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

I'm curious about your Scouting policy. Obviously there are a lot of Scouts (actually, how many are there?) and they work in different ways, but it struck me that your particular policy would mean that, since I've already got some entries in (i.e. I'm not a new writer) and since my oldest non-recommended entry is only four weeks old, I'm not going to get a rec. from you as a matter of policy.

Aren't you just supposed to pick the best stuff? Or is that just too time consuming (I can easily believe it would be...). I'm trying to get a better insight into the Scouting process so that I can improve the chances of my current (three) and future (who knows?) Entries making the Edited Guide.

Do other/all Scouts operate a similar policy? Having written a single entry which I was surprised and pleased got in, I wrote about six entries in the space of a week - they all went into Peer Review more or less at once. They got selected in dribs and drabs over a period of several weeks, but the first was picked up fairly quickly, I think. It's difficult to know how to improve one's chances of selection, so any pointers you can supply would be helpful. I'm keen to see anything of quality get in, and I'm far from averse to weighing in to PR conversations about other people's entries if I know anything at all (rare enough!).

Anyway, that was all, just looking for some pointers, if you have the time...

H.

I don't know his particular policy, but a lot of people got fed up of badly scrutinised entries getting recommended for the guide the same day that they were posted to peer review.

in an effort to cut down on the amount of flack that the scouts were getting over this, most of them have developed a policy of looking at the older, fairly inactive threads first. this allows time for the entries to get reasonable peer review, while stopping entries that are currently the source of debate/controversy from going in too soon.

once your thread has calmed down, you will tend to find that scouts do pop along and recommend it eventually (unless it gets sin-binned or sent to the writting workshops, etc).

I hope this reply helps.

There are at most 40 Scouts as a maximum because that's the best fit for having each Scout getting 3 picks in roughly 4 weeks, while maintaining a quota of 5 entries per working day on the front page. Should there ever be an increase of in-house staff for editing entries then this quota and the number of Scouts may increase as well.

Actually, there is *no* guideline for picking entries, other than that the picks have to be submitted to the in-house staff within a week from the 'Reminder' posting which is sent out via the Yahoo eGroup. Scouts are *free* to pick any entries of their choice, provided they have been on Peer Review for at least one week and the entry isn't one of their own. The success of a Scout's recommendation depends on the word from the PTB which is where the real decision is made.


--- My policy ---

Some weeks ago I put down the basics of my policy, at http://www.bbc.co.uk/h2g2/guide/A584246. As of today, I have visited some 130 out of the ~180 threads which are in PR as of today. According to my very personal standards, 52 of them could be recommended right away.

"Picking just the best stuff" -- Of course this is a subjective unit of measure anyway. When I was appointed a Scout, I started with such a scale of quality but abandoned it quite soon. Of course, some of the glory of an excellent entry falls back to the Scout who recommended it, at least in hir personal records. But, picking 'from the top' could mean to prefer entries from professional (or at least, experienced) writers. Beginners would fall back into the queue and soon leave the site altogether, and in the end this would lead to *inbreeding*, ie, all that remained would be a limited amount of regular writers who submit yet another well-written entry about *their* scope of Live, the Universe, and Everything. This doesn't mean that I were to recommend entries of mediocre quality. But given the choice (three out of 52 if I had my turn right now) between an entry from a researcher who already has, say, five entries recommended and another researcher with hir first entry running, my choice clearly goes out to the 'firstie'.

The rationale is a simple one: I want the scope of the Guide to be as wide as possible. The following example may hurt you in particular (sorry for that), but anyway: there's an entry about [something or other] in the Writing Workshop which *is* complete and well-written etc, and I encouraged the researcher to go to Peer Review with it. Once this entry has had its one week of minimum waiting time of one week, I'm going to recommend it as soon as my share of picks allows (which, however, might be another couple of weeks because there's another queue within my list). The idea behind this is that I reckon that an 'experienced' writer will be able to sustain yet another week of waiting for hir entry to be picked, whereas a 'first time' writer is most likely to abandon site after a fortnight of lacking progress in PR.

I *am* aware of the danger that would be incurred if the other 39 Scouts were to follow the same policy. Sooner or later the overall quality of entries would decrease if only 'first' entries would be picked. But (this is my very personal impression) there *are* Scouts who have difficulties in chosing their three picks in time and are happy to find three threads with positive comments under the first red LED within the PR page ( -- I know I'll get smacked for this remark, but this is my impression anyway).

Back to the essential question, -- yes, chances are that it won't be Bossel who's going to recommend, eg: the 'Gyroscope' entry next time it's his turn. Full stop. Hence (concerning the 'Gyroscope' entry) you may safely ignore any comments from Bossel like you already did.

However, there is a ' - this one has been languishing for too long' rule in my policy too.

Thank you for taking the time to give that detailed reply. It pretty much answers all my questions, so I've only one thing to say...

I didn't ignore your comments! In fact, although I didn't incorporate any of your observations into the Gyroscope entry, your mention of bicycles took me over to the thread you pointed out, and if you look in PR now you'll find a whole new entry on "Unicycles and how to ride one" inspired by the conversation there, and therefore indirectly by YOU! So, seriously, major thanks for that...


Ultimately, as you say, having got several entries in already I've developed patience. Please do keep the comments coming, inspiration is a rare commodity!

H.

Speaking as a newbie who as just had my first article recommended, I think that it would be good if the Peer Review blurb carried some indication of the likely timescale involved. Something like....

"....Because of the sheer number of entries we receive, it can often take several weeks for an entry in Peer Review to become recommended."

I only found out the timescales through Bossell's encouragement on my "Bill Hicks" article. Thanks again for that. You too, HV.

Good news for both of you... Congrats on the recommendation for 'Gyroscopes' HVL , and Geoff, if you'd like to take a look at the PR blurp (I posted your idea to this conversation http://www.bbc.co.uk/h2g2/guide/F47997?thread=136808, and the blurp was amended :-)