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

Hi folks,

great entry, and a good idea of you to have this issue addressed from both sides of the fence, so to say. I'm a Sub myself, and have got four of my own entries through PR. My experiences so far:

(Subbing) Since the new editing system was installed, I've contacted every author and said that I'm the Sub for his masterpiece and that he could find the subbed version at http... . The problem with the duplicate 'pending' entry, is that it appears only *after* the sub had returned the entry. At this stage, the Sub couldn't do any corrections himself, but has to contact the in-house editors to do them (more work). Therefore, I contact the original researcher *before* I return the entry to the in-house editors, but after I made my changes. In case of necessary corrections, I could do them easily myself; if I don't hear anything within a week, I return the entry without any further changes. This has been a quite pleasant experience so far, and I never got any serious complaints.

(Writing) Until now, I've never been contacted by the Sub. There have been a few nitpicks now and then, but in general, I was always pleased by the Sub's work. When there were minor corrections necessary, they had to be done in-house, as the entry was already returned. In my Aquavit article, however, there have been changes by the in-house team that I'm not so pleased with. Nothing serious, but I think the entry would be better without them.

In conclusion, I think that the whole editing process is a lot smoother if the Subs would contact the researcher of the entries to sub, if only to get any last minute corrections done without bothering the in-house editing team.

Just to add some comments to your sub-ed article, to be more precise, on the contact between author and sub-ed.

I've had 4 entries on the front page now.
I have never been contacted directly by the sub ed in question for any of the articles.

For two of the articles, I took the time to search out the recommended version, checked who was sub-editing it and contacted them.
Only one of them bothered to reply to my post.

For one, I only bothered contacting the sub-ed on finding the 'pending version' had a few errors in it (of my own doing, not the sub's) - the sub immediately contacted the italics to rectify the problem.

For one I didn't bother contacting the sub, and they didn't bother contacting me (However, there were no problems with this one.


Above I was counting just the entries having completed the process.
I do have another two recommended entries. in reality three, but one is yet to be given to a sub.

Of the two, I've initiated contact with the sub on both occasions, one of which was never answered.

On finding problems with one of the articles, (after it appeared on my page as 'pending') I went straight to the in house editors -
I'm still waiting to see what happens with the second entry.

So to recap


6 entries
Contact initiated by the sub ed: zero
Problems found by the author: 2
Problems requiring the intervention of the in house team: 2

So 33% of my entries had problems in them at the end of the sub-ed stage (not all due to the sub-ed themselves I should stress) and all of these problems required the attention of the in-house team.

Wouldn't a little more pre-emptive cooperation between author and sub-ed make the italic's jobs a little easier. After all, that's why we volunteer, Isn't it?

A simple "I've finished working on your article, it's at Axxxxxx. What do you think?" message could save a lot of work later on.

whisky

I'm sorry I didn't spot these earlier. I think it's time for a revision of this Entry. Anyone up for it?