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

It seem to me that:

(1) the number of entries being approved has lowered to the bare minimum of 5 for the past few days.
(2) the new peer review scheme is less likely to have your entry actually looked at by a real live editor, as they would have to continually press back into the deep areas of entries that might not have been too interesting for enough people.

I write an entry on Half-Life, and to mildly positive responses and one rewriting, only to have it disappear to the depths of the onversation list, never to be seen again! And this only took 2 days! How will informative but unpopular entries get approved?

I'm done ranting for now, but I'm sure there will be a huge surge in approved articles about sex...

Your name seems very appropiate...

I'll have a look at your HalfLife. Got the game, the expansion pack and the tshirt

I agree with NYC Student here. The more well-known and topical entries (note the one on David Fincher) get a decent amount of traffic, but obscure or arcane topics (many of the others)--people, places, and things nobody has heard of--will inevitably be buried and lost, and will therefore never make it to the Guide. That people should visit the entries they're familiar with is natural, of course. If one is placed in the position of critiquing another's work, it makes sense that they'll pick topics they know something about so they can offer intelligent suggestions or fill in gaps in information. However, it seems that such a strategy goes against the purpose of the Guide: to inform people of something they know NOTHING about. Why else have separate entries on specific London neigborhoods, or strange customs in places many of us are unlikely to visit? If the Guide is to become the vast, incredible encyclopedia of local knowledge that it has the potential to become, then the innumerable entries that dwell on obscure entries absolutely have to be included--naturally, so long as they meet the Editors' standards. One could argue that these arcane entries are much more important than any entry on Michael Jackson, even if it were written by the Gloved One himself.

*pant pant*

Do the Editors have a way of saving these entries before they fall into obscurity? Or do they count on the interest of the h2g2 researchers to recommend entries to their attention? How exactly does this all work?

The other thing that will happen is that people will artificially "float" their entries - adding a pointless post to get the item back into the Top Ten conversations. That will make for an awful lot of pointless posts in the war to remain in clear sight!

Roll on the Phase 2 developments of the Peer Review. A BIG page to show a lot more of the posted conversations would be a quick win and a massive improvement without going into the complications of the automated submission system just yet!

I agree with NYC Student. The entry on Half-life was really good, and it would be a shame to see it just drop back into the miasma of forgotten, once-submitted entries. I also agree with Dr. Funk--the question should be, not how do more guide entries get edited, but how do guide entries that people would actually want to read get edited? I didn't realize until reading about it in this thread just now that there is a strong disincentive to edit entries that nobody knows anything about, i.e. entries that you could learn from.

I'm just surprised an editor hasn't been around in a while.

They should make a rule forbidding floating (after all, you can check out who is posting, can't you?)!

The scouts should be able to help here.
Basically they will be mooching around picking up on interesting articles and trying their best to get the attention of the relevant sub-editors on the peer review pages.
If an article has been submitted by somebody on the peer review page and hasn't had any replies at all (cos its obscure or whatever), I personally think its fair enough to drag it up to the top of the pile with a gentle reminder - things do tend to slip off the bottom of the page pretty quickly. I think 'floating' is rude if you do it more than once, or if you've already had lots of replies offering constructive criticism.
Don't forget though, that even though a thread may have dropped off the page, it is still there, and will probably be looked at by the sub-editors in due course.

Just my humble opinion.

- Adam

yes, but not only has it dropped off the page, but it has gone all the way back to the fourth page of old conversations, and NOBODY has the kind of patience to wade through all those posts to look at mine.

There really shouldn't be a seperator on the peer review page in terms of numbers of posts staying there before going to the archives. I think every article submitted should stay in one long list on the peer review page, and conversations should be archived only when the author gives up, or the entry is approved.

and that, of course, is my humble opinion.

There's also a grassroots sort of solution to the problem of entries dropping off the face of the earth: we can make a point of starting somewhere near the bottom of the list and only critique entries that have not been critiqued yet--of which there are many. Your one critique will send it to the top of the list, where casual passers-by will see it and maybe get interested in it enough to review it themselves. It doesn't totally solve the problem, but there's ony so much kvetching (sp?) we can do before we're required to actually do our part in evening things out a little.

What a good idea, Dr. Funk! I think I'll go to the end of the queue and see what's there...

There are some very valid comments here. ( jqr, I'm going to the end of queue too.) But it says on the Peer Review page that any discussion not relating to an article won't be read by the powers that be. Whether this is true or not you'd probably have more chance of being heard in the h2g2 feedback forum.

yeah, but this has to do with the Peer Review scheme, so why not?

and won't the scouts succumb to the same idea of ignoring entries they know not about? What if a roving scout or sub-editor comes across my entry, and passes it over because he (or she) doesn't play computer games? Or the new handball entry I did. What of that? If the multitudes of researchers look over this page once in a while, and still don't comment on my entries, what are the chances a scout or sub-editor will?

This is about an article: A395589 to be precise... This is apparently on their wish-list... this may change at some point. But don't quote me on that - things have a habit (good? bad? I don't know) of changing...

Don't worry - it doesn't work like that.
If an entry's good, it's good. The person reading it doesn't have to be a physicist, for instance, to realise that an article on Black Holes informative and well-written, and therefore reccomend it!

Remember, all the volunteers are Researchers too - and it's our JOB to read all the articles in the forum! If you want to make specially sure yours gets noticed, why not tell a scout on their own Space or on the Scouts page? (www.h2g2.com/Scouts).

so you're saying that not only do we have to put it up here, but we must all ADVERTISE our works to the scouts, who surely must have lives of their own? there HAS to be a better way...

Actually, I start at the back of the conversation forums on the peer review site and work forward. And I know I'm not the only sub-editor or scout to do so. However, I'll agree that most people just look at the top ten or those with the most inflammatory titles.

Keep in mind that the H2G2 community (including scouts, sub-editors, and Towers staff) is still adapting to the peer review system. It may take some time before all the kinks are worked out.

While the old system may have been easier on the researchers submitting the entries, it was (or is, as we're still finishing that queue) a lot harder on us sub-ed's. Spending hours wading through and rejecting entries on topics like "I like my dollies" and "My favorite color is purple" is not my idea of a productive use of my time. This system lets the scouts and the general H2G2 community take care of that first stage screening.

And yes, I'll take a look at your entry, although I'm not promising much -- I don't even know what Half-Life is (outside of it's scientific meanings).

My advice is not to worry too much about articles dropping to the back of the queue on in the peer review forum - All us scouts do take time to read through the old entries, to make sure nothing slips through the net. We also have a list on our discussion site where we put names of articles that still need a look at, lest we forget.
If you have a trawl through the forum, you will see that there are a few discussions that have been resurrected from a month ago.
as MtHM(S-e&G) said, its early days yet, so the will probably be a few hiccoughs, but we are getting there.

- Adam

If it is a slow day at work, it is always fun to delve into the depths of the PR page I must admit I will look at things that interest me first, but after giving them a shuftey, you move onto Entries concerned with places, any place, it doesn't matter. If you want the Guide to fulfill its potential, you get out there and comment on them, bring them to the top, for a whiley. Even become a Scout. It doesn't take that much time......
BCNU - Crescent

Well said, Adam! I think people may be underestimating the role the scouts play here; I think it's fair to say that if an entry is interesting and informative enough, even if the subject matter is a little dull-seeming or esoteric, it will be read by someone on the PRP and/or scouted, as Big Mad Mr T mentioned above. Quality will prevail.