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

Entry: Creedmoor - A2385902
Author: ResearchPress - U638401

Creedmoor was a world famous rifle range in the US in the latter part of the 19th Century. It's name has become synonymous with long range shooting and many manufacturers market their products under the name (and various miss-spellings thereof). This short article is intended to inform explain where the name came.

Looking all right

Of course, I know nothing about it and can't vouch for any accuracy or completeness.

What's with the large first paragraph in quotes, that ends with something in brackets? [The Story of Creedmoor, Frederick Whittaker, 1876] Did you lift that quote from somewhere? Because if you did, I'm not sure that it's allowed, even if you state the source. Does it really need to be there?

Niwt

Didn't check his space until after I posted that - he's only made two posts (one of 'em this one), no introduction, hasn't posted for 3 weeks.

Now here is a lesson for us. Newcomer writes reasonable entry and submits it to PR, and no-one responded until Niwt did. Should someone be taking care that all such new entries get a response, even if it is a negative one?

Is this for the scouts, aces or subs to do? If for the subs, I do not mind volunteering, as I stay subscribed to PR, and have often tried to tone down very negative responses to new writers.

I agree. I would like to see more action in PR. Entries are going for weeks without people looking at them, bad entries are staying around for months...

I don't want to blame it on the scouts, even though it's their job to check out entries. I think they're doing all right. And it's hard to be a scout, especially if you're busy.

It's not very encouraging to new writers. I'm glad I found this one. I've had similar things happen to me (not a new writer), two recent entries get absolutely no response for a long time.

I hope the author hasn't been put off by this.

Niwt

Peer Review is not supposed to be just for scouts. Everybody who uses h2g2 is welcome to come along and review entries. That's what the "Peer" means. I used to try and review at least one entry every day (although I am not a scout), but my life has got very hectic recently, so I am taking time off to sit on top of a virtual stone pillar.

Old Hairy, are you talking about some sort of system whereby scouts and other reviewers give priority to entries which have not received any comments yet? Is there any way of sorting the peer review list so that entries with no comments come out on top?

You're right, Peer Review isn't just for Scouts, it's for everybody. But not everybody on the site is *expected* to be involved in Peer Review, but Scouts are. They knew that when they signed up to be a Scouts; that's why they get a nice badge. Recently I've found several entries (including this one and some of my own) that have been left for weeks with no comments.

It would be good if there was a system whereby one could see the entries where nobody had commented. The Aces have the <./>NewUsers</.> page, where a * appears by someone's name if there are no postings on their personal spaces.

The closest thing to that is checking the guide entry list in Peer Review. If the "Date Entered" is the same as the "Last Posted", it's quite likely that nobody has posted since the author's original post. (Although of course somebody could have posted on the same day as the author, but not since then.)

Niwt

It's a hard one to deal with. Like many Scouts, I'm subscribed to Peer Review, so I see everything that comes into PR. However, commenting on entries is a reasonably specialist art. If an entry doesn't need any advice needed to it PR-suitable, then you really need to know a bit about the subject in question to be able to comment.

I think this is why entries on subjects that aren't particularly common knowledge sometimes don't get much feedback. I've certainly found this with some of my more obscure ones - everyone leaves it to someone who knows more about it, and no-one does.

The way I handle when I see a new entry comes to PR, it is that if there's nothing that contravenes the Writing-Guidelines and the entry is basically EG-suitable, then it's down to whether I know anything about the subject or whether it interests me. If the answer to either of those questions is no, then I take the view that there's nothing further I can contribute. So I unsubscribe, and leave the Peering process to those better qualified than me.

Sometimes, for entries like this one, where I'm mildly interested but completely ignorant of the subject matter, I stay subscribed to monitor the feedback that an entry gets and leave it to contributors to the thread to reach a consensus about the entry and when it gets to a point when it might be pickable.

Of course, not all Scouts operate in this way - and it has to be said, you see some around Peer Review far more than others. But for a bunch of volunteers chosen at random, I think we have a surprisingly wide base of knowledge and manage to cover most areas. Just not all.

I think another factor worth taking into consideration is that if I'd put something into PR and it hadn't got a response, I'd post again asking why. I think I'd have done this even when I was a newbie, but I can understand why some people wouldn't.

I've noticed that there are only seem to be a few Scouts posting comments regularly in Peer Review at the moment. However, I agree with what you said and think that for a group of people chosen at (almost) random, Scouts do know an awful lot between them! (The same can be said about the h2g2 community in general.)

I understand that people have specialist subjects, but part of the fun of reading an entry you know nothing about is that you learn something new! You don't need to be an expert on the topic, you can still offer advice about the entry in general (even if it doesn't contravene the Writing Guidelines, there are probably still a few ways it can be improved, minor spelling nitpicks etc.). Or you can just post a vague "Yes, I like this entry, I think it is well-written and informative" (like I did with Creedmoor, something I know *nothing* about). If I wanted to check the accuracy of an entry, I would do a quick Google to check what other information there is about it.

Anyway I understand what you're saying. It's a rather tricky issue. Obviously there are some entries where *all* Scouts think "I don't know much about that, it doesn't look very interesting and anyway I have no time today, another Scout can deal with it" and nothing gets done! As well as that, there are many new entries put in Peer Review every day, so I can understand how many Scouts won't have time to check them all out, and might unsubscribe/ignore out of sheer frustration.

Hmmmmm.

Niwt

I think that a lot of the authors whose entries get no comments are one-stops, like this Creedmoor guy, and don't return to post again.

Recently a lot of my entries have been getting no comments , and I have been posting a few and to try and make people notice them. Although this can help by pushing it up the conversation list, it doesn't always work.

Er...sorry to ask, but Number Six, if you're there, would you mind....? F48874?thread=395120

A couple of thoughts....

First, I would definitely disagree with the idea that there are only "a few" scouts who are active in PR. Now, that's not to say that every scout is equally active -- there are some who stay subscribed to PR to see all the new threads coming in, and post daily in PR in a variety of threads. There are others who go on a PR-ing spurt once a month when their picks are due. For many their activity waxes and wanes. But I know that although *I'm* not spending massive amounts of time in PR, I'm still seeing more scouts than I can count on my fingers.

Secondly, I think it's a tremendous problem if we're relying on the scout system to maintain activity in PR. If PR is not a *community* activity, then the net advantages of this system over the previous method for getting entries into the EG become far less significant.

Do I think it would be great if all new postings to PR had a response within 2 days? Definitely. Once upon a time, Mark Moxon used to send us scouts an email listing of PR threads without responses, which was tremendously helpful. As of now, the only ways I've been able to approximate this have been to:

1) Reverse sort on "time since last posted" -- whenever I have a significant chunk of time for PR, I try to bring things up to the point where no thread has gone for more than 4 weeks without a comment.

2) Sort on "time entered into PR", and compare that time to time since last posted -- if and when they are the same, I check to see if there are any comments, and if not, I leave one. However, this method has very limited utility -- if the only responses were the same day as the original entry into PR, the dates will be the same. And if the entry came into PR more than 6 days prior, the times will be measured in weeks/months rather than days, making it all the more difficult to pick out the ones that are without comment. So I usually only do this for the first page or two of entries after doing the sort.

Just my
-- Mikey

With regard to the number of active Scouts, "few" is a dangerous vague word. Sorry. There seem to be less than before, but maybe that's just me. And maybe there were always heaps of threads going for 2 or 3 weeks with no responses, and I just failed to notice.

I don't agree that you should only post if you have knowledge of a subject- in some ways a person coming from a point of total ignorance on a subject is more useful than someone who knows about it- an ignorant person can pick up on parts of entries that come from a point of 'assumed knowledge' much easier than someone who already knows about a subject.

I do try to comment on as many entries as I can in PR, many times I've read an entry that I don't think will be intresting from the title and be plesently surprised.

Sometimes I only put

'Good work ' especially if a lot of other people have commented.

I always post to every entry that I read - and stay subscribed to the thread.

When I have regular free time I stay subscribed to PR and try to read every entry. Other wise I'll spend an hour or two every other day PRing and reading though entries after sorting by 'date entered'. I sometimes do revserve last posted as well - to try and pick up entries that aren't being commented on.

Despite this a lot of entries do slip through the net. . I'm wondering how we can improve the system.. would more Scouts help? - bearing in mind the drop down list is out of date, and there aren't as many of us as their used to be!

Really, the only way to increase the number of scouts is to *decrease* the number of picks they're making per month -- and personally, I don't know if I'd feel it was worth it if we were each only making 1 pick a month.

As I said earlier, though, I think the key isn't so much getting scouts to post in PR more often as it is getting the *community* more involved in PR.

And while I do run across entries like this one every now and then that have slipped through the cracks, I also run across entries where there may be a *reason* no scouts have commented. For example, if I see an entry by someone who has a previous pattern of either ignoring my comments or responding hostilely or defensively, I'm pretty unlikely to post on their new PR thread.

Just to flesh out the variety of Scouting practices I have to confess I don't subscribe to the PR forum and read every entry that comes in. As has been suggested earlier the method I mostly use is to regularly review the list of entries in PR (sorted by date entered) and cherry pick any that pique my curiousity.

Since I am not diluting my PR-time reading entries I am not interested in, those entries that actively respond to my suggestions usually receive more advice than they want .

Due to the inability to post to the Scouts message board from my usual connection I don't undertake a regular weeding function, though I am inclined to occasionally offer a proposal or seconding.

Pimms Lettuce

As nice as an object lesson as this was, should we be moving this to the Flea Market now?

Yes I believe that we should.