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

Mean comment from me: Far too much PR comment is about grammar, spelling, etc...

Almost no PR comment involves fact checking.

This leads me to the mean-spirited conclusion that far too many people who spend a lot of time commenting in PR are extremely lazy.

They already know - or think they know - all about grammar.

They would have to do some research to help an author make sure his/her facts are accurate.

Somewhere in the process of editing, we hope, that stray comma will get argued about (and poor Alex is just about to read me on the subject of verbs and collectives...nothing bad, I promise...).

But an incorrect fact - say, the population of a place being off by an order of magnitude, or a wrong date - could seriously affect the quality of the work.

If you don't have much else to say about a piece, contribute to the effort by activating your google finger. And offer your contribution with respect - the other person has just put a lot of work into this.

And put as much effort into your comments as you do into your own writing, people - if you're writers, you know words have an effect. Don't use them as blunt instruments to hurt somebody else's feelings, just because you've had a bad day.

No, Alex, not you - maybe not any of us, and naming no names. You know who you are out there. I've seen it. Stop it. You don't like it when people do it to you, you know.

Well, I guess somebody who's researched an Entry would already have got the facts right. We would normally only expect people who are 'experts' in the field to comment on factual accuracy/inaccuracy .

Where PR comes into its own is in organising the text to make meanings clear, avoid ambiguities etc etc.

A

I'd agree. It's rare enough that I'd spot anything wrong with the facts in another person's entry, and I know quite a bit about a range of subjects. But if I do spot a problem, I'd certainly report it.

I wouldn't use google to check the facts in someone else's entry unless I saw something that was suspicious, not because I'm lazy but because the person writing the article will have done the same and will have sifted throught the facts available, rejecting the contradictory ones. They, since they're writing the article, presumably know more about the topic than I do.

I guess we're enforcing the writing guidelines, first and foremost.

In other words, if I hear you correctly, it requires several dozen people in this enterprise to make absolutely sure the rhetorical structure of the offering is up to an elite standard...

...but there's a gentleman's agreement that one person alone is responsible for the factual accuracy of the offering?

No helping with research? No suggestions such as, 'Have you considered the opinion of Professor So-and-So?'

I wrote one once on a subject I had already spent weeks researching for a paid job - the Cherokee Trail of Tears. After we got it up on the front page, a reader objected to the title on the grounds of insensitivity.

I wrote to the newspaper in Tahlequah, Oklahoma, and asked. They suggested a change. The h2g2 editors were kind enough to make the change.

To me, that is worthwhile follow-through. That is integrity.

And it should have been caught in PR.

Checking the content is checking the accuracy.

Of course, you can't go through and research every single fact that's used every time you comment on an Entry, but that's no reason not to help with the research...

The sub-eds are meant to check factual accuracy as well. It's even in the test. But how many do that?

What I mean is - if it looks incomplete, if there are no links to back anything up, if anything strikes you as odd - if it's *important* that a date is exactly right - do check!

I've been harping on this subject since the days of PROD (anyone remember that? No, I won't bring all that up now ). It's funny, because back then, everyone seemed vehemently opposed to the idea that PR shouldn't be a spell check mechanism, but now it's a more accepted idea. There are even fewer of those long lists of minor errors, these days, I'd say. That's progress - it's great.

We have a lot of filters for typos on this site. Subbies, italics and curators/EF run their eyes over an entry, looking for errors, without the help of PR. I think PR should really almost exclusively focus on other aspects of the entry. There's a difference between improving the clarity and writing quality of a piece and pointing out typos and format errors.

It's great if someone can check the accuracy of certain parts of the piece or suggest more information, but I agree that it requires a certain amount of knowledge in that field to do that (and unfortunately nobody writes about the areas I'm interested in, other than me ). On the other hand, a PR commenter surprised me just the other day by going out on the web and finding some new information to use about a subject I'm pretty sure he wasn't an expert on (full disclosure: it was Icy). The great thing is, the more people in PR, the more likely you are to have someone with knowledge of the subject you're writing about. If you want to improve the fact-checking in PR, the first step is to bring more people in - after all, who can resist commenting on something you already know in and out?

Hear, hear.

We are all ignorant, only on different subjects. Somebody said that - I'll bet somebody's going to tell me it was Mark Twain. Oh, well.

And that was exactly what I was trying to suggest - only better put, of course.

I'll gladly point out errors toward the end of the process - or if someone repeatedly makes the same ones, eg. confusing its and it's.

(Second half of the post )

But that's only to help the subbie out, not because it's part of PR.

I forgot to mention what the best filter for errors and typos is - the author himself. Granted, looking over your own work, your eyes sometimes skip over errors that would be apparent if you were reading it for the first time. But in many cases the best way to deal with a really error-riddled entry is not pointing everything out, but just suggesting that the author proofread his or her work, and run it through a spell-checker. It's usually clear if the author hasn't bothered to proofread their entry.
An obvious exception would be people who aren't as familiar with English as the rest of us. I think they can be given a little extra leeway. Though I can remember at least one occasion when a commenter asked if English was a new writers' first language, only to learn that the writer in question was really just horrible at spelling and grammar.

Absolutely. Peer Review is to offer opinions on whether the entry is any good or not, and if not, to offer suggestions on how to improve it. This may include pointing out that some phrases just sound awful, rewording paragraphs, changing sentences around so that it flows well and follows a sensible explanatory order. It will also include disputing any facts that the reviewer knows anything about.

If I'm commenting and make no comment on the content, it's because I don't think there's anything about it that needs changing. I usually post something like 'Nice entry' even if I then go into a few suggested changes to spelling and grammar, but it probably would be helpful if I was clearer that I think the content is fine.

Something I'm trying to work on is not just posting "I like it!" or something like that, but saying what, specifically, I like.

"This is good" is just as useless as "this is rubbish" to someone trying to figure out what works style-wise.

Maybe it's not especially helpful to say that an entry is nice, but I think it is still better than not saying anything at all. At least the author will know that somebody has read the entry, and even likes it.

Yes, of course it's better than nothing. But I'm trying not to do just that myself.

From the (recently updated) Peer Review Help Page http://tinyurl.com/ltryco :


"Wherever possible, try to help the researcher get the grammar and spelling as accurate as possible. While we have volunteer Sub-editors who polish entries before publication, it never hurts to get the entry as 'right' as possible early on. This will also help your chances of having the entry accepted."


"We have a lot of filters for typos on this site. Subbies, italics and curators/EF run their eyes over an entry, looking for errors," (Jordan)

These people cannot be expected to find every error (let alone errors of fact, omission, or 'datedness') - and they don't.

No, but even if PR was little more than a typo-checker it wouldn't catch everything. I'd rather have an accurate, stimulating, clear article than one without any typos. Typos are easily fixed - the curators have done a great job of making that process painless. Deeper problems within an entry can only really be fixed by the author in the PR process.

A bit late in the discussion, but I was sorry to hear that Gnomon has stopped commenting in PR. There are some people who will flounce at suggestions, have always flounced but some of them will come back later and carry on once the petticoats have been smoothed back down.

I've had a really good friend on here whose entries I wouldn't comment on due to the umbrage taken with every comment, no matter how carefully worded so sometimes I am just direct and get on with it so the flounce can be got over quicker. Although this doesn't make me popular I do often get other Researchers agreeing, so some directness is obviously needed. I do try not to be hurtful when I do it, but I don't suppose I get that quite right.

Spelling, grammer etc, was upped in PR because there were less Eds so they had less time to spend correcting grammer etc in the entries they edited, bearing in mind I don't know if they do the double check on entries that come back from subs that they used to.

I'm happy for any sort of comment, I've had to withdraw entries from PR because they have been deemed not quite right, some I've redone and come back, others I like them how they are (or have lost interest) so just left them unedited.

If people aren't continuing to try, or they aren't commenting because of the reception they get I think that's really disappointing. It also doesn't address the entries ignored for weeks, while the Eds are crying out for new entries.

WHY are entries ignored? Are there not enough Scouts? Not enough Picks? Are Scouts deciding not to pick for reasons to do with the author rather than the entry? I just can't understand it.