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

Hi H!

Following all the step-by-step points in your manual... can I call it that? It seems to me it needs pictures titled Fig. 1... Fig. 2 etc.! But back to the entry.

I'm not sure I can add anything else to what others have already said, apart from:

- Step 5: Paragraph 4 - 'commment' should be 'comment'

- How about a bit on the 'Preview Message' button? I'm sure that people don't want to make a mess of their smileys! But, they applies to all boxes anyway... so that may or may not be relevant

- Would people who have had a *really* bad week want to go away and write another entry? In my experience, I think most people couldn't be b*****ed to spend time writing another, and if it did get shot down in flames by said Researcher X, what would they do next?

I'm probably sounding like a prospective Researcher X... I didn't mean to!

Anyway, it's a very witty piece of good reading!

Caper Plip

Hi HVL,

<> Not a problem! <<...this was NOT aimed at you, personally...>> No, I realised that, but thanks for saying so. I only replied to say that (I think) it's OK simply to comment on the entry, without necessarily reading what other researchers thought of it. As for my other point:

<<[Pattern-chaser] said: "I commented because I understand that's how entries get to be made official." Not true.>> Oh. I realise that PR is partly to edit the entry on-line, to minimise the work for the Editors. That's fair enough, I suppose. I also thought that PR was a way that *I* could have some influence on what is accepted into the Edited Guide. I gather this isn't so?

<>

I can live with that!

Pattern-chaser

"Who cares, wins"

Toes? Damn!

And I am so proud of my teas, too. (I make superb scones). I don't really own any ties, and it is best not to comment on boy-scout tricks. Don't know any sailors, except a couple of former sub-mariners and you can't really call them 'tars'. And for my best breast stories, you should see the Most Embarrassing thread...

Ben

Pattern-chaser: "PR is partly to edit the entry on-line, to minimise the work for the Editors."

Partly true - there's usually a helpful person able to spot any commmmmmmmmmmmmmments you've misspelled!

>I also thought that PR was a way that *I* could have some influence on what is accepted into the Edited Guide. I gather this isn't so?

True, sort of. Ultimately, YOU decide what goes in the Guide IF and ONLY if you are a Scout. I think the "you" on the PR banner means "you, the public", rather than specifically "you, the person who is reading this".

It USUALLY works like this: I write an entry, I put it in PR the same day, a dozen other people comment on it in various ways, and I make updates as I see fit, and this process goes on. Eventually, after at least a week and sometimes several months, someone who is a Scout comes along, reads the entry and the thread, sees that there's a generally positive response, so they "PICK" it. Picked entries go forward for subbing by Subeditors. They then go in the Guide after a final polish by the Editors.

BUT: It SOMETIMES works like this: I write an entry, and then leave H2g2 never to return. Some other person puts that entry into Peer Review themselves. Nobody can think of anything to say about it, and it gets picked by the first scout who happens by. The Peer Review thread is practically empty as a result.

So although the number and tone of comments in PR may influence a Scout's decision to pick an entry or not, ultimately the decision about what goes in is made by them. They may pick an entry very soon after it's submitted, even though arguments about its content are not over. They may leave an entry unpicked for months for no particular reason, even though the comments in the thread are positive. They may pick an entry which doesn't even HAVE any comments made, if they think it's already good enough.

Ultimately, if you want to take the PR banner literally, and decide YOURSELF, personally, what goes in the guide - become a Scout.

Hope this is of help.

H.

Hmm.
Me thinks I spot a fatal combination of high horses and windmills here.

We all have bad days/weeks/lives whatever. That's *NO* excuse to be rude in Peer Review.

Slight changes made - thanks for comments (just the two m's) to all.

Any more...

H.

Blues Shark, there's an advantage of being a Scout here: if you're having a *bad* day you can still wander around PR but rather than posting comments you can kick some lazy researcher in their behind or ask nasty questions along the lines of 'hey Scouts, how about removing this one from Peer Review'

I wasn't referring to the scout system, Bossel, which I think works fine.
I was refering to the tone of the whole piece.

Why did you say:
"Oddly enough, Galaxy Babe agrees with me."
H?

You are surprised *I* agreed, or surprised *anyone* agreed?

... Ahem,

May I join? (I'll do it anyways...)

We all agree that this is not a standard entry. I mean, it's not about 'centrifugal force' or 'anoraks'. It's about the commenting-etiquette in Peer Review -- which deserves an entry, or at least a mention in the Peer Review introductory text.

However, I think that this is not going to be it: First because it's strictly Hoovooloo's view (any new commenter could see this as an official guideline and get irritated - too many rules, too complicated, too boring going through a complete entry - we know these can be long, too long sometimes - too boring to go through a whole PR thread, which is not always advisable - I'll come to that later). Second, because it's way too long, and probably misses it's purpose.

As I see it, the purpose of this entry is to get people to be more careful when commenting, or at least take things a little more serious. Those folks that read entries like these are normally the careful ones, those that normally don't care will not care to read this (long and serious) guideline.

------

In the next section I'll explain why some of the guidelines provided by Hoovooloo might be debatable:

There are no *laws* saying that one *must* read entries first before commenting, or read the *whole* thread before commenting. In the last case I might even argue that reading the whole thread before commenting might generate bias. I mean: If I read the thread and find my favourite buddies against the entry I will be inclined to be against that entry too. So, why not give a neutral comment without reading the thread? Just because some arguments might repeat? Note that I am not saying one should NOT read the thread... In some cases that should be done. In some cases it shouldn't, like when the thread is very long and most of the suggestions from the first 25 posts have been included, and the entry was subject to a major rewrite - basically, the posts before a major rewrite are about a totally different entry - that's also why one should consider withdrawing the PR thread before a major rewrite... but I am digressing here.

That bit on the notepad, might be debatable, too. It shouldn't be an official guideline. In principle you have all you need here, and it's everyone's own business if he's able to cope with a crash, or not.

You see, you have gathered many interesting thoughts, but as soon as you give it an official framework things get stiff and brittle. One should all the time be reminded that these are not laws but merely suggestions...

-----
Another digression:

The idea of writing about the peer review system, or aspects thereof, is not new, there is also Azara's Personal Guide to Peer Review (A580835) for example with some mention of the bad sides of this process. This entry is basically of the same flavour: Hoovooloo's personal guide to Peer Review commenting.

Note: It's good, I really like it. It's like Azara's piece, I like that one too. But, Edited Guide entry? Maybe it would be better to convince the h2g2-staff that a commenting comment should appear on PR's mainpage.

----

Well, that was my comment,

HELL

Hi Hoovooloo

"nice entry, but why didn't you do it as a numbered list of steps?"

No, seriously, I did read it. And yes, I did think it was good. I am also pleased to say that it is pretty much what I do (or at least try to do) so I can't argue too much with what you say.

I would agree with the general feeling that this is more of a guideline than an entry in itself. I also think that it would achieve it's purpose better if it was pared down to the absolue minimum, or summarised initially with details following. This would give the impatient or short attention-spanned (let's say "target audience") the idea as quickly as possible.

One tip that I employ is that I open a new browser window (ctrl-N on my browser) so that I can have the entry side-by-side with my comments. This lets you deal with things systematically and get your quotes exactly right (see above)!

I think "Tips on commenting in Peer Review" might be a good way to pitch it to avoid it sounding dictatorial. Maybe then it could be linked to the PR page (I know this has been suggested already) for newbies to use.

Be it this or something else, I agree that some tips on commenting in PR should be on or linked from the PR page.



Ugi

Thanks to Hell and Ugi - you're dead right, this is personal view. However, it was intended to stimulate a bit of a debate, because I think the Peer Review page you get when you click on the banner is aimed too much at writers and not enough (or indeed at all) at commenters - and it's a great deal easier to comment than it is to write an entry. For instance, some American geezer has just joined h2g2 solely for the purpose of commenting on the entry on centrifugal force. He's written nothing, joined no other conversations, not even set up his personal space, just a single quite long comment under an entry. Which I think is interesting.

Anyway...

>etiquette in Peer Review -- which deserves an entry, or at least a mention in the Peer Review introductory text.

Thanks! I'm glad we're agreed on that, because that was my point, really first and foremost.

>However, I think that this is not going to be it:

Good thing too...

>First because it's strictly Hoovooloo's view

Very true - but on the other hand, with a bit of debate here I'm sure we can pare it down to the necessary minimum and propose it for inclusion on the help pages.

> (any new commenter could see this as an official guideline and get irritated - too many rules, too complicated, too boring

BORING!



>As I see it, the purpose of this entry is to get people to be more careful when commenting, or at least take things a little more serious.

Really the two points I think SHOULD be made to anyone commenting are:
(1) try to read the entry, at the very least
(2) if it's someone's first, be gentle.

>That bit on the notepad, might be debatable, too.

True. I tend to do it because my connection can be dodgy.

>One should all the time be reminded that these are not laws but merely suggestions...

Absolutely.

>But, Edited Guide entry? Maybe it would be better to convince the h2g2-staff that a commenting comment should appear on PR's mainpage.

YES!

Not sure how to go about updating this, so I'm going to let it stew another day unchanged before I have a go at it...

Thanks very much for the comments, one and all

H.

as there seems to be lots of entries around about peer review, most of which i ahve never heard of, is there a way to link to them from the peer review page.

the lazy and really rude are never going to read them anyway, but i'm around a lot and i have never found half of them, so how is an interested newbie going to?


it would also be useful to have a central place to point someone to (like the links of the peer review page) when they have got hold of the wrong end of the stick about an entry, their own or someone elses, and are offended but cant seem to understand why people are 'being mean'. this seems to happen a lot with newbie writers who have actually writen a decent entry but have made a few bodges that will prevent it getting in but dont understand why they count as such. i know there is advice for writers, buts its often made easier if you can see both sides of the fence



FABT

>...is there a way to link to them from the peer review page.

Well, I'm hoping that between my little effort here, and Azara's (which I've not had chance to read yet) and Bossel's (ditto) that people here can knock something up and go to the Italics and say "here, this is what the Peer Review page SHOULD say, and so say all of us!".

>it would also be useful to have a central place to point someone to (like the links of the peer review page) when they have got hold of the wrong end of the stick about an entry, their own or someone elses, and are offended but cant seem to understand why people are 'being mean'.

This would be the job of the ACEs to sort this out. Although they're just people too...

>this seems to happen a lot with newbie writers

Like I say, if the ACEs are for anything, they should be for this. Any actual ACEs care to comment, 'cos I'm not one...?

H

>...the Peer Review page you get when you click on the banner is aimed too much at writers and not enough (or indeed at all) at commenters - and it's a great deal easier to comment than it is to write an entry...

Absolutely true. There must be something, and it's good you incited this discussion.

>BORING!

Well, see it that way: Who will read through such a large entry about commenting on PR? The ususal suspects, not the rude who doesn't read them entries... Like mentioned above it should focus on 'the right audience'.

We/You should extract the main points, persuade the 'askew forces' (Italics) to infiltrate the text into the PR mainpage, and perhaps link it to an entry with more details that could be more or less like this one.

HELL
(off to see the ol' centrifugal force thang)

Hi Hoovooloo,
I found this after the centrifugal force discussion, and I fully understand your irritation. This kind of things make me want to forget I am supposed to stay nice as an ACE, even to one-time readers of "Physics for dummies"
Whoops, I did it anyhow!

I tried to follow your rules, so I need some more.

Put in somewhere "before posting, check whether this is post 20 of lots of pages".

And : After having read the entry and all the posts, read the entry again in a separate window.

I know I started originally in the wrong way too, but sometimes people can learn.

Just wanted to add a tip for your list.

I recently wrote an entry, which had all the comments and feedback etc. which were very useful. One researcher, who knows about the subject too, had a look and rewrote the whole thing. It was helpful as it showed how someone else would write it differently. I decided in the end to keep my version (it's pending at the moment ) as I preferred my writing style. Now this didn't bother me as I was open to suggestions and asked him to comment.

But someone new might have been intimidated by a complete rewrite. So a tip on not to rewrite the entry (or to be offended by a rejection of the rewrite) could be mentioned. It is their entry after all.

As a side note someone on the thread said to this researcher that becoming a sub editor might be a good idea which could always be an option.

SallyM
P.S. I don't see why this can't become part of the edited guide, but put as a help page as someone said before. I.e. make it "official guidelines" but not rules.

Oh, you're not going to like this. There's a mistake in the first sentence:

"Peer Review is one of the interesting parts of h2g2 which make it different from most other websites."

It should be *makes*, as 'peer review' and 'one of the interesting parts of h2g2' both count as singular, not plural nouns.

Nice entry!

It's a sentence of two clauses. If you split it into two sentences you can get:

"Peer Review is one of the interesting parts of h2g2."
"The interesting parts of h2g2 make it different from most other websites."

In the second part of the sentence, "parts of h2g2" is the subject, not "Peer Review". If you replaced "make" with "makes", then you would be saying that Peer Review is one of the interesting parts, but not all the interesting parts make it different from other websites, which is a subtly different statement.

You'd have a better argument for the insertion of a comma: my Word grammar checker, at least, seems to think that 'which' should always be preceded by a comma. Which is nice...

-Martin ier than thou

What ry have we here? A challenger! Right:

You have parsed the sentence incorrectly (yes, I'm going to get all pompous now. No, not really. I hate linguists who do that.) The sentence is actually two noun phrases linked by the copula. The noun phrases are:
"Peer Review"
"one of the interesting parts of h2g2 which makes(s) it different from most other websites."
The copula is the verb 'to be'.

The second noun phrase contains a relative clause "which make(s) it different from most other websites". The relative pronoun 'which' (or 'that' as Word's bloody grammar-checker insists) relates to *all* the words between itself and the copula, i.e. "one of the interesting parts of h2g2", and also, by extension, to "Peer Review". Both of these noun phrases are singular, so the verb in the relative clause should be "makes".

Jack O'Lantern