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

Entry: What Happens When Someone Submits Your Entry to a Review Forum? - A829550
Author: Anna - U25

Hello there,

We're thinking about changing the text of the automatic messages that are posted when an entry goes into one of the Review Forums in response to a comment in Editorial Feedback. This is what we came up with, I'd love to hear what you have to say about it.

(also, I know I've got to put a load of links in, and will get round to it tomorrow)



Anna

The PR and Review Forums titles seem to be a-about-t.

Just one comment and it's about the Flea Market notification:

'Your entry has been put into the Flea Market because it's believed that you've disappeared from h2g2.'

It's often, but not always the case that the author has fled the building. It might be better to word it:

'Your entry has been put into the Flea Market because it's believed that you have lost interest in the entry or you've disappeared from h2g2.'

What do you think?

I think 'lost interest' and 'disappeared' or 'left the building' are assumptions which may not always be correct. The author may have become sick, or suffered a bereavement, or had a baby, or... etc etc. Or they may just be having writer's block or going through some sort of rough patch.

So I think something more neutral and less personal would be better. The fact is that entries that for whatever reason are not progressing after a reasonable length of time need to be relocated to assist the smooth working of the Review system, so why not say so? Then go on to explain that the entry has been moved to TFM to give the author or other Researchers a chance to pick it up and work on it.

And by the way - is the title 'The Flea Market' set in stone? To me it has always carried a pejorative connotation, not far removed from suggestions of junk or trash even though, as we know, glittering nuggets may occasionally be mined there. How about 'The Recycling Centre'? OK, maybe not, but there must be something better than Flea Market!

Bels

I totally agree. I've thought for a while that "The Flea Market" seemed like a bit of a negative name... but alas: I have no better suggestion.

I totally agree. I've thought for a while that "The Flea Market" seemed like a bit of a negative name... but alas: I have no better suggestion.

I like the "Flea Market" as a name. A flea market is a place to pick up bargains: antiques, second-hand stuff, curios, and so forth. I think it is a pretty accurate description of the place, at least as I use it. "Recycling Centre" would imply that everything will get eventually reused, which isn't the case, and shouldn't be the case.



Anyway, to comment on each suggested para... [MY COMMENTS]

Peer Review:
If your entry has been submitted to Peer Review, congratulations! The person who posted[SUBMITTED] it obviously really likes it and wants to see it progress through the Editorial Process[LINK] and into the Edited Guide. Your entry probably satisfies all the criteria in the Writing Guidelines[LINK], but may need some fine tuning. [PLEASE] Be prepared to listen and respond to the[ANY] feedback that crops up in the discussion.



Writing Workshop: If[IF?? THE ENTRY *HAS* BEEN SUBMITTED, WHICH IS WHY THIS AUTO-POST IS BEING MADE!] your entry has been submitted to the Writing Workshop, well done! The person who posted[SUBMITTED] it can see[PROBABLY THINKS] that your entry is a good one and would like to see it in the Edited Guide, but [THAT] it will need a little more [JUST MORE] input from the Community before it's ready for Peer Review. To help you get to that stage, look out for the helpful ideas and pointers that arise from the discussions which will help you polish off your prose ready for submission to Peer Review.

Are we still going for the idea that the workshop can be used for university entries? Do we know what we want to do with it? Besides, should people be able to submit other people's entries to the Writing Workshop? I don't think so.



Collaborative Workshop: Your entry has been submitted to the Collaborative Writing Workshop, if you've got the bare bones of a great Guide Entry but would like help writing it. This is where you can get together with a group of Researchers to write brilliant Guide Entries while also developing your writing skills. [THIS PARAGRAPH GRAMMATICALLY INCORRECT AND REWRITING IS NEEDS]

I think there's a good argument that you shouldn't be able to submit other people's entries to the Collaborative Workshop. A decent collaborative entry takes a fair amount of commitment, so it needs the support of the author, in a way which isn't *always* needed in Peer Review, and which isn't needed in the Flea Market or Alternative Workshop.



Alternative Writing Workshop: If[IF??] your entry has been submitted to the Alternative Writing Workshop, it's because it doesn't quite fit in with the Editorial[WRITING] Guidelines [FOR THE EDITED GUIDE] but the person who submitted it can see that it's a great entry[REALLY LIKES IT] and wants it to head towards[TO SEE IT FEATURED IN] a prominent place such as The Post[LINK] or AGG/GAG[LINK]. This might include entries that are pure humour, mainly fiction, or otherwise not eligible for the Edited Guide.[SCRAP THIS SENTENCE - THE AUTHOR KNOWS WHAT KIND OF ENTRY SIE'S WRITTEN] In this forum you can still receive feedback so look out for comments.

Flea Market: Your entry has been put into the Flea Market because it's believed that[SOMEONE BELIEVES THAT] you've disappeared from[LEFT] h2g2 [, OR ABANDONED THE ENTRY]. The Flea Market is the place where the entry can be picked up and finished off by someone else.['FINISHED OFF'? IT'S MORE WORK THAN THAT TO RESCUE MOST FLEA MARKET ENTRIES...]

Oh, I misread something. I thought each para was being suggested as a direct replacement for the "Your entry above has been submitted to the Review Forum..." message. I think this would be a much better idea than giving an automatic message with some of the info, and then requiring people to go to a *seperate* page, and look down the list till they find the right review forum. Why not present that information directly?

I think that, rightly or wrongly, fleas are associated in the minds of most people (as, for example, in 'fleapit') with things that are dirty, dingy, infested, unattractive and unwholesome. And even if it is the opinion of some people that some of the entries concerned fit this description (I couldn't possibly comment ), it still seems unkind to seem to be passing summary judgment on _all_ the entries that happen to fall within what are essentially administrative rather than qualitative criteria. It's an admin thing, and we shouldn't really be implying any value-judgment.

It seems to me that an immense amount of care is taken by the people running this site to avoid implying value judgments on the genuine (and even some of the more cynical) contributions of Researchers, and I give this a big round of applause, and three cheers as well.

As regards re-using the entries, they are all part of the Guide, and will all be retained as such (unless there are any proposals to delete them), so you cannot in truth say that they will never be recycled. I agree that 100% recycling, though the ideal, is not always feasible. But even if an entry is not re-used in full, it may be that certain parts of it can be salvaged and re-used elsewhere, and in an imperfect world this is a valid form of recycling.

But if 'Recycling Centre' is disliked as a title (I don't think it's that bad, but I'm not wedded to it either), how about something like 'The Adoption Agency' or even 'The Lost Property Office'

With Lucinda, I fail to see the point of other researchers submitting entries to the WW. It's sometimes hard enough to know what sort of help is being asked for in the WW even when it's the author who has submitted it. If an orphan entry is not considered suitable for submission to PR, it should go to TFM in hopes that someone will adopt it and in due course submit it either to WW or to PR as its 'guardian'.

Bels

I was going to suggest "Lost & Found", but Bels beat me to it.

"Recycling Centre" has more negative connotations to me than either "The Flea Market" or "The Lost Property Office" does.

The Spare Room?
The Attic?
The Hut?
The Other Place?

The Void

Steptoe's Yard.

Admittedly, not a reference most non-Brits will get, but then, flea market here is a perfectly acceptable term, whereas it seems not to be with British researchers.

Better read the entry now I guess

Dr Montague Trout

I'm sorry, but what do you mean by a-about-t?

ZSF and Bels

About the flea market notification - you and Bels are probably right that the wording could change. 'Lost interest' seems so negative. If we leave the message deliberately vague, then would that help with the assumptions that Bels talks about? More explanation can be provided by the help page that the notice links to.

Bels

I think that changing the name of the Flea Market to something else would involve a lot of work.

What should the wording of the notification be if not 'you've left the building' etc?

Lucinda
Thanks for those suggestions.

'Are we still going for the idea that the workshop can be used for university entries? Do we know what we want to do with it? Besides, should people be able to submit other people's entries to the Writing Workshop? I don't think so.'

The workshop can be used for University entries and so on, but I'm not sure this should be discussed in a help page entitled 'What Happens When Someone Submits Your Entry to a Review Forum?'. We can cover that in a separate help page.

We have to link to the seperate page because the notification message has to be relevant to all review forums.

I've updated the entry - how's it looking now?



Anna

Then you have a different set of associations with the phrase 'flea market'. I think of bargain hunting, car boot sales, and finding a really dingy oil lamp that just needs a quick polish and *whoosh* there's a genie. It also gives an image of having to search for the good stuff - there being decent stuff obscured by other stuff that's mediocre at best. It's an accurate name for the place, which is why I like it.

--

Fact is, entries enter the Flea Market at a vastly faster rate than they 'leave', and this is as it should be. I'd estimate that the 'recycling rate' is about 5%. In the 100 most recent conversations in the flea market, the following entries have been 'recycled':

How to Write a Blank Cheque - salvaged by me - Pending
Milk - salvaged by Shee - not in review
Truth and Validity - salvaged by GTB - Pending
A Short Guide To Testicle Cuffs - salvaged by me - Pending
Gross Domestic Product - salvaged by me - Pending
UNIX File Permissions - salvaged by S'pe;lug:x - not in review
Television - salvaged by Don Cheeko - not in review

That's 3% successfully recycled by me, 1% recycled by GTB, 3% recycled and currently not in review, and 93% unrecycled. So yes, I can in truth say that most entries in the flea market will never be recycled.

100% recycling isn't so much unfeasable as completely devoid of any connection with reality. And no, it wouldn't be ideal either. Entries in the Flea Market are of varying quality. A minority are salvageable. A minority of those are actually salvaged, based on the interests of the handful of researchers who trawl the flea market. And that is as it should be - otherwise you'll have the situation where people looking through feedback for inspiration and salvageable entries can't find them, because they've all been salvaged already.

--

You say: "even if an entry is not re-used in full, it may be that certain parts of it can be salvaged and re-used elsewhere"

The vast majority of entries salvaged from the flea market are not re-used in full: bits and pieces are used, to varying degrees. Talk of 'adoption' by 'guardians' is rather missing the point for the majority of salvaged entries. Entries go to the Flea Market because they're not good enough for the edited guide. Not because they're good writing that fails to meet the guidelines - that goes to the alternative workshop. Not because they're good writing that the author has abandoned - if stuff just needs a few tweaks, it gets picked and the sub-ed does it. Moving stuff to the Flea Market *is* a value judgement. You're not going to change that by making a nice euphemism for it.

-Martin (unofficial speaker for The Campaign for Plain English)

(that was a simulpost, btw)

> "We have to link to the seperate page because the notification message has to be relevant to all review forums."

Right, then I'll put in a feature request here and now for the ability for the notification message to vary depending on the review forum the entry was submitted to. This would be good for the reasons mentioned above.

I'll also repeat my request to disallow people to submit other people's entries to the Writing Workshop or Collaborative Workshop.

However, in the mean time:

--

> "Your entry has been submitted to one of the six review forums"

there are only five review forums.

You could do with links to each of the relevant review fora when they are mentioned.

> "in each case a fellow Researcher has chosen"

chosen what to eat for lunch? chosen to sleep with the editor? This isn't a clear sentence (and it's missing a full stop). Besides, we're talking about cases where someone else has submitted your entry to a review forum. In the case of the flea market and alternative workshop that typically means the h2g2 editors, not a fellow researcher.

> "Peer Review"

This header is 'ass-about-tit', to steal Montague's phrase. Peer Review is a Review Forum, so it should not be stuck out on its own.

> "The Review Forums"

They're all review forums. This header is redundant.

> "If your entry has been submitted to the Collaborative Writing Workshop, you've got the bare bones of a great Guide Entry but would like help writing it."

I'd like some help writing it, would I? No I wouldn't! Don't tell me what to think!
(etc)

> "This might include entries that are pure humour, mainly fiction, or otherwise not eligible for the Edited Guide"

What might include? What is 'this' referring to in that sentence? Also, you need to include something about what happens if the submission was in fact a move from PR/WW. For example: "Alternatively, you may have submitted the entry to Peer Review[link] or the Writing Workshop[link] when it is pure humour, mainly fiction, or otherwise not eligible for the Edited Guide. In this case, if at least two Scouts agree that the entry is unsuitable, the h2g2 editors[link] may remove it and resubmit it to the Alternative Writing Workshop."

> "such as The Post or AGG/GAG"

Add links: <./>thepost</.> and <./>AggGag</.>

> Flea Market text.

I'd have:

If your entry has been submitted to the Flea Market, the person who submitted it probably thinks that it has some worthwhile content, but it needs a good deal of work before it could be accepted into the Edited Guide. The person who submitted it thought that you had left h2g2, so if you're reading this, welcome back!

Alternatively, you may have submitted the entry to Peer Review[link] or the Writing Workshop[link] and then temporarilly left h2g2. If an entry is in either of these review forums, and the author does not post to h2g2 for over two months, then the h2g2 editors[link] may remove it and resubmit it to the Flea Market.

> "The quickest way to access the 'Remove' link"

This is still inaccurate, as is the FAQ page, as I pointed out here: F83059?thread=206990

-Martin

The Editorial Process link should be to <./>DontPanic-Editing</.>

Thanks for all those suggestions Lucinda especially the clarification of a-about-t! I see exactly what you and Montague Trout mean. I'll leave in the heading 'Review Forums' as to distinguish between that and the 'How do I Remove...' headings. 'Peer Review' etc are all subheadings of 'Review Forums'.

Dear Bels, Gordon and Lucinda,

I can see that coming to a consensus on an alternative to Flea Market, or keeping the name could continue for a while. The name is hard coded so we probably won't be able to change it yet...

Thanks everyone

Anna

Dear Lucinda,

"Right, then I'll put in a feature request here and now for the ability for the notification message to vary depending on the review forum the entry was submitted to. This would be good for the reasons mentioned above."

Sorry, I forgot to add - would you mind posting this feature request in the feature request forum, so we've got it in the right place? Cheers, you're a darling

Anna