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

While the Peer Review concept is itself laudable, since it allows anyone to recommend an article, what is the practical reliability of the system?
What I mean is this: say an article (such as my recent one on Tactics To Avoid Appearing Drunk) is read by two or three contributors who leave their opinion. Are they expected to actually make a new posting recommending this article? Is there any real likelihood of their doing this even if they think the article was a really good one?
Lastly, if no EDITOR reads this article, how will it ever get the recognition it (presumably) deserves? Does it just wash away into the backwaters of the 'unedited' Guide?
Please address these concerns - I'm sure they are held by many.

First, I should mention that I'm not an editor. I write an article for the h2g2 Post ( http://www.h2g2.com/U54963 ) called View From the Queue. I've been covering the change in the editing process as a columnist for about a month now.

I think you have a very interesting take on this system. It is almost always the Researcher who wrote the Entry who submits it to this Peer Review page. There was some concern in the past that very good entries could "fall through the cracks" of the old system because the author didn't think to submit them for review. The Peer Review system provides a loophole where an h2g2 Scout (or anyone else for that matter) could shuffle those missed entries into the editing process. But this is clearly a very rare occurence.

If an h2g2 Scout does not pass an entry from the Peer Review page to a sub-editor, it is possible that the entry will be lost to obscurity again. However, several very good entries that aren't approved for various reasons do reach a consistent audience. Sometimes the author has "advertised" their entry to clubs and hang-outs within h2g2 related to their topic. An author who reaches success at having one entry approved often attracts visitors to their user page and their other unapproved entries. And every once in a while, an entry is amusing or interesting enough to get passed on from one researcher to another indefinitely.

Of course, this is more the exception than the rule. Many of the entries submitted to Peer Review will likely fade into obscurity if they don't reach a sub-editor. This was true with the old editing process as well. The difference is that here, at least, the author may have the one moment of glory where anyone at h2g2 might run across their submission and comment on it. That wasn't the case before.

As the number of researchers at h2g2 has increased, so has the number of entries submitted for approval/editing. h2g2 was forced to either increase staff at an exponential rate or tighten the standards for approval and decrease the amount of time the staffers must take to choose which entries to feature each day. They could speak more than I about why they chose the solution they did.

Hi Martin. I'm afraid I'm not an Editor (though I hope to be a Scout when the system is launched) either, so something odd must be going on.

Just to say: yes, I DO think that you're supposed to reccomend an article. Firstly, if you've written an article and think it's worthy of addition to The Guide, (and I'm sure it would be) then post its' details on the Peer Review page and it WILL be looked at. If people have read your article or have things to contribute, then they WILL reccomend it!

In fact, h2g2 is making sure of this by introducing the Scouts. The Scouts will (between them) read ALL the entries posted for entry, and make comments or suggest ideas for how to best suit the entry to h2g2's guidelines for good entries. Of course, it's likely that the entry will already be good enough, and a Scout will reccomend the entry a Sub-Editor, who will then go over it again and make sure everything's "tickety-boo" (and makes any final alterations such as spelling and formatting if neccessary). If it is, it gets added!

...or at least, that's what I THINK happens. So don't worry about articles getting lost too easily. Remember: if you think ANY article is worthy of submission, it doesn't have to be your own, RECCOMEND IT!

Cheers.

I'm a Sub-Editor...is that close?

Those two have made excellent points about the new system and I hope it helps. The Peer Review is a lot better than the queue system, in that the subs are only going to be getting the great articles, instead of the small articles that may need to be rewritten, or the researches just having fun with the submit button articles. It's hoped by the editors that it will speed up the process a lot. The only problem is that right now, most if not all the subs are working on going through the old queue of entries and trying to clear that out, so it might be a little while till we get to these articles, which numbered something over 400 I think right before they changed the system. Unless of course the powers are working on them themselves. And like Mr T said, it should limit the number of articles lost, because it's hoped that the scouts will scour EVERYTHING in order to give the subs something to do