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

Entry: How to comment in Peer Review - A748532
Author: Hoovooloo - U114627

Sadly, on recent evidence, the guide needs something like this...

H.

Presumably you had somebody say something 'unintelligent' in one of your threads HVL?
Otherwise, it's a useful, well written piece.
(Though i'm not sure that just because you've had a load of stuff in the Guide should open you up to brutal criticism-I don't see that there's ever any need to be impolite...)

*puts reading glasses on*

I'll be back with a comment but I think I already know what it's going to be.

I'm not sure how to proceed here, so I'll load up on politeness and plough on.

I recently commented on the Avengers entry (http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/alabaster/A739451, if my copy-and-pasting is on the ball), and made a comment about The Prisoner, which was mentioned earlier in the review thread. I admitted at the time that I hadn't checked, and so I'm sort of guilty, as *this* entry defines guilt.

The thing is, I enjoyed the Avengers entry, but couldn't be bothered reading what everyone else had to say about it. I'm sorry if this makes me an evil person.

I commented because I understand that's how entries get to be made official. I was casting my vote for the entry, *not* for what other researchers thought of it.

I think *this* entry is well-written, clear and unnecessary, so I'm afraid I *don't* vote for it.

Pattern-chaser

"Who cares, wins"

And I was correct!
Loved the entry, it was a much-needed one.
And the only thing I *was* going to comment on, was exactly what Blues Shark said.
I've had many edited entries, but it still hurts when someone is brutal, even if they're being honest.

Tact, that's all that is required.

Well done, H.

Hi Hoovooloo,

I see you've had problems with someone in PR. Sorry to hear it, but do you really want to leave your little personal vengeance in this perfectly good entry on what would otherwise be a perfectly usable guide etiquette piece.

Not much to say on the rest of the text.

Factual and informative - tick.

Balanced - mostly.

seeya
spiff

For me, there's a bit more needs to go into this entry to balance it up. Something along the lines of 'How to Comment in Peer Review when you are the Author of the Entry Being Reviewed'.

Let's not forget that PR is a collaborative process. I think a number of researchers see in the guidelines that it says that PR is for entries that they consider are finished, and they misinterpret this to mean that they just have to click 'Submit for review' and walk away. They see a banner that says 'Join in the fun of Peer Review' and they think that's all it is, a bit of fun, nothing too important or valuable then.

But it's most impolite to ask other people to read and comment on your work and not be around for when they reply.

They should expect praise and criticism and be prepared to deal with both. If they disagree with a reviewer's comments they should say so, and (briefly and politely) say why. If they agree to make alterations based on a reviewer's comments they should also say so, explain if necessary that it might take them a few days, or a week or so, or whatever, and then post back to the PR thread when they have made the changes so that people can take another look.

If they have made other changes off their own bat they should again say so and give people a chance to respond to that.

What to do when they are not getting any reviews? I don't know whether that's a good or a bad thing. They could just sit tight and wait for the entry to be picked, on the basis that an entry that nobody has said anything about is an entry that nobody has said anything against. Or they could post to the PR thread themselves from time to time just to keep it from disappearing out of the first 20. I suppose it all depends on how keen they are to see their name in lights.

Me, I'm still experimenting!

Woo-hoo, the voice of common sense

...Although I have been the dreaded 'Researcher X' on occasions...

It's probably worth mentioning that you can access the review forum straight from the entry (under the author's name), rather than go through all that tedious 'Back' business. Also, emphasise that reading the backlog is a good idea that will probably free up some of everyone else's time.

B

Hmm, whilst I agree that this sort of entry might be needed I get the impression that the author wasn't in the calmest state of mind when writing it and find the whole thing a little too aggressive

Sounds like you didn't have a lot of fun at one moment or another...

On the other hand, have you seen Bossel's A487253 which is more heavily based on the point of view of what an author should expect rather than what a reviewer should say... Between the two entries I reckon there could be the definitive guide to PR... what about talking to Bossel?



whisky

Oh, someone has actually *read* that piece

There's some more about the subject at the bottom of A645059, under 'Handy Peer Review Hints'


I started commenting before I've read the entry!

OK and fully agreed

If I may, I'd like to suggest you split the entry into two sections, one about the more technical stuff on how to get to places and back, the other about *what* to do or not to do.

As to (6) and (10/11): I'm still astonished at how few people appear to be using more than a single browser window. Having
- the PR page in window #1,
- the PR thread in #2,
- the entry in #3
- and your reply in #4
makes things *a lot* easier and saves time that you'd otherwise need for reloading. You can switch back and forth between the PR thread and the entry and write your comment in between, without the danger of losing your line of thought or missing points that you wanted to say.

Have you ever tried opening 4 browser windows on a P100 network with a sub-56k connection? 2 will do for me.

B

How can people LIVE with only one window open? (This is my biggest gripe with Lotus Notes).

a multi-fenestrator called Ben

Quoting from A584246 which is another part of Bossel's PR stuff trilogy:


How to identify a first-time writer:

(a) Through the initial posting if it says 'This is my first attempt, please be gentle'.

(b) If there is a 'A123456 - MyNewEntry' thread hanging off the entry, of course with no replies for a week. [ok, doesn't happen any more with the new PR system]

(c) Sneak into their homespace. Be alerted if it says 'This is the Personal Space...' on top of the page. Be likewise alerted if the list of Guide entries contains precisely one item, made up three days ago. Be even more alerted if the list of conversations consists of only two items, where one headline reads 'Greetings from an ACE!' and the other contains an A-number and a hyphen.

Ooops, cross-simul-posting!

I sometimes post to entry rather than to review thread: if it's a long post, for example, that might wreck the flow of the review thread. Or if it's argument or discussion rather than criticism. It's not quite so black and white as you make out, imo.

Agree with the need for a corresponding view of how to use peer review as an author - in this entry, or another one.

Re: the long point (5). You might mention another couple of reasons for Researcher X's error:

* Sometimes people genuinely miss stuff.
This can even be a sign that the original entry was laid out badly. For example, I'm a world expert on the Keebling form of Zenga Trees, and when I read a recent entry on Zenga Trees I looked over the section on the Keebling form, and noticed it completely missed the relationship with the Tum-tum tree. I mentioned this in Peer Review, and was told that this information was in the entry, but was in the section on the Elephantine form instead. If sie had talked about Tum-Tum trees in the more relevant section, there wouldn't have been a problem. When the entry gets onto the front page, readers will not necessarilly read it any more carefully that me, so it'd be good if the entry continued to make sense if people read only the section's they are interested in. I live in hope.

* Humans are fallible.
"Oh!" I said to hir later, "you said Nemenic!" I'd thought sie said Menemenic, which is an entirely different form of Felking method. But what I thought had been a rather careless oversight turned out to be me misreading a key phrase - been staying up too late I guess - my eyes were tired.

* Say that again?
In my own entry on Felking methods, after the original author had abandoned it to Peer Review, I gave a quick explanation of both Nemenic and Menemenic, and the differences between them. But a couple of people still asked me what the difference was. I explained easily enough in the review thread, but I soon realised that I'd need to expand that bit of the entry and make it clearer. Problem solved, all was ok.

* An anachronism.
One of the worst things is to read an entry, and comment on it, and then discover that the author made changes between the two actions. Especially if it's a long entry, this kind of pseudo-simulpost happens easily enough, and it's reason enough to be careful. After all, one wouldn't want a Menemic Felking, would one?

- MyRedDice (outgabing the borogroves)

I sometimes post to entry rather than to review thread: if it's a long post, for example, that might wreck the flow of the review thread. Or if it's argument or discussion rather than criticism. It's not quite so black and white as you make out, imo.

Agree with the need for a corresponding view of how to use peer review as an author - in this entry, or another one.

Re: the long point (5). You might mention another couple of reasons for Researcher X's error:

* Sometimes people genuinely miss stuff.
This can even be a sign that the original entry was laid out badly. For example, I'm a world expert on the Keebling form of Zenga Trees, and when I read a recent entry on Zenga Trees I looked over the section on the Keebling form, and noticed it completely missed the relationship with the Tum-tum tree. I mentioned this in Peer Review, and was told that this information was in the entry, but was in the section on the Elephantine form instead. If sie had talked about Tum-Tum trees in the more relevant section, there wouldn't have been a problem. When the entry gets onto the front page, readers will not necessarilly read it any more carefully that me, so it'd be good if the entry continued to make sense if people read only the section's they are interested in. I live in hope.

* Humans are fallible.
"Oh!" I said to hir later, "you said Nemenic!" I'd thought sie said Menemenic, which is an entirely different form of Felking method. But what I thought had been a rather careless oversight turned out to be me misreading a key phrase - been staying up too late I guess - my eyes were tired.

* Say that again?
In my own entry on Felking methods, after the original author had abandoned it to Peer Review, I gave a quick explanation of both Nemenic and Menemenic, and the differences between them. But a couple of people still asked me what the difference was. I explained easily enough in the review thread, but I soon realised that I'd need to expand that bit of the entry and make it clearer. Problem solved, all was ok.

* An anachronism.
One of the worst things is to read an entry, and comment on it, and then discover that the author made changes between the two actions. Especially if it's a long entry, this kind of pseudo-simulpost happens easily enough, and it's reason enough to be careful. After all, one wouldn't want a Menemic Felking, would one?

- MyRedDice (outgabing the borogroves)

Well, on the last count H, you seem to have more than 12 entries in Edited status, so here goes...

Corrections:

1. First person references under section 1, section 5 and your first footnote.

2. Peer Review banner - this may date quite quickly as subsequent changes to the h2g2 skins may render the banner obsolete. Include a link to Peer Review instead.

3. The 'click back' section is now out of date since DNA. There is a link to the Peer Review thread in question in the right margin under 'Currently in:'.

Additions:

> Check the entry against the Writing-Guidlines and comment of any points which may prevent its smooth transit to Edited status and comment on this first. Then take content into consideration.

> Comment on typos, like this one: "DUH! OBviously!", and locate them; as for the previous example, the first sentence of section 5.

> What to do when there is no response from the author.


Stay ,
WD

Blues Shark: not some ONE - THREE separate persons this weekend someone either told me I ought to include something that was already in, told me to include something that was wrong, or mentioned something that had already been covered in the (quite short) backlog. The first time it happened, I seethed. The second time it happened, I wrote this entry, but didn't put it in PR because I thought it was overly sarcastic and unnecessary. The third time in two days, and lo and behold into PR it goes. And yes, I've had a bad week.

Re: Brutal criticism - if you've already nursed an entry or two through PR, you should have a good idea of the writing Guidelines. You are therefore more able, I think, to take someone turning up and saying "this doesn't really belong in the guide because A, B and C." If you're a COMPLETE newbie, that sort of thing could put you off, so commenters in PR should, I think, be encourage to find out a little about the author BEFORE they comment on the entry. That way, they'll know not to just wade in with a detailed critique, but rather be a bit more circumspect.

Pattern-chaser: I'm sorry. Please accept my apology. In mitigation I can only offer the fact that this was NOT aimed at you, personally, but was rather the culmination of a lot of little niggles with the PR system I've had for a while which came to a head this weekend and of which your minor error was only the latest. Interesting point though: you said: "I commented because I understand that's how entries get to be made official." Not true. I've known entries for which got into the guide with only TWO posts in the Peer Review thread - the one by the author and the one by the Editors saying "this is going in". I've WRITTEN an entry for which the fifteenth post was the "it's going in" one, after five and a half days. Long PR threads do not equate to Edited Entries - see "A short Guide to Short words, which has accumulated over 260 posts in it's three months in Peer Review so far! It's the Scouts picking that gets stuff in the Guide. I'm sorry you feel this entry is unnecessary - but in my experience it demonstrably IS, so we'll have to disagree.

Oddly enough, Galaxy Babe agrees with me.

Spiff - balanced? I think so. Well written? Not really. It's a rant, in places. In the end, the point I'm making here is that there is *some* advice given (although not enough) on using Peer Review for WRITERS, but no advice offered at all for commenters. I think this is a BIG gap, and since Peer Review is where the writers this site needs are exposed to criticism, that criticism needs, at a minimum, to be based on a reading of the entry and the backlog, in my opinion. Otherwise you risk putting writers off - and we DON'T want that.

Belshazzar: I think there is a need for more advice for writers submitting to PR - but this is aimed at the commenter, not the author.

Master B: Common sense? Me? Don't let it get out, I have a reputation to consider I just wrote out how I navigate, it's probably terribly inefficient, but I like it.

Whisky: "the author wasn't in the calmest state of mind when writing it" Correct, see above. BUT, I think a calmer version of this entry is needed, as part of the help pages rather than as part of the Edited Guide. If you click on the PR banner, now, you get advice on how to submit an entry, but realistically, how many people do that? As a proportion of readers... 20%? Less? More? Don't know. But I think more comment than write, which means there should be MORE advice for commenters than writers. Also, if you're in the state of mind to write an entry, you'll be more inclined to hunt out the information on how to do it.

If you're a casual commenter, you just want to, and I quote "join in the fun". So the advice for you needs to be RIGHT THERE, because you're the kind of person who can't be bothered to read the backlog unless you're told to.


Ben: Nice t**s.

Bossel: I've only got a little screen! Seriously though, the advice to have several windows open is useful... that'll go in OK.

Lucinda: yes, people miss stuff, which is fine. But then going an telling the author that THEY'VE forgotten to put it in is something else entirely. If I thought someone had left something out, I'd make damn sure they had before I went and told them. It's not difficult.

And yes, humans are fallible. Sometimes they post the same thing to a conversation twice without meaning to...

If part of an entry is unclear, I'm very happy and receptive for people to tell me so, and I'll do my best to write more clearly. On the other hand, if you gave a quick explanation of both Nemenic and Menemenic, and the differences between them, and then someone said "why didn't you mention Menemenic at all?", don't you think you'd want to roll up that paragraph and poke it in their eye?

As for "simulposts" - it's never happened to me, but if it did I'd only ever be grateful to someone for pointing something out, under those circumstances, and would just ask them nicely to read the updated version and see if that was any better.

Witty Ditty: First person references: Guilty as charged, but as it stands this is something of a personal piece. I'd hope it would end up, not as a part of the Edited Guide, but as the text you see when you click on the Peer Review banner. It's obviously going to need a lot of work before that happens! Peer Review banner reference. Hmm. Don't want to try to be too clever - if it goes in at all it's likely to happen in a matter of weeks or months, in which case it then becomes the Editors problem to keep it up to date...

Good point about including reference to Writing Guidelines, that's going in...
"OBviously" isn't a typo, is was meant as heavy emphasis on the first syllable. Note to self: use bold text for emphasis in future so you don't look quite so useless at typing!

Hmm. What to do when there's no response from the author... Or even, what to do when there IS a response from the author... There's a whole other entry right there, I think!

Oh, and by the way, Ben... I meant "toes".

H.