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

So, what exactly are we going to do about the workshop?

The obvious fix is just to rename the workshop the "Writing Limbo", or somesuch, and admit that it's a graveyard. And then create a bunch of new places:

My favourite - The Collaborators: the idea is that this place is kinda like questions in ask-h2g2, but with the aim of creating a collaborative entry out of the discussion. On a daily basis, one thread from this place is made "This Day's Topic" by an inhouse bod, and from there to the edited guide. Alternatively, if the discussion has died down, anyone can try their hands at editing everything together and turn it into a collaborative entry and submit it to peer review.

Like Peer Review, there'd be a bunch of threads attached to an entry called "The Collaborators". Each thread would have a link, in the title, to a "This Week's Topic" style entry, with the standard open-ended questions and suchlike. People could do small chitchat in the thread attached to "The Collaborators", and make larger posts attached to the entry itself.

I think this would be more successful than the university because it's on a smaller scale, and there isn't any commitment unless you want there to be. Making the threads "This Day's Topic" would be simple: it could be an additional scout pick, for example - or perhaps have a seperate group of people who organise it, and both pick threads to feature, and do the editing to turn all the comments into a single coherent entry {which is a different set of skills to normal sub-editing, and requires a more butchering attitude}

Could something like this work?

Long, long in the future in a galaxy far, far away, the Writing Workshop and the Peer Review systems will be automated, so you can only have one review thread per entry, and that thread can only appear in one place - PR or WW.

Until then, it's all manual, and although we're always happy to move threads around, it's a bit of an effort. That's what happens when you decide to implement Peer Review using standard Forum technology.

Any suggestions for what we can do in the meantime would go down well. If we can help by moving threads or anything else, just yell.

Sure - but that won't help much - there are only about 30 threads which are duplicates of PR threads, and perhaps another 30 which are duplicates of recc'd entries. That won't tone things down much...

I think the one place tries to do too much; on the one hand it's a place for people to create collaborative entries; on the other hand it's a place for entries where the author has left which people can look through and perhaps revive themselves; on the gripping hand it's a place for writing and commenting on stuff which isn't aimed at getting into the edited guide; and on the tail it's a place for incomplete entries which the author wants feedback on.

I think we need a different place for each of those four types of thread. Hence "The Collaborators"

Why not come up with suggestions for multiple 'escape' forums for Peer Review? It's the same amount of effort to move things to any forum, so that would ne fine by us... if it *worked*. Happy to entertain any sane ideas.

* hopefully sane ideas *

First of all, the threads connected to recommended entries will have to go. Please don't create a new storage place, nor put them into the Sin Bin: they belong to their respective entries because a search for the subject matter should (ideally) yield *one* location, ie: an entry plus some threads to it. My experience is that WW/PR threads contain lots of ideas which didn't make their way into the entry and may serve as starting points for new discussions. The basic line reads: keep things together.

A list of WW threads falling into this category has been uploaded into the 'database' section of the Scouts' eGroup

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Next thing are those WW threads which have siblings on the PR.

They shouldn't exist in the first place but that's fiction as outlined in posting 3. The minimum requirement would be to have them carry links to their siblings in PR. They would still represent clutter in the WW. Researchers looking out for threads to comment on would be annoyed after encountering the second or third thread of this kind.

I've been playing with the idea of posting these links into WW threads of this category, but stepped back because this would add more confusion to the WW, as the really *working* threads would sink down to the second or even third red dot.

Things get worse if any of these entries gets moved back from the PR into the WW. Then there are *two* WW threads relating to the same entry, and comments would be dispersed at random between them.

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Pieces with the author AWOL.

This case is not covered in wording by the text at /Writing-Workshop, yet it's something that appears quite often. My suggestion goes along the lines of the 'ideas' section of the GalacticGuide (Ooops, yes, I've been visiting the place ). We could call it the Flea Market or so. A place where researchers are encouraged to take up un-owned and half-finished yarns and complete them.

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Finally, there's the Writing Workshop as it was meant to be. A place where researchers can ask for assistance and contributions from fellows before making the step into Peer Review.

Bossel

"Flea Market", I definately like. Nice idea, and it'd definately help. I like the workshop partly as a list of abandoned entries and ideas that I can make use of, and the threads with actual conversation in them get in the way of that!

Stuff which isn't aimed at the edited guide I think it'd be better off for h2g2-official not to worry about - the community ought to take care of that, just as the community take care of unofficial directories and such. A short comment in the writing workshop to that effect, and a link to the FAQ which says how to encourage people to visit your entry, perhaps?