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

Is this ever going to work again?

B

Not soon.

Will bribery help?

B

There are more important things, B. Like making the 'not for review' for any guide entry the default option. We get way too many entries in PR which some idiots submit and haven't even written them themselves.

actually, we get far more piles of rubbish that idiots have written and submitted themselves. So on that argumnet, we need a membership test for IQ and not being a raving nutter.

By the reckoning of many of the health-scare sites I have Stumbled Upon, then my alcohol consumption should lead to an IQ of 36, so I'll vote against that, thank you.

B

Whooah! Hold your horses there a moment B'El!

Has something deeply and significantly changed amongst the Scouts that they want to address this (so called) problem all over again?

This subject has been broached on a number of occasions in the past and the concensus, which was pretty forcefully put, was that a 'not for review' default was a SERIOUSLY bad idea.

Yes, we do get the odd muppet from time to time who willy-nilly submits other folk's work to PR when it clearly does not meet the guidelines. But that's merely an annoyance; and a nothing in comparison to the potential loss that would be come of locking out ALL non-edited entries just because the original author didn't think of submitting their work to PR.

agrees with Greydesk

-- the Commander Keen entry in the EG was one that I found, put into PR and the resercher who had forogtten about it worked to put it through into the EG

We only get a few randoms sticking things into PR that are from other people, and it isn't really that much of a problem in th elong term

To bang it home a bit, I'd use the analogy that these random submissions of others work to PR is like fleas on your dog.

It's an annoyance. When it happens it needs to be dealt with swiftly. What ever you do it keeps on coming back. But you don't shoot the dog to solve the problem.

B A N G!!


Ooops.. did I hit the dog?

Ok,ok, I digress. Still, during my time as a scout I haven'zt seen any entries worth being in PR having been submitted this way, but I've seen numerous of the others.

Yes, but the point is that if you set the default as 'not for review', then NO suitable entries can EVER be submitted by anyone other than the original author.

Well, yes, but as this doesn't seem to happen anyway, I really fail to see the problem.

You are asking to remove the opportunity for this to ever happen.

One of the problems that this site has is that it's used a print model as opposed to an open editing model, and as a result it has totally failed in the online encyclopedia place in comparison to wikipedia. By removing any opportunity for getting material out from the unedited guide and into the edited one by anyone other than the original author you are placing more barriers in the way of any chance of success that this site has.

agrees

I'm pretty sure that part of the role of a scout is / was that when wandering around the guide, if they saw a suitable entry, they could sent it to PR

And for entries where the author has vanished, the Flea Market

GD, I don't see the guide anywhere near W*k*, and I'd never compare the two becuae they are so different in my eyes.
Jon, I don't browse unedited entries, so I personally, will hardly ever come across a suitable one. Plus, I think it's impolite and bad taste to submit other people's work to a review forum, but that's apparently just me.

I think your analogy is flawed, GD. Shooting the dog is akin to closing down PR. Both are unnecessary and OTT. However, if your dog has fleas you do something about it - you do either get some flea powder, or a flea shampoo, or some of those anti-flea tablets.

Unsuitable entries being submitted to PR by someone other than the author really isn't as big a problem as fleas on a dog - Scouts flag as unsuitable and bring it to the attention of the Eds, who then remove it.

How many suitable but unsubmitted entries do we really think are languishing in the far reaches of h2g2?

I did consider the idea of having the default setting as Not for Review and giving Curators the ability to uncheck the Not for Reiew box, but not every Researcher who finds a worthwhile entry would know about this arrangement. Mind you, it would have a beneficial side effect - there are plenty of unsuitable entries out there (including some Help pages I think) which currently *don't* have the box checked but which really should.

The "Not for Review" should be the default.

It is completely useless to allow anybody to submit someone else's work, since the Entry can not be changed in line with Peer Review suggestions to make it fit for the Guide.

If you want to submit someone else's work, (such as with a long-departed author) the only way to do it is to make a copy and submit that, being prepared to act upon suggestions made in Peer Review.

The "no search of conversations" is not a bug to be fixed but a conscious decision of the site designers. They don't want you to be able to search conversations as it puts too much of a load on the servers.

Thanks for that, Gnomon. I knew there was soemthing else making these submissions pointless but didn't remember what it was. You're right, only the author can edit the entry, no matter who submitted it.

hi all
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ive been lurking again lol
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this might not be possible, but could solve the pr problem.
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as you say some cut and paste a page from say a book, then slightly alter the text, or just anything, just examples.
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what if there was a inbetween section, so the submitted is in a section, to be checked, to see if it is worth the pr, then sent to the main pr.
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this way you wont get the pr having to explain the reason its not for pr, one person, could check the entries and their decision to forward to the main pr would be final.no trying to discus why and whynot.
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sort od a treaage(my spelling)so the ones that are worth the next stage go on, and the ones that are just someone trying it on,to put it mildly are weeded before the whole pr as to get involved.
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jim