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

I've been thinking about this for some time, and now I'm going to make the official proposal:

*** Please REMOVE the Writing Workshop ***



It's an eyesore.


(1) For as long as it has been around, the Workshop has been used as a dumping place for entries that were put directly to PR, from people who didn't (and won't ever) read the Guidelines. Not what the Workshop was intended to be.

(2) Nobody posts to it. Apart from three or four people, it's only the original authors who are around there. The latter don't go beyond 'their' threads. Again, not what the Workshop was intended for.

(3) Once every now and then, an entry is put in from a researcher who actually has read the Guidelines and took them to heart. Those entries are almost, and very close to entirely, complete and finished. All that is lacking is the confidence of their author in the quality of their own work. There's *significantly* more work required on the [counting... done] majority of entries that are currently in Peer Review.

(4) Brilliant entries like F57153?thread=172887 and F57153?thread=172889 are drowning and drying out, and the author goes amiss. Not what the Workshop was meant to achieve.

(5) All other threads over there are either:
(a) in an intermediate state on their way to the Flea Market, or
(b) pieces where the author is still around but has lost interest.
-- Nothing that the Workshop was meant to host.



Bossel

PS: For the time being (that is, until it has been removed), I'm going to refer to it as the *Notworkshop*.

Hi Bossel,

Interesting proposal. But I think the potential of the workshop to be occasionally used as it's intended makes it worth saving, even if most people don't use it for anything.

Giving that Sir Bossel usually has more idea of what is going on around here and I certainly don't, I have no objection if he wants to save a little server space.
In time, the whole framework needs a little shakedown, and if some things fall off...

I very much doubt Review Forums have any impact on the servers when they're not being used...

Bossel, would your problems with the writing workshop be solved if more people posted to it?
I mean, do you think that it would improve matters if (say) people from Volunteer groups were encouraged to lead the way in commenting on threads there, so that it was busier?

And what do you suggest for people who haven't finished their entry, but want feedback? I was in this position a while ago - the rules say that Peer Review is their only for an entry which is finished in the writer's eyes, but I knew that my entry couldn't be finished in my eyes unless I had other people read it first, to see if I ought to develop it in a certain way - the Writing Workshop seemed to me to be the ideal place.

Perhaps more good but unfinished entries shoud be transferred to the Writing Workshop?

What would happen if the writing workshop was cleaned out more frequently?
- say if a scout saw a finished entry which s/he thought was good enough to go into peer review, they could automatically transfer it

/

To me, it seems that the problem with the writing workshop isn't that it shouldn't exist, because I think having a no pressure area where people's work can be reviewed is very valuable; it seems that its not being used properly, which surely could be in part remedied by more promotion for it.

I think there is a place for the Writing Workshop, although it does not seem to be functioning correctly at the moment. I look in occasionally and so does Bossel, but very few other people seem to look at it or comment. I think that we need a place for entries which are only starting off and where the author does not know how to proceed.

There's no doubt that there are entries in the Writing Workshop which should be in Peer Review, because they are essentially finished. But the authors of these can easily be encouraged to move them into Peer Review.

I think what is needed is more people to comment. Occasionally an author submits an unfinished entry for Peer Review. Technically, they should be asked to withdraw it and resubmit it to the Writing Workshop, but I rarely recommend this because I know the entry will in all likelihood never be seen again. If people provided the same level of constructive criticism and helpful comments there as they do in Peer Review, I think it would work very well. Perhaps one of those happy bands of volunteers (Aces, Guardian Angels, Scouts etc) could be encourage to look in from time to time to keep the workshop ticking over.

perhaps, instead of suggesting that the writing workshop should go, it should be suggested that every so often there is a small script run against the subscribe list for peer review, inviting the people subscribe to peer review to subscribe to the writing workshop.

if we can get more people to be subscribed (and thus comment) then the writing workshop will become what it is supposed to be.

perhaps the aces, guru's and other volunteers could also be invited to subscribe to it and comment constructively.

Come to think of it, I left my entry for the Ann Arbor Hash Bash in the Writing Workshop for a while. It got some good feedback from people. When I finally got around to revising it, I followed their advice, made some changes, and it was quickly recommended from Peer Review, slipped into the Edited Guide with few changes.

Probably not an example of what commonly happens to entries in the Writing Workshop, but it worked well that time.

I guess I'm still looking for what the harm would be in leaving the Writing Workshop open. It's an eyesore to experienced h2g2 researchers, but may help a few underconfident people. It may distract people who should be submitting directly to Peer Review, but there's no harm as long as the piece eventually makes its way to PR.

If the only problem is that people don't participate enough to make it an effective workshop, then we should try to increase participation, not close the doors.

Hello everybody.

Here go my 2p: I agree with Bossel. I even have some more points to add:

H1 - Nobody is THAT interested or has THAT MUCH knowledge about someone else's entry.

H2 - If there is such an acute interest people tend to solve the problems via personal space communication with the author himself. Which is very uncomplicated and effective.

H3 - The WW is a hangover from the pre FM, AWW, Uni, Collaborative Workshop days. It's not needed any longer.

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Stimulating WW conversations by installing another volunteer scheme will make the procedure even more complicated.

Those were my 2p.

Endorsing the WW Removal,

HELL

I'm not sure about the proposal, but Bossel makes some convincing arguments. WW shouldn't be a place entries go to die.

Another point worth adding is that entries in WW can't be sent to PR again without being removed from WW (by normal researchers anyway). If an unsuitible entry was just removed from PR, it could be worked on by the author, and then someone could re-submit the entry to PR at a later date.

If the consensus is to remove anything, then it's no problem to remove it, but I think everyone would probably agree that it would be better to have a healthy, functioning Writing Workshop than either no WW or the eyesore we currently have. Some questions:

* Does the Collaborative Writing Workshop have a place when there's already a Writing Workshop? Would combining them be remotely useful? It would then be a place *not* for unsuitable PR entries, but for entries that people *want* to put into WW for some input.

* Instead of moving unfinished entries from PR to the WW, we would simply move them out of PR, and wait until the author resubmits them to a different (or the same) Review Forum. This would prevent the trickle of entries from PR into WW, and therefore from WW to FM.

* Do we really need the Flea Market? Or is the Flea Market a useful place for entries to go and hang out when their authors disappear? It seems to me that the WW takes on a kind of interim role between PR and FM, which is possibly why it has the vibe of a graveyard rather than a proactive collaborative writing system. If there was just PR, WW, AWW and FM, and entries got moved *out* of PR rather than out of PR and into WW, would this change things?

* If need be, we can clear out the WW with (say) all entries that haven't had any comments in their Review Conversations in the last month. That might help invigorate it.

Anyway, much food for thought, and if a consensus gets reached, we'd be happy to oblige. After all, there's no manual for running this kind of thing, so if the time is right for an experiment, that sounds fun.

It's good to see PR doing well, though - at least that one's working well!

I hate it when h2g2 swallows my post.

The dogma that you can only remove and add review forum threads, not move them, is a stupid dogma. It amounts to forcibly unsubscribing people from the entry each time it moves a stage through the process. It reduces the amount of participation in the review forums, for no good reason except keeping things neat and tidy for the Editors and easy for the coders. But that was just the final nail in the WW's coffin - it was already decaying long before.

Publicity won't work. Firstly, the WW has plenty, and it's still crap. Secondly, there's no reason anyone should go to the WW, when they could go to PR instead. The entries are of the same type, and you can make the same kind of suggestions, but they're not as good, the authors are less responsive, and they take longer to get into the Edited Guide, and they're less likely to get into the Edited Guide. Charity would work, but would be a tremendous waste of energy that might be better used in other ways. Finishing those uni projects perhaps. In my case, maintaining <./>AggGag-Archives</.>. Reviewing entries in PR or CWW or AWW. Rescuing entries in FM. And so it goes.

You might merge PR and WW, as (I think) Bossel is suggesting, but that increases clutter and the difficulty of Scouting. Scouts already don't put in enough time and pick dire and/or unfinished entries - if we make their life any harder they'll crack under the strain and grow hunchbacks, and I don't think any of us want *that*.

You might remove threads from the review forums altogether, as Frankie suggests, but:
1) If that's not rejection, I don't know what it is.
2) That throws out the Flea Market baby with the Writing Workshop bath.

I propose renaming the WW as PeerReview-Rejected. This would, at least, be honest. PeerReview-Before claims "Rejecting people isn't kind", but inventing euphemisms for rejection isn't kind either, nor is leaving entries to float indefinately in unreviewed limbo. We could also rewrite the relevant docs to (shock, horror) actually tell the truth. Then nobody would mistakenly submit good stuff to PR-Rejected, nor be surprised when they hear nothing there but the echoing sound of their own voice.

There are times when warm fluffy refusal to use nasty words like 'rejected' cause more damage than they avoid. The inadequate, counter-productive, waste of space, ugly, researcher-losing Writing Workshop is one of those. It's time for the truth.

-Xanthia

Not everything in the WW is stuff that has been moved from Peer Review. There's some new stuff, where people read the description of what WW is supposed to be about, and submit their entries directly. I try to keep an eye on the WW because these entries should be encouraged.

> "Does the Collaborative Writing Workshop have a place when there's already a Writing Workshop?

Yes. We had a combined CWW and WW before, and the WW was still dead then. All combining would do is kill the CWW, which at least has potential. The WW supposedly contains entries than need work by the author. The CWW contains entries that need information and opinions.

For example, Looney's 'Weak Bladder Syndrome' was in the WW. It was in the WW because the author rejected additional information and opinions provided in PR. That could not be more diametrically opposed to the type of author and entry you get in CWW.

> "Do we really need the Flea Market? Or is the Flea Market a useful place for entries to go and hang out when their authors disappear?"

We don't *need* it, but we want it. We want the FM because it's a useful place for entries to go and hang out when their authors dissapear. Don't get rid of something good because something else is unadulterated garbage.

-X

"Instead of moving unfinished entries from PR to the WW, we would simply move them out of PR, and wait until the author resubmits them to a different (or the same) Review Forum. This would prevent the trickle of entries from PR into WW, and therefore from WW to FM."

This sounds like a good idea to me. The idea of constantly moving entries from PR to WW just fills WW with a load of junk threads with no posts. The idea of WW is that people can help authors improve their entries, but that's what PR does and PR does it better. I once submitted something to WW (&CWW) and didn't receive much of a response. Once I posted the same thing to PR: tons of responses and a chance of being picked (which it eventually was). So from an author's point of view, PR is always going to be the best place to send things.

If it's decided in PR that an entry needs work and the author is prepared to work on it with the help of others, but that it's gonna take a while, the entry can be removed from PR, worked on, and then re-submitted (by the author, or anyone else if the author vanishes) when it's ready.

FM isn't a bad idea but I'm not sure how effective it is. I've used an entry from FM once, don't know how often this happens though.

As a first step I suggest that the 'automatic-higher-askew-entity' move from PR to WW should stop. If someone uses the WW then it should be his/her full intention to do so. That would keep the 'not quite a SinBin, but almost there' touch off the WW. At a later point if the WW is still being used, we could debate again whether to remove it or to leave it.

If we all see that nobody's using it, the entries could gradually be removed (e.g. by implementing a maximum age of un-postedness limit to the threads) and the WW closed.

Furthermore, I think that all moves except the moves to the FM (because of building-leaving) or complete removals from a forum (spamming et al) should be performed exclusively by the authors. That would ensure that the author knows where his entry is, and that he's done the move intentionally. The remove option of the forums (PR, WW, etc... ) is already a useful step in that direction.

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An interesting thought has been brought up some posts above: Euphemisms. Hmm, I have been noticing a decay in quality of PR based entries. Maybe people are just not afraid of being sinbinned anymore. It used to be quite funny to have a dungeon for failed entries. There could be a slighter reinvention of a trashbin: For entries that are really no good, or were sent in by mistake or by people that just didn't care enough to read the guidelines. The purpose of the trashbin would be to provide a humourous punishment... But that would be another suggestion altogether.

HELL

FM definetly is not a bad idea. It's good for inspiration.

HELL

I like your two-step suggestion Hell.

Before we do anything though, perhaps it's best to consult more widely on this issue. Not many people are subscribed to the Feature Suggestions page. Perhaps a note to the scouts mailing list, PR or official announcement?

scouts have been informed Frankie.

Oh good.