fact that the UG doesn't pick pieces that are merely 'good enough', either.

There's a whole different culture in AWW. People submit pieces purely for feedback, for crit, so when pieces draw robust criticism they actually find that helpful. Weird, huh? And you don't find people asking what's going on with their writing because 'it's been here x weeks!', because AWW is a workshop rather than a selection process. It's all about the journey (man).

It's interesting that you seem to see a flaw in subjective reviews. Why should that be? We were entirely subjective in our judging, and rarely agreed on anything. GB wrote a lot of rubbish. Pin did too. I wrote a huge amount of rubbish, and only got away with it for so long because I had such a good spreadsheet to keep the scores on. We were all criticised for our reviews at one time or another - justifiably so, in my view - and that to me is one of the beautiful things about honest, fair and subjective reviewing. All those things you mention in the paragraph 'Style is much harder to judge' are worth bringing up in PR, in my view.

There also seems to be a fear of giving mixed messages, of being the one to see the Emperor in his full glory and decry him. I always took the view in PR that we're all grown-ups and if we need every comment to be tempered with too much gentle kindness then we probably shouldn't be putting our work up for review. Reviewers tend to hide behind the Guidelines and use them as an excuse: 'You'll have to do this or it won't meet the Guidelines!' or 'This won't do if you want it to get into the Edited Guide!' The fact of the matter may be that the entry is just plain dull or badly-written, but this kind of reviewing encourages the view that entries that meet the minimum requirements of the Criteria will eventually be accepted regardless of quality. It would be better to be honest and explain why the Entry isn't very well written than to hide behind the Guidelines, wouldn't it? If you value your writing at all and are proud to see your name on it, you'll revise it, right?

And I don't like the 'x won't come back after this rough ride in PR', either. Nobody misses AR Shams, do they (well, apart from me)? There is pressure to fill the FP, for sure, but we shouldn't drop standards just to keep people here. I'd be more inclined to return if being on the FP was an achievement, anyway.

If somebody takes you off their friends list and writes a journal about the experience, they probably aren't worth your time anyway. I've asked the likes of Jordan here and Leo for their opinion on specific pieces in the past, and their critical responses made me more proud of the end result, not less. Friends can be honest with one another, right?

The way to start is to just write honest reviews. Forget about being objective for a while. People might not love you for it, but I'd certainly respect your opinion more if you gave something I'd written an honest, critical review than if you just wrote 'Nice '. I can remember a couple of my own PR submissions where I asked the Scouts to hold off on picking because I wasn't happy with the piece myself, and I got some deeper reviews as a result.

Finally, it's worth bearing in mind that everyone has contributes to PR has a subjective view of what they would like the Edited Guide to be anyway: some prefer Entries to be comprehensive and functional; some prefer more flowery prose and a clever style; others like a little wit and ingenuity. We'd like all things, I guess, but what do we prize the most? The only way to get the Guide we all want, that brings all those together, is to champion the Entries that fit our ideals the best and review with those ideals in mind. To take the two chaps above as an example, I don't imagine for a moment that Jordan and Gnomon would review or write any Entry in the same way, but I don't think their views are mutually exclusive, and I think anything I've written would be improved by both of their input rather than by just one. So there isn't a 'right' way of looking at PR. I think the 'functional' holds too much sway at the moment, though, and that perhaps we could do with focussing more on making Entries an entertaining read. Maybe if Gnomon and Jordan could be persuaded to collaborate on an Entry they could shine a light for the rest of us to follow...

Woah, hang on. I never said that judging style/judging subjectively was a *bad* thing, just that everyone's afraid of doing it. They just cling to those things where they can "prove" they're right. Which is the entire problem, really, because once you get into the "I simply don't think it's a very good entry" problem, everyone else jumps on you and tells you to be "nice".

Just say that 'nice' isn't in your genes

And anyway, that's "everyone else"'s problem, not yours. If you're honest, it's a good review.

Preaching to the choir here, you know You seem to have entirely misunderstood my Post 8 if you think I need convincing that the point of PR isn't just for praising people (without telling them what, specifically, is working) and then pointing out that they missed a curly apostrophe.

Basically, it boils down to the fact that we need more people active in PR with enough time to give an entry a thorough read and the guts to say *what* they do or don't like about it (without being deliberately nasty, of course), and for the author (and other reviewers) to not act like honest criticism (however misguided) is a personal attack.

there, I'm afraid

Ah. You sounded like you wanted to inducted into some kind of cabal. I was just preparing the goat when I read your reply

You're right, though. I'd love to be more involved in PR again, but I have enough to do for h2g2 that I don't have time for already without not having enough time for PR as well.

I think I got sucked into the 'corrections' side of PR too much myself, so that reviewing became dull for me. As I became more involved with and the Aviators, PR became a fairly boring place, so when I had to cut a bit of h2g2 out it was only natural that PR went first. I'm trying to be a little more involved thatn I have been because there is some really good stuff coming out of the other end, but I'll do it for fun rather it being a 'duty'.

And I don't know many of the newer PR regulars, so I guess it can't be personal

I've had a wonderful thought.

Imagine that when you switch on your PC for the first time in the morning, you can't wait to go to the front page to see what's there. You sit in your chair damning that spinning hourglass (or whatever the more modern computers have) while you're impatiently waiting for PR to load, to see what's been submitted while you were asleep. What if, in short, PR was a guilty pleasure, instead of an obligation. We all have enough obligations, enough duties, in h2g2 and in RL.

I can remember the old "Get Writing" site, as I'm sure many of you can. For others, it was a BBC DNA site for creative writing (mostly fiction as I recall) which went kaput sometime in 2005 I think. I didn't spend much time there, but when I wandered over, I always saw a remarkable attitude. It was something like a guilty pleasure. It was enjoyable, and never seemed like a droning process. Why? If I had to guess, I'd say because there weren't really any restrictive guidelines. There were no badged low-numbers popping in briefly to say "This is unsuitable, please remove it." There was no expectation that authors excise all first-person references. And of course, there was no expectation that an entry could be good enough. It was a real celebration of writing.

I do think PR has a lot to learn from the AWW and the model of a Get Writing or similar fiction workshop site. If The Post wants a manifesto for what they want h2g2 to look like, I'd suggest framing it by asking what can be done to make PR a guilty pleasure like it seemed when we were newbies.

No. I don't think the guidelines have anything to do with it, really. It is quite possible to write well and still stay within them. Some things *are* simply unsuitable, and opening the Edited Guide up to fiction won't solve anything.

The problem I see is the need for something - anything! - new on the FP every day, so people know that something - anything! - even vaguely suitable will be picked.

And I'd still rather pick nothing than pick something boring.

I didn't say anything about opening the EG up to fiction, Mala. But if you see a pressure to pick inferior entries, can it be doubted that having our guidelines has everything to do with that? After all, if we didn't have the Writing Guidelines, we would have to use our best judgment in picking entries (heaven forbid), rather than having a sort of a checklist for the minimum requirements.

This thread really should be moved to the 'How can h2g2 be improved' section. It would add another idea to the 'It's all the Aces' fault that newbies don't sign up, don't stay on h2g2, don't reply to the Ace welcome, don't write suitable guide entries...' complaints by all those knowledgeable people here.