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

One of the drawbacks of the system is not being able to see what other Scouts are picking and comments from Editors and fellow Scouts was a nice feature of that old egroups system.

In the past, the Scouts had a few disagreements among ourselves as to the readiness of certain entries for inclusion into the Edited Guide. And when an entry was turned down by Sam or Ashley, they'd give a reason for the whole group to see which I think helped with a learning curve that will be unavailable to newer Scouts.

But overall I still think it's a great new tool. I just can't wait until I get to use it.

- X

Do you think it would help if the Scout picks were automatically listed somewhere and could be discussed?

But wouldn't that put us back where we were with egroups (except for it being a touch more automated)?

I'm not sure if this is even a concern really. But I think for a newish Scout, seeing reasons for recommendations and rejections might help understand the system a bit better...

Maybe you're right. I guess I can't think of any good way for the system to be fully automated and still encourage full discussion by Scouts about the picks. Perhaps discussion can just be encouraged in general on the Scouts egroup.

Or perhaps we need to pay better attention to the comments in the PR threads themselves....

Often if something needs more work or isn't quite ready, you can tell simply by reading the comments in the thread.

Hey,

Let me first say that the new system seems nice and verry tempting to use. I didn't get to use it for real yet, but I pressed all the buttons I could find and it was lots of fun .

As to what was discussed earlier in the thread, I think that there should be some "repository" of recommendations withe the recommendation reason, and rejection/acception with reason. I think it should e a thread that is updated, probably a "private" thread for scouts only.
I think conversation about "aborting" a pick can go there. maybe it takes the top off the automation part of it, but it keeps everything nice and under control.

To your questions:
1. "Do you think h2g2's new site features are useful?" - Yap, seems like the buttons are for things we do, and we can use them, so usefull is a good way to say it. It sure makes my clipboard sigh in relif. Recommending used to require a great deal of copy/paste actions.

2. "Have you gotten a chance to use the new buttons yet?" - I think I answered that already, Not for real, just playing off and chickening out of submitting in the last moment.

3. "Will writers notice any change in how Peer Review behaves?" - Well, I think the change in behaviour is mainly that there's an editorial note before the scout's "closing off" the thread. I don't think it's bad, don't think it's good either.

4. "Do you think the Peer Review system will become more efficient or speedy?" - Well, as efficiency goes, yes, becuse it will probably take some load off the scouts and the h2g2 team (Bet the sub eds are getting it easier from their features too). As for speedier, well, I don't think that the change will be to obvious, as the system was pretty quick to start with.

5. "Any other comments would of course be appreciated." - Well, all I write might seem a bit negetive at points, but it isn't really. I think the idea is good, just still there's a bit to go till were there.
Main points are:
1. Automation is nice, but an alarming(well maybe not alarmeng but some) degree of control is lost, maybe not to the inhouse team, but to the scouts and researchers scattered all over the world.
2. When a scout submits a pick, I think the pick needs to ask for the date the pick is for. I guess we can do it in the body of the recommendation. It is necessery because we sometimes switch dates or fiil in for each other, and it's kind of hard for Ahley Mark Sam... to follow it without it being mentioned spesifically in the picks.


Cheers for the hard work, look like a bright optimistic future

Peace,

Dancer

Thanks, Dancer. The Sub-Editors seem to be responding similarly. The new system saves them a couple of steps and overall they like it. There is a little worry, though, because you can't go back and fix anything else once you've pressed the button indicating that's your done with your edit. You have to ask an Italic to make the fix for you.

So there's a little less control, but it's easier. And in the long run, this change may make it easier to automate other things along the process as well. That's just speculation on my part, but there you go.

On the other hand, with the Subs and the Scouts, once entries were emailed back, or picks emailed to the Yahoo group and approved/rejected, then any corrections had to be fixed by... emailing the italics.

So that's not really changed, it's just done on a one-on-one basis, rather than in a public forum. And we're still the nice, contactable team we always were.

(The issue about there being no open discussion about rejected picks it a good point, though.)

Which was debateable in the first place

We really need a smiley for .

Well, we just found a new way to show what a great thing e-mail is.


Dancer.