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

Gee - your over-pluralisation is infecting me now!

"a single person spoke to the single author in a way which could be interpreted as accusing that author of being a parasite"

Are we having fun yet?

Tell me, do you use Usenet at all? Do you know what the slang "troll" means in a Usenet context?

What I meant it what I said, We (and I'm no saint (well not in the Real life sense)) yell at other researchers (and there are bound to be other examples of this if people are as pedantic as you seem to be (no offense intended)), and accuse them (the other researchers) of being parasites (or displaying the behaviour assoiated with parasites).

I hope you now fully understand what I meant and perhaps we can move on to a more productive discussion on how Peer Review can be reformed to make it run more smoothly.

Regards,

"troll" - one who posts an offensive comment to a newsgroup or similar and generates a disproportionate number of offensive replies from people who should know better. Moving on - A wonderful idea. I humbly suggest we move on to this thread: http://www.bbc.co.uk/h2g2/guide/F615?thread=120041 and leave the nastiness in this one behind us.

I think that's a very wise idea.

Barton,

"I, of course, need to consider if I went to far in trying to wake this person up to how flip, rude, inconsiderate, and unthinking he had been in light of all the attention and support he was being offered from the community."

I've read the thread at least up to 87 where you wrote this, and I totally disagree. Playboy Reporter was not flip, rude, inconsiderate or unthinking. He simply did not understand the Peer Review, what kind of junk sub-eds have to deal with, that this topic might have been more suited to a University project, that it at least should have been moved to Writers' Workshop instead of Peer Review.

The sarcastic post you made earlier (post 61) was way over the top, loaded with baggage about the sub-editor process that he had no way of knowing.

"Of course, posting on any subject to the world from an organization that purports to be an encyclopedia under construction is both prestigeous and daunting."

That you and others on this thread have taken things too seriously does not excuse the way you treated Playboy Reporter. If you hound all the people out of h2g2 who do not demand that Guide Entries equal the sincerity of doctoral theses or professional journals, then h2g2 will be a lonely place.

"Moreover, this particular lump was actively fighting to preserve his lack of understanding in the face of good people trying to help him past what they took to be a naive lack of comprehension of the scope of what he was, ostensibly, trying to do."

Does it no longer count as an ad hominem attack if the victim has left?

Until he was attacked, Playboy Reporter apparently made several attempts to modify his entry to include suggestions from Peer Review. Whether his modifications constitute plagiarism is debatable. Lucinda makes it sound like these kinds of modifications, lifting quotes directly from Peer Review, are common and acceptable.

What is not debatable is that Playboy Reporter consistently attempted to modify his entry based on the suggestions of others. If he was "fighting" against those suggestions, then he would have ignored them all and demanded his original draft be used. Even his suggestion that it be modified further by Mikey or Arpeggio or a sub-editor seemed to be a way of accepting the many heavy-handed criticisms he had received.

The responses to his request were way overboard. What was done to this guy was much worse than the innocent or ignorant requests he made. He did not understand the Peer Review system. But you know the system, so you have no excuse for this kind of behavior.

"Lord help, Playboy Reporter, if he is ever a student of mine."

With that attitude, Lord help all the students you may ever have, as well as the institution that would employ you as a teacher.

Dear Deidzoeb, how are things in the trenches?

You made a number of comments on Barton's post 87. Archangel Silly Willy made similar comments in his post 90, which Barton answered in the first half of his post 97. It would seem good if you were to read this argument, so we can avoid going over the same ground ad nauseam, and move on to a more productive discussion.

You might also read my post 115 which explains my personal position on people who fail to read the entire backlog of such delicate and somewhat inflammable threads as this.

Xanthia - *reading "Zen and the Art of Internet Flaming"*

Hi all.

I'd just like to clarify the issue, as I understand it, on incorporating comments from Peer Review into entries. And do it seperately from my other comments.

1) If you copy something verbatim from anywhere not on h2g2, you should give it an attribution. You should also check that you are not violating Intellectual Property aka The Law. You should also put it in talicised s.

2) If you copy something verbatim from someone on h2g2, you should ensure that they get co-author credit on the entry. This means writing the following sentence at the top of the entry, filling in the U-numbers appropriately. The sub-ed will do the rest.

"Note: The following people deserve credit for this entry - , , {etc}."

3) If you see some facts that someone wrote, and write the same facts in your own words in the entry, then you need not give them co-author credit. You should, as a matter of course, thank them publically for their input in the appropriate thread. You may wish to give them co-author credit anyway, if they made a big contribution.

If any scout or sub-ed would like to give their input on this issue, then that would be useful, and probably much more useful than pointing fingers and saying "It's HIR fault" ("no it isn't" - "yes it is").

Thank you for your time.

Finally caught up with all of the thread to date. I stand by what I said. Barton wrote nothing anywhere in this thread to excuse the tone of post 61.

I don't think you or Barton are seeing this from the perspective of someone unfamiliar with Peer Review. You make it sound like Playboy Reporter was maliciously playing around and wasting your time. I don't see it.

Writers should develop a thick skin and expect criticism, but this goes above and beyond the call of a critic's duty. (Do we really need more critics around here?!! Can't remember who said it, but the saying goes that Critics are like eunuchs in a harem -- they know very well how it's done, they see it done every night, but they just don't have the tools to do it themselves. h2g2 needs better critics, not more critics.) I've been in some real life college writers' workshops where students occasionally left crying. Sometimes it's just a student who is too sensitive, sometimes it's the critics being insensitive. In this forum, it was the critics.

There should be a way to accomplish thorough, valid criticism without hounding people off the website.

"Dear Deidzoeb, how are things in the trenches?"

So slow I had to come pour gas on the flames over here. (JUST KIDDING.)

Actually reading this interminable thread has distracted me from my normal rabble-rousing duties. I haven't checked other threads since this morning. (Also couldn't access h2g2 for about an hour around noon or one Eastern Daylight Time. 502?)

First of all: Crescent, I apologize for misspelling your name. I was tired and I didn't double check.

I would also apologize to Playboy Reporter, if he hadn't run away (Or as some of you have indicated, been 'driven away') for having the name Playboy Writer stuck in my head for no discernable reason.

Hello Deidzoeb,

I'm always happy to be attacked from another flank, but as has been noted here already some of your ammunition was already used. No big deal, keep pounding away till I surrender or run away, just like Playboy Reporter.

I'm afraid that in that arena, I might be thrown out, but I'm not that kind of cry baby, unwilling to stand up for himself or unwilling to apologize for mistakes.

I have already apologized for failing to credit Playboy Reporter for the major improvement in his work from the first submission.

I have explained my position. And I hope that you all understand by now why I did what I did and why I felt and still feel justified for having done it, though none of you have acknowledged or attempted to refute my position.

Yes, I know this isn't a debating society and that you are, apparently, very upset at this one case, particularly since you feel that I am the one who drove Playboy Reporter away.

There's no point, then, in mentioning those who chimed in with concurrences, some of whom disassociated themselves from the manner I said what I said but still seconded my sentiments. Perhaps, they might share some blame, since you seem to be looking for a victim. And if there is a victim -- I'm sorry make that 'perpetrator' -- then there need not be anything changed in this wonderful system. ('Everything is fine we'll just write him a stern warning and it won't happen again.')

Though I would say that what you are perceiving, in hindsight, as a vicious attack -- particularly with that totally unwarranted, demeaning, prejudicial, and insulting characterization of Playboy Reporter as being potentially 'a fourteen year-old, non-genius boy with dyslexia,' when the guide has already accepted three articles from him, and after Mark having said, here and elsewhere, that the article showed some quality which he implied, if not directly having said, would be acceptable as a guide entry, right now.

(So all you have to do about that particular comment is to pick this entry for the guide and send it to some sub-editor to fix up. After all, it doesn't really matter if it's any good because it can always be replaced or revised, isn't that what I read in someone's post, here? -- Something of a clear indication that Scouts have no real function other than to pick what they like arbitrarily -- The sub-editors can always fix it up and Peer Review is simply away to take some of the load of the editing team. So you might consider just changing the name to Peer Editing since review doesn't seem to enter into it.)

Crescent, having said that, has done more to tarnish the abilities of Playboy Reporter than I ever did. All I did was accuse him of being immature and selfish while you have described him as being immature and mentally crippled yet still capable of writing satisfactory articles (which isn't impossible, but which Crescent offered as reason for sympathy and compassion, for what I take to be a judgement of low quality for this article) for the guide thereby tarnishing Playboy Reporter and the guide's standards.

And,who was it that announce announced that he is afraid to post an article to PR for fear that he might be assaulted for his ignorance on a subject which he nonetheless felt capable of writing about, for the world to see, in the mode of an expert researcher, by 'experts' for having misrepresented himself as one of their company? Where on earth is that coming from? What does it mean? Does it mean that you are afraid of being called misinformed and offered suggestions and direction?

I'm sure that every one of us who has posted whether we have been picked or not to be tendered to the tender mercies of a sub-editor, such as Crescent, have felt precisely the same way, because each of us know that there are many people 'out there' who are better schooled or better qualified to be writing about our topics.

That is why *most* of us look forward to hearing the comments, critiques, and exceptions from the community to be better able to perfect our contributions. The articles that receive no significant criticism, such as my article on Jargon, and yet are picked are the ones that we feel the least secure about, even though they received rave comments. We all know that most of the ones that receive no comments end up floating on the sludge at the bottom of the stack.

At this point, I was going to address the specific unique charges and comments in Deidzoeb's posting. Particularly the parts that came where he boasted that he had not finished reading the thread. Evidently he felt that he had seen enough and had to add his insights while they were still fresh.

Okay, that's taken care of.

I was actually going to try one more time to reason with you people, but just yesterday when discussing the shameful way that another researcher (who has been on h2g2 for nearly a year and who wrote an article that recently appeared 'on the front page' -- the topic was Wicca and how Wiccans were persecuted) was persecuted in a dreadful thread which no one seemed to care about because she didn't run away crying, I found myself advising some one that the problems were inevitable because the people who were involved were not aware that they did not share a common vocabulary, that they were trying to use logic to define faith, that they were trying to prove that they were right despite the fact of conflicting faiths, and because everyone wanted to burn the witch.

There is no point in my wasting my time framing arguments, proposals or explanations till any one or more of you are willing to read what I write and consider that your belief might be just as wrong as you believe my belief to be. We have conflicting faiths. We can't even discuss it because we disagree about what the significance of the facts are. We can't prove we are right because or 'facts' only have significance in the light of our faith. And, obviously, you want to burn the witch.

I will, of course, be watching what you write, particularly when you write about me. I will be looking to see if any of you display other than your current blind fanaticism and zeal to see the flames licking at my feet. I will know, because you will need to discuss the suggestions and points I made unless you have already decided that I can make no point worth discussing. If you cannot even consider point by point the possibility that I said anything worth your attention then you are indeed, too deep in your zeal to be reasoned with. If you cannot even give me the consideration given a criminal in court to be heard and refuted, well, why should I waste more time? I have no possible input in any case.

I, also, note that no one has taken the time to comment on my suggested entry for Intelligence. You are all too honorable to flame me, and I respect that. But you haven't the honor, it seems, to compare and contrast.

Indeed, since you are not selecting this entry and you will not consider my entry, which is honest and witty, that there will be no Intelligence in the guide.

If that seems rude, good folk, why, tit for tat! Which is where this all started, isn't it.

Barton

Evn'n Barton,

Suggest you scroll up/backtrack to where Lucinda said 'let's take this convo elsewhere', and read the Peer Review Feedback Forum.

Hey! I thought it was *me* they were burning. Wait yer turn, already!

Read the Peer Review thread all the way through, get offline, go purchase blood-pressure meds, and once you feel you can trust you, go back and say this there. This blame thing is bullcaca, and we do not need to sit still for it. We're some of the writers they are so anxious to keep, right?

Please go see. And please take it easy. I'll be back in a couple hours. Going to play real-life Scrabble w/ David and decompensate, or did I mean 'decompress' for a while.

Please, though there is no good reason why you should (or I should, or Lucinda should), try to keep your temper. Mine's out on the balcony...whimpering to get in, but I'm showing it who's boss.

Arpeggio, ttys

I've read that conversation and while it started poorly it seems to have settled down into some serious and seriously considered issues.

As to my posting my last message there, it wasn't written for that thread. It was written for this one. Most of the people there read here, it appears.

This event is not really what that thread is about. That thread is about problems, suggestions, and discussion; thesis, antithesis, and synthesis; in short, analysis. Good stuff, now that the emotions are starting to cool -- there.

Thank you for your advice, but I'm really not interested in shouting or pleading over there while I'm still being ignored (except as a target of opportunity) over here. What's the point?

You know there is an article out there titled, "How to Become Invisible." I haven't looked at it recently, but maybe I should consider posting to it.

Nah. Too many civilians in the way. Don't want to draw indiscriminate fire.


Barton

Darn! I keep forgetting. 'Parasite!' Great word! I wish I had thought of it. It isn't what I would have called him, but it's a great word and indicative of how you define a parasite. My definition is a bit more biological than social. I'll have to bear that interpretation in mind.

Thanks,

Barton

Barton,

"Though I would say that what you are perceiving, in hindsight, as a vicious attack -- particularly with that totally unwarranted, demeaning, prejudicial, and insulting characterization of Playboy Reporter as being potentially 'a fourteen year-old, non-genius boy with dyslexia,' when the guide has already accepted three articles from him, and after Mark having said, here and elsewhere, that the article showed some quality which he implied, if not directly having said, would be acceptable as a guide entry, right now."

First, I did not write that Playboy Reporter was "a fourteen year-old, non-genius boy with dyslexia". Someone else wrote that.

Beyond that, I do not understand the rest of the sentence. There's a missing clause or missing punctuation in there somewhere.

I still think you dumped a lot of Sub-Editor baggage in this conversation, on top of a person who may not have known about the Peer Review process or what the job of a Sub-Editor should be. Playboy Reporter contributed to three entries in the Edited Guide in the past, but Lucinda said they may have all three been accepted before Peer Review came around.

"After all, it doesn't really matter if it's any good because it can always be replaced or revised, isn't that what I read in someone's post, here?"

Straw man. That is not the issue here at all. I agree that the original entry should not have been accepted just yet, probably ought to have been a University project, at least should have been bounced over to the Writer's Workshop. Although I don't know everything about what Sub-Editors are supposed to do, I believe you when you say that the work of Sub-Eds should not be to rewrite or piece together the whole entry.

The real issue is that you could have communicated all these problems to Playboy Reporter without being so rude about it.

"...Particularly the parts that came where [Deidzoeb] boasted that he had not finished reading the thread. Evidently he felt that he had seen enough and had to add his insights while they were still fresh."

Exactly. Is this some bit of netiquette that I missed? By the way Lucinda crabbed about it similarly, there must be a rule I missed. I read through the thread in order. When I came to your post, I had specific responses that I wanted to add. Whether anyone else already responded did not concern me at the time. If I repeated what anyone else said, think of it as a simulpost two days late.

From now on, I will try to restrain myself from responding until I read the full thread. If this is some universal law of netiquette that I have missed, then I won't congratulate you on the way you "teach" netiquette. Lord help me, I have somehow accidentally become a student of yours.



Imagine an auto parts store that has run out of 13mm bolts, and has been sadly turning away customers for two weeks as they wait for this size to come in stock again. 1986 Yugos are common in this town, so 13mm bolts are in great demand. All day the clerk has to answer the phone and tell people, "No, we still don't have them yet. I don't know when we'll have them. I'm sorry but I can't help you." Finally a new customer comes in asking for a 13mm bolt and the clerk begins ranting about the ridiculous expectations that are heaped on him by too many eager customers.

Playboy Reporter did not know that you were out of 13mm bolts.

For all its worth, there are others to blame in this thread for making him feel unwelcome. Your post was just one of the more obviously over the top.

Just to say I havn't read any since I posted on Saturday, but I wish to apologise for my rant. Looking back on it, way over the top, out of perspective. What can I say I shouldn't be allowed out in polite company Again my apologies I hope I didn't frighten anyone away I am now away to read the rest, and probably yikes my post. Until later....
BCNU - Crescent

Subcom. Deidzoeb,

Thank you for the courtesy of actually speaking to me with a sense of expecting an answer.

I apologize that I appeared to be blaming you for that quotation, I new it was not from you and in the process of editing and removing some excess vituperation, you ended up in the crossfire. Again, I'm sorry. It was careless of me.

Also, you are correct there is a missing clause. The part I left in was an introduction to yet another explanation that I did not attack the article but rather the attitude of the author who had already been informed of others reservations about the article and been given detailed suggestions on improvement but who had blown them off as being insignificant to him. The manner in which he did this, and the attitude he displayed (others seem to prefer the phrasing 'I perceived') toward these people and the guide in relationship to his own perceived importance and significance were the explicit targets of my admitted sarcastic attack. He was being childishly selfish, obstinately ignorant, and rudely condescending. Three cardinal sins, by my admittedly personal set of social behavior standards. Hence my use of the metaphorical 2x4.

I have said all this before and somewhere in my preparation to say this to you in particular when I had already said much the same in other posts. I decided to clean out the deadwood and simply draw a line in the sand. I missed the fact that I had left the sentence unfinished because I had split it with a parenthetical and the balance was lost as the mew broom swept clean.

Since you hat taken exception to the phrase flip, rude, inconsiderate, and unthinking, which I also admit are not necessarily killing offenses (if caught in time) I was going to make you the same offer I made to Archangel Silly Willy in post 97, to retire to neutral or semi-neutral ground and discuss definitions, achieve mutual understanding, allow me to make my case by direct reference, he to make his, and if I was convinced of his position to analogize and retract those words. The offer hereby stands for anyone who wishes to do so on a person by person basis. I will not attempt to deal directly with a committee, though I suppose that, if someone wanted to approach me as the chairman of such a committee, I would be willing to treat with that individual on the behalf of the committee.

I am not trying to set myself up as the king of the hill -- come knock me down. I am interested in comparing notes and finding out where the disagreement or misunderstanding lies.

I believe that, had no one else taken that opportunity to second me in my charges, that Playboy Reporter, might well have said words to the effect, 'that's pretty harsh, why are you picking on me?' I could have put away the big stick and we could have talked. That is how that technique has worked in the past and it has been quite successful with people who were too self-involved to hear suggestions.

My most significant mistake was in forgetting the very public nature of all communication on h2g2. The next was failing to anticipate exactly how much animosity was out there directed against him and what he had said.

Almost immediately several *very* impressive people jumped on that topic and it was too late to tell them to back off. Even worse, at that moment, I was so ticked off at what he had done and how he had done it, not to mention the sexist overtones of what he had said which, thankfully, has not been a part of this discussion (and I would suggest that there is no need to do more than acknowledge their presence or protest their absence) that I was actually glad that they had chimed in because I felt that I had successfully tapped the undercurrent in what was going on. It validated my judgement that intervention was needed.

The obvious result was that instead of a relative stranger having ranked him out of the blue, it was the Lone Stranger and his Gang of Thugs. Of course, he ran. He was a spoiled, child, in my estimation, actual or otherwise. (I believe that close reading of what he wrote in all his posts will convince you, or anyone willing to consider, that this was not a child but a young adult well past a secondary school education.) But, I had no intention of forcing him to run or even desiring that he should run. I wanted his attention, his complete attention.

In an earlier post, I mocked him for running. I still don't think much of his having done so, but, given the type I estimate him to have been, I am no longer surprised.

Now, please don't think I am trying to pass blame. I am the one who initiated the encounter and I am the one who did not correctly anticipate the degree or strength of the responses of others. I do, however, still feel that he needed to be rebuked with the chance that he might be shown where he was failing in his social responsibility.

As I say I have done things before and I have done them online and off when the situation merited it. Several of those whom I rebuked, later thanked me for getting their attention. I will not deny that I take a lot on myself, in such a matter. I'm of an age where I begin to feel it my responsibility to do such things. You may disagree, but you may easily imagine circumstance where though you are clearly an outsider you feel the need to enforce key social values: perhaps, if you saw a parent mistreating a child, a bully and his gang terrorizing a child, an old lady, or a cripple, a woman being beaten by her husband, a man daydreaming about raping a beautiful co-worker, or simply an over-grown brat making a complete a*s of himself.

As far as 'sub-editor baggage,' it's much like raising a puppy; you show him what he did wrong, then you rub his nose in it, then you smack him to let him know your upset. You need all three or it's just cruel treatment.

Playboy Reporter didn't know he was doing wrong? He was ignorant? Well, setting aside the issue that ignorance can kill you, and that saving someone from ignorance is usually a life saving act, there was no reason why he could not have known. And no reason why I should have supposed he was ignorant. There was every reason to assume that he understood what was being asked of him and warned over and over that the job was too big. He most definitely choose to ignore the advice and the people who had warned him, obviously, decided that if he was willing to try, they were willing to try to help him. Thus a kind of social contract was forged.

If you can't see that, then you should look around Peer Review on every project where someone decides that s/he *will* tackle the daunting mountain, s/he had not seen behind the foothill. That is the wonder and mystery of Peer Review. Everyone climbing on to help someone with a good idea that's too hard to do alone.

Straw man: Tit for tat.

Netiquette: Come sir, don't you cry ignorance, too. If you read your way to 87 and your post arrives at 125, then you clearly were staring at a row of dots stretching off in both directions. You would be telling me then that you didn't care what anyone else had to say, you *had* to get your word in because nothing further down the thread could conceivably have any bearing on what happened. There was no point in reading further, you had something negative to say so you said it. Then you arrived discovered that your particular bomb had already been exploded and when back to finish reading the thread in order to see if you could find something else to add to your peers and friends feeding frenzy.

It's not a question of Netiquette, it's a question of trying to be a rational human being. I admit we cannot always be rational, but we should not try to disguise our lapses by accusing someone else of not having told us the rules of the game before we throw our money in the pot.

Netiquette? Flame before finishing the post and making sure of what has gone on and bragging that you didn't need to read any more. Shame, sir. Straw man, indeed.

Congratulations for admitting that you *might* have been wrong.

And yes, sir. You became a student of mine, not an enemy. Since I have high standards for being human, and since nearly everyone I have met at h2g2 seems to be human, which to me consists largely of taking responsibility for whatever one might do and therefore striving mightily to be conscious of what one is doing to avoid having to take the consequences of poor judgement as well as 'outrageous fortune,' I tend to be a much more stern task master for perceived failings in those areas.

You don't want to be held to those standards? Say so. I'll write you off my list of equals.

And, of course, it goes both ways. That's why I'm here, waiting for the anger to subside and the reason to return. That's why I resolved not to make more attempts till some one showed signs of having re-engaged hir brain.

You seemed to be the lucky one who got here first. Welcome.

You don't need to be a student. I don't try to teach my equals. I try to share with them. But, we all have lapses. And we need to be reminded that we have lapsed. Ignoring such things does not make them better and it does not make them go away.

You don't need to genuflect a simple 'Oops!' will do for a simple slight and something more may be required for more significant ones. I am still atoning for my last major mistake. I will continue to do so till I think I have learned my lesson. Then I'll try to relax a bit again.

Your little story is well thought out and makes its point nicely. But, it really doesn't apply. I am more in the position of someone in a rooming house who has been watching a grown man dial a telephone choosing numbers out of a phone directory and hearing him ask if they have Prince Albert in a can. His friends don't think it's cute, they're getting ready to leave, because he won't listen to them. I'm the one 20 or 30 years older who comes out of my room and explains exactly how juvenile he's been behaving, that he's been rude to those he called, rude to his friends, and lacking in respect for having been doing it in my house where we try to be a bit more grown up.

A good person will take the time to reflect and either accept or reject the significance of that action. We might even have a discussion or maybe an argument about it. But, either way he would know about what others think about what he was doing and not what he chose to think they thought.

My problem was that right after I came out, the most respected of his friends lined up behind me and bawled him out just like I did. Suddenly he wasn't the center of the group, he wasn't even on the fringe. He was on the outside. An adult could have asked what he did that has turned them on him, a juvenile personality just knows that the whole world is against him.

There I did it again. I attacked poor Playboy Reporter when he isn't here to defend himself. Big kid picking on the little kid. so forth and so on. Funny how that works when you use guilt on responsible adults. The really hard part is that if you weren't responsible it wouldn't work. But if you are responsible, what is this angry monkey tribe defending an infant reflex response you are all demonstrating?
Please note: I am not saying that you are behaving like monkeys, I am saying that you are responding to a primitive monkey tribe REFLEX that has a sound survival basis to it, but that you are defending a 'baby' that isn't here and wasn't a baby in the first place.

Why on earth *should* he believe he needs to grow up.

Now, that should either be enough for you to begin to think that you may have an insight into what I am saying so that you can go back and read the suggestions and comments I made with an open mind and respond pro or con with an equally open mind. (Being fair and realizing that there was anger on both sides of this issue.) Or, you can decide that this whole stupid hogwash doesn't mean beans to anyone and get back to the lynching which is more fun and less painful.

Incidently, I am one of those teachers who always gave essay tests because I wanted to see how my students could use what I was teaching while most of them wanted multiple choice so they could vomit back what they remembered and guess on what they couldn't. *My* compromise was multiple choice essay tests chosen from a list of essays handed out the week before.

Education starts off as being involuntary, we have to train young animals how to present the basics of human understanding and behavior, it's for our own safety. But once you are past the basics, you can no longer just be taught, you must also actively learn. A teacher who isn't interested in his students is a very poor teacher. A teacher who just wants to make life easy for his students, is far worse, because he is not only failing in his duties, he is crippling his charges.

I do not train dogs or children with anger or harshness. I am very gentle and I have been told, inhumanly, patient. But once a student has reached the point where s/he is capable of learning but refuses to learn, or worse has been allowed to grow past the point where s/he should have learned but has been allowed to be poisoned with slack principles such that that student can no longer be trusted to make responsible personal and social choices, well, I suggest you look up another monkey tribe reflex known as the pink monkey effect. Maybe you won't judge me so harshly.

(See! Just like a nasty teacher, he's even giving us homework.)



Barton

My Netscape crashed on a multi-page reply just now. It appears that Lady Luck thinks I should summarise more...

Deidzoeb said: "Do we really need more critics around here?!!"

Yes. That's why we've got a big green banner inviting people to contribute to the discussion. It's why we have lost *many* researchers, not just one, to lack of PR feedback. Since you ask, as far as I'm aware, every critic in this thread has recc'd entries - so we all have the tools to do it ourselves. I agree with you Deidzoeb - there is nothing worse than being given advice on how to do something when the adviser has had no experience doing it themselves.

That includes advice on how to be a critic.

Xanthia - 29 Recc'd Guide Entries ; ~500 PR Threads ; Too Many Hours

Crescent - thank you very much for your considered apology - and may I extend my own in symmetry. I was overharsh in both of my responses, and you of all people certainly did not deserve that. I hope we can all put this ugly incident behind us and learn what we can from the charred ruins that remain.

Thank you again for being a greater man than me,
Martin

> "Lucinda said they may have all three been accepted before Peer Review came around." Read the conversations on Playboy Reporter's home page - no "may" about it. Netiquette is off topic for this thread - I have created a thread here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/h2g2/guide/F58629?thread=120746 where I have explained why I feel it is important to read and understand the backlog, and why it is commonly found in lists of "laws" of netiquette.

"As far as 'sub-editor baggage,' it's much like raising a puppy; you show him what he did wrong, then you rub his nose in it, then you smack him to let him know your upset. You need all three or it's just cruel treatment."

You treat a dog like that. You don't treat a human like that. You should have *told* him what you thought he did wrong, not treated him like a dog.

"Well, setting aside the issue that ignorance can kill you, and that saving someone from ignorance is usually a life saving act, there was no reason why he could not have known."

Silly. Ignorance about how to drive a car or cross a street might kill you. Ignorance about the responsibilities of Sub-Editors on h2g2 will only hurt your feelings when one of them goes buckwild on you with all his baggage. Try not to inflate the importance of his "ignorance" in this case. You weren't saving anybody's life, so it doesn't justify you treating him like a dog.

Furthermore, I disagree with your claim that "there was no reason why he could not have known." In this thread or the other "problems with Peer Review" thread, there was a Sub-Editor who said he didn't mind major rewrites when someone turned in a less than perfect entry. All these facts that you keep saying Playboy R should have known, the same facts that you claim as justification for your rude behavior, are facts that other Sub-Editors either do not know or do not agree with you about.

All that nasty baggage about the responsibilities of a Sub-Editor turns out to be your opinion, not a hard fact.

Col. Sellers brought up another interesting thought in that thread under Feedback titled "Peer Review." A researcher who submits an entry to Peer Review is not obligated to follow all the suggestions made in Peer Review. In some cases, this would reveal a stubborn researcher. In some cases, peers make bad suggestions that should not be followed. It seems to me that Playboy Reporter was trying to incorporate the suggestions of some people but *disagreed* with the suggestions of others. It was his right to disagree.

If this was a bad enough entry, then there are safety checks further down the process that should have caught it before it went into the Edited Guide. Although it defeats the purpose of Peer Review, a writer should reserve the right to ignore all suggestions people give him and proclaim that he still has a good enough article, maybe one that he believes ready for the Edited Guide.

The point is that you don't need to shout down or chastise people who disagree with your criticisms in Peer Review. In the future when you see this happening, you should try to politely disagree, and let it go. If the entry is as bad as you believe and it does somehow get recc'd, then the assigned Sub-Ed or h2g2 staffmember will reject it.

"You would be telling me then that you didn't care what anyone else had to say, you *had* to get your word in because nothing further down the thread could conceivably have any bearing on what happened. There was no point in reading further, you had something negative to say so you said it. Then you arrived discovered that your particular bomb had already been exploded and when back to finish reading the thread in order to see if you could find something else to add to your peers and friends feeding frenzy."

I don't care what anyone else said. It wasn't about raising a point that had not yet been raised by others. It was about adding a vote to the number of voices that believe something went wrong in this thread. There were three or four voices that concurred with you earlier. There are other voices now that have read the full thread and been appalled. Without putting the finger of blame on any individual in this thread, Mark wrote that it was "over the top."

"Flame before finishing the post and making sure of what has gone on and bragging that you didn't need to read any more. Shame, sir. Straw man, indeed."

That's not a straw man at all. What anyone else wrote after your post has no bearing on whether my reply was valid. You were rude. If ten people made that point between post #87 and post #124, it doesn't make my agreement any less valid in post #125 when I say again that you were rude.

"You don't want to be held to those standards? Say so. I'll write you off my list of equals."

Please cross me off right away. Don't lower me so far as to consider me merely equal to you.

We should drop this student/teacher malarky as well. I have learned more by the examples you keep setting. Your lessons on how not to treat people are much more informative than any netiquette you thought you were handing down to me. I learned that flaming someone after they've left a community is still flaming. Calling Playboy Reporter a "leech" and a "lump" is not any more mature when he's gone than it would have been if he were still here. This is pretty sad behavior for an alleged teacher to engage in.