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

Sho, your points are good enought that I'm going to break them up into separate discussions.

"What's so special about this famous cookie recipe?"

Nothing, they seemed popular enough when I made them for the Winter Meet and a couple of people did ask for the recipe, which is in the recipe archive of The Post BTW, if recipe's can get into the EG then I thought I might give it a go

rg..can youfeedthemto themhamsters,,,my sloe down meds has just hit homre and iain typing good..hootoo is crap tinight wirse ever ooh dear srtugling here,don't think going to finish post......sleep pill kicking in now

GOD DAM IT THESE MEDS AND BLOODY TICKER ,


note...type,bloodypost fiorst then take the flamim knock out pill..............................

sleeeeeeeeppppiiinnggg pillls woking....zzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

thinkit works What i said about whatever it was I said
think i ll look to morrow whatever.

mudst go, bye......

Yes Reefgirl, go give your cookie recipe a try out in PR. I had half of one of them at the last meet and was most impressed, and I don't even like sweet stuff normally!

Gnomon, was that the 'Tuna and Broccoli Bake'? If so, then that was me what picked it. I was a brand new Scout at the time and that one was third of my three picks for my first month.

Ok, I'm going to confess. I picked the Pirates and Piracy entry. I explained in the box that I didn't think that it was quite ready, and that I thought that the Sub Ed would have a bit of work to do. I also said that as a Sub Ed it wasn't that much work, and if the Eds had a problem with it I would offer to sub it. I've been a sub as well as a Scout and I would have been happy to sub it as well as Scout it. When I got the e mail - I was a little surprised that it had been accepted Pauly did comment and refer to the comments box so it had been read.

I've only just come across this thread.

I picked it because I really liked it. I thought it was an exceptional entry and deserved to go to the Guide. It was written by a new author who had been away from the site for a while, he didn't look likely to come back and make the very minor changes. I would have been happy to Sub Edit it myself and spend a bit of extra time on it - which I offered to do.

You call it inconsistency I call it flexibility- that gets a good entry into the Guide. I don't pick and entry because the authors been a Good Girl and done everything right - I pick it because with a bit of Sub Editing it could have gone on the front page.

I assume that you make those changes because getting an entry into the guide with the minimum of work for the subs is a nice thing to do for the subs - not because it has to be done to get picked.

As I Scout whose been around for ages I tend to steer away from the obvious picks - those entries by a well known author which are very good - because I know that they'll soon get picked by someone else. I try and look for something different that might not otherwise get picked.

This was an exception to the rule for a piece that needed an exceptionally small amount of work doing on it. I have already asked the italics if I can Sub it if they think that there's too much work to be done. I thought that picking it and doing the work myself would be quicker than it going to the FM and me picking it up there and then resubmitting it to Peer Review. I estimate that there's about 20 minutes of work to be done - not a great deal.

I can confirm that I picked the papaya steak entry on Friday night; it's very much EG quality, and adds a little more than being a simple list of ingredients and how to put them together. Entries don't get 'recommended'c status until after the weekend, when the Italics come back to the office. I wouldn't have a problem picking an entry on cookies if it was of a similar quality.

I'm with Z in that it's far more fun to find entries around the bottom of PR to pick. I picked Hell's entry that had languished for months, discussed briefly above, as well as the re-submitted Haslar entry - I rarely if ever pick entries that are continually bumped by the author unless there are lots of extra picks flying around, though. Fine if it's been a week or more without comment, but when entries get bumped every couple of days I have to admit I start to lose patience. Chatting on an entry also makes it harder to see if comments have been addressed, too.

Anyway, shouldn't we be commenting on entries rather than the forum itself?

Well if we are going to go into confession mode here: I was the one who picked the other Papaya entry. Which I did on my trawl through PR on Sunday afternoon.

This was an entry that from a rather poor start had shown terrific development, and was by the end an entry that satisfied all of the PR criteria; plus that extra criteria that I apply, that an entry has to prick my interest and leave me with a smile on my face. It worked perfectly on that score. And Paully agreed with me.

Oops, we forgot the priest.

But thank you all for providing the second and equally important side of this discussion.

Aaargh! I didn't have a problem with either papaya entry, just the fact that it appeared to be picked in the middle of a discussion chimed with what we were talking about here *Having an MJ doesn't anyone read what I write moment*

Does this mean it isn't really worth commenting on stuff over the weekend then? If you make comments about something major in an entry these might just get lost as it could have been picked already.

Cheers BG, there's not a lot I can do with a choc chip cookie recipe than list the ingrediants and method, it's not like it has a long history, I'll think about it

"the actual picking is done in secret"

That makes it look a bit sinister, but essentially, yes, picks aren't public because authors might get all excited and then find the entry is turned down, either because it's not suitable, or because the Eds don't think it's ready. And why would Scouts pick an entry that's not suitable?

To get a final word from the Eds.

That's what happened with Movie Sock. I disagreed with everyone who said it was ideal for the Guide both here and on the thread but really didn't feel up to stating that anywhere on site when so many people said it was, so I picked it to see if I was the one who was wrong - the Eds turned it down.

"Does this mean it isn't really worth commenting on stuff over the weekend then?"

I think perhaps not picking at the weekend would make more sense - but of course most of my h2g2 time is at weekends now, so that would mean I couldn't Scout anymore and there must be others like me. I don't think any picks were processed while Jimster and Paully were away, nor do I think picks are processed every day - it depends on what else is going on to take the Eds time. So there's no way we can say when a 'safe' time to pick is. They are going to be down to two staff next week, they might only deal with them once a week - we can't know.

I picked the Essex entry to *stop* more comments being made, because Emmily had said she had enough suggestions and didn't want anymore but people were still posting. The entry was complete enough without any more additions.

I'd say the best thing to do is to relax about it. If an entry is accepted while there was still discussion due to this, then it can't be hard to post back to the PR and ask if the Sub will be able to finish off the last tweaks. If there are major tweaks needing, then let the entry hit the Front Page and update it.

It's not deliberate to pick right in the middle of a discussion.

I think that goes fo rmy steak recipe too. Someone pointed out there was doubling up between the papaya entry and the recipe. Well, I don't write an Entry with an expectation that someone might know all about the subject, so of course there's bound to be a little doubling up . If you want to know about papaya, search for the papaya entry. If you want to know some different steak recipes, search for different steak recipes. See what I mean?

Anyway, it's the weekend picking and PR discussion that seems to confuse issues a little, because somehthing could be picked on a Friday night, then not processed until the Monday, so over the weekend further discussion could be made about the Entry. This is, I believe, when a Subbie steps in and makes sure they peruse the threads when subbing the Entry

you could always preced the cookie recipe with a brief discussion of the history of chocolate chip cookies and some theory on how to eat them. (en mass, in small bites, if you break them in half then the calories leak out...)

What do we think about what happened here?
F3130648?thread=2225352&skip=60&show=20#p27823143

I think this is just about commenting style, and a PR newbie who is feeling a bit fragile. How should huge swathes of typo and grammar type corrections be posted so as not to spook the author?

I think this has already been explained, but I’ll explain it again, from my own point of view, as a Scout.

A first-timer author's Entry in PR can and does get picked with minor corrections needed to be done, or even in plain text, with no GuideML.

I take into consideration various things when picking an Entry. (I'm one of the Scouts who tend to pick from the forgotten Entries on the back pages of PR)

When the author is a new to PR, it’s the content of the Entry I would be looking at, not the spelling, punctuation, grammar or use of GuideML, that can all be sorted by a Sub-ed in a *first-timer’s* Entry (not in every Entry picked) and I’d say in the text box that Scouts have use of, that there are minor corrections needed to be done, and that the author is a new to PR.

Emmily

"you could always preced the cookie recipe with a brief discussion of the history of chocolate chip cookies and some theory on how to eat them. (en mass, in small bites, if you break them in half then the calories leak out...)"

I could give it a going over, the things you've mentioned plus 'Dunkability' which one's are the best, I've also got a choc chip biscotti recipe but I have tried it yet as it's a fag to make them

Are we allowed to advertise Biscuit manufacturers here on h2g2?

Actually Reefgirl, there is some really quite serious science behind the concept of 'dunkability'.

It's all to do with the behaviour of lipids, starchs and flavour molecules in the presence of hot liquids (such as a nice hot cup of tea). And how the interaction thereof makes a previously stable system fundamentally unstable - that's when your biscuit breaks and you have to fish out the bits from the bottom of your mug.

I'll see if I can dig something up for you tomorrow

I say, RG...can I volunteer to be taste tester for any samples?