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

I have three suggestions, all of which could be useful in clearing out the review forums, at least until we have an automatic system for removing entries where the author has been away for 2 months or more, which for the purposes of this proposal I will call absentee reseachers or authors as appropriate.

1)I thin it should be possible to find out the date of a reseachers last posting. It could be dislayed on their personal space, or there could something you click on to reveal it. However, you do it, this would make it easier for us to tell whether a reseacher had been gone for 2 months or more more easily.

Currently to verify that they have been could require going through a long list of conversations with replies in the last few days or weeks, as if someone has previously subscribed to a lot of busy conversations (or even peer review for example), could come up before a post the reseacher not long ago.

An alternative is a notice saying that an author is an absentee author, having been away for 2 months or more, rather than give the date of the last post.

2)I think there should be an automatic list of absentee researcher, that we could consult if we though someone had been away for 2 months or more. The automation would make it easier to rely on the information on the page, although it would be good to have a check on it, using suggestion 1)

3)I think that there should be an automatic list of entries in any review fora that have absentee authors. This I feel would be more useful than 2) as each one of these entries could be removed from its review forum, whereas 2) would also include people who never submitted to a review forum, or have since had their entries accepted into the edited guide, or removed for some other reason.

some good points.

although it is possible for most people to easily check an authors last post by looking at their conversations list if the researcher in question subscribed to ask h2g2 and has then been gone for four months it could take sometime. i certainly think this warrents soome considersation....especially given that it would make it much easier to track down errant authors and the likely hood of their return much quicker.

FABT

It'd also help the sub-editors to decide whether they should contact an author during the subbing process: if an author's been offline for two months, there's a good chance that they aren't reading anything that we type .

Robert

I like the initial idea: have a 'last logged on' in the entry box of the researcher's page. That'd also be more accurate than 'last posted': some people lurk a lot...

I don't like an automatic list of absentee authors, because it'd be HUGE, and not very useful.

I don't like displaying entries by absentee authors differently in the Review Forums, because this would probably be harder programming than the automatic removal currently in feature requests. Similarly with a list of absentee authors with entries currently in review.

I do like having an indication of the last time the author posted to hir own review thread, as one of the many columns. Generally I don't want to comment on any entry where the author hasn't posted to it for a couple of months, regardless of whether the author has in fact left h2g2, or merely stopped posting to this one thread.

-Martin

Some interesting ideas here.

I'll take them point by point.

1) It's on our to do list to have the date that a Researcher last logged onto h2g2 on their Personal Space. We thought it was on <./>Development-ideas</.>, but it I couldn't find it when I looked for it. I've asked Mark to update it. Hopefully it's there now. This would let you know easily if they had been online in the last two months.

2) A list of absentee Researchers would be enormous. And we'd have to decide what constitutes 'absentee'. I think once the above feature is in place, this would be superfluous.

3) Would this also be necessary once 1) is in place? As I don't deal with Peer Review (Anna is out of the office until Monday, but I didn't want to leave you hanging that long!) I'm not too sure how it works, and I know Anna was dealing with some Scout applications, and I don't know if this is covered by what she is doing. I'll look into it.

I see your point mina about 2). It would probably be too long to be useful.

Also about 3). Anna has been dealing with scout applications as you say, but in that thread she suggested that I post this in a new thread, as it whasn't covered by what was suggested there.

I still think it would be useful having 3) if we had 1), as then to clean peer review say, we could just have a look at the list of entries with absentee authors, and just keep going down the list, recommending their removal, rather than having to do through the peer review list, and have a look for entries that might have absentee authors (ones with unfamiliar names, with no response for a while, some of which may be regulars who I am not familiar with. This would be easier though if we had 1).

Also, about 1), I can see it in the list now under 'More User Statistics', which gives 'Also display the time they last visited the site, if that user is happy for this info to be displayed'.

There may be a problem with this, as it means that if someone does object, then we can't use their login date to see if they have been gone for 2 months or more, so would have to look through the conversation list. However, the date of last posting is something that you can determine from the conversation list, so I doubt whether anyone can reasonably object, as the information is something that can be obtained with a little effort from the conversation list (although that relies on the reseacher not unsubscribes from their conversations, but I think most people don't do that anyway, or at least to the extent that it would cause problems).

However, I think I will wait until we have the login date feature, to see whether this is a real problem, or not.

I wasn't aware that the date last logged in feature was going to be optional.

If you have to check a list of absentees to see if a Peer Review author was on it, wouldn't it be just as quick to check their Personal Space? Either way you are going to have to move away from the PR page briefly, even if only to look at another window.

I'll see if I can find out about the feature when Mark gets back into the office, because if it is optional, it might not be much help to the Scouts. I'll also mention the list idea.

And thanks for the tip about Anna, that saved me from the agony that is searching someone else's conversations.

Arguably, your list of threads should also only be displayed to others if you wish it. A seperate thread, though.

"If you have to check a list of absentees to see if a Peer Review author was on it, wouldn't it be just as quick to check their Personal Space? Either way you are going to have to move away from the PR page briefly, even if only to look at another window."

I see your point, this would apply to the list of absentees (point 2) Although you could just search for their name in the list, whereas currently you have to check down their conversation list to check if the researcher is absentee, by checking when their last posting was, which can mean going through many pages of threads that have had recent responses. However, this would really be dealt with by point 1), as then you could just go to the reseacher personal space to check, which is just as easy as going to a page with a list on. Point 2 would allow you to look at the list, and check if they have entries in review fora, but that would probably result in finding a lot that haven't, so not saving much time.

I think point 3 is more defensible, as you could then start on the page with the list in, and for each one go to the entry, double check absenteeism by using point 1, and check in the review forum thread to see if there are special circumstances, then if not recommend the thread's removal. This would probably be quicker than going through the list of entries in the review forum, for possible entries with absentee authors, only to find that quite a few are just abandoned entries, but with authors who are regulars.

Those entries need to be dealt with, but it is a lot easier if you can eliminate entries that have absentee authors from the list first.

To clear up a point about point 3, I think that the list of absentee author entries should be kept on a seperate to the main peer review (or other review forum) list, so only those who particularly want to look for those entries (e.g. scouts on a clearout of review forums) will see the information.

Ah, now I see. I think.

Are you saying that if there were a list of absentee peer review authors, it would simply be a matter of finding their threads in PR and going from there? Rather than starting with the threads themselves.

You've got the idea Mina, that is exactly what I am saying.

How about making things really complicated for the programmers and having an entity which displays the last-online date as well?
===
For example:

I was last online &lodate;.

would parse as:

I was last online last week.
===
I'm sure the people with long complicated PS'd love it:

'Oh look, here's another obscure GuideML thing I can put on my Personal Space. I know, lets put it in a bright green table, make it scroll up, down, left, right and embold it. And I'm sure we can put some smilies with it to'



Robert
(loves suggesting useless(?) features)

It's on the to do list to have a last logged in date on Personal Spaces, a gadget sounds funky, as it appears to be something that would be optional.

I'm posting for 2 reasons.

Firstly, I'm wondering if this thread has been forgetted about, as there don't seem to have been any replies for a while, and the ideas don't seem to have been included in the feature list. With this, I hope if this is the case that it gets noticed again.

Secondly, I have more ideas about my first idea, the date of the last posting. I still think this would be useful, and less objectionable than the data of last login, as the information is already available, although it requiring looking through a conversation list. Therefore, it could more reasonably be compulsory.

However, the date of the last login would be a more accurate reflection of when someone last visited, if we are talking about lurkers, a point that Lucinda made before.

The fact that this is proposed to be optional (and I can see why), means that such system might not be useful in general, forcing scouts to either use the inferior last posting date, or if that isn't implemented requiring you to search through the author's conversation list.

Therefore, I propose that if someone does want the date of their last login to be displayed, then if they don't login for 2 months, something on their personal space tells us that they are an absentee author, as that is all us scouts need to know, not how long exactly they have been gone. I suspect that no-one will object to that sort of thing being displayed.

This would mean that scouts could find out if someone is an absentee author, without needing to display when the author last visited, as the actual date is not needed, if we know the author is absentee. It would, I think, mean that researchers could retain their privacy, if they want, whilst allowing scouts to easily find out if an author is absentee, or not.

It would also mean only one date (the last login date) would be needed), as if the author opted out of the system, we could still know if the author is absentee or not, so not need the last posting date, or to laboriously go through the author's conversation list.

Absentee here means gone for 2 months, as defined for the purposes of moving entries to the flea market.

> "The fact that this is proposed to be optional2

It could be optional but opt-out rather than opt-in...

If it was opt-out then perhaps more people would have their date of last login shown. That could be helpful. However, I still think it would be useful to have something to tell if someone is an absentee, if they choose to opt-out.

There may not be many people opting out, but I think its as well to have a system in place that doesn't rely on people not opting out, rather than deal with it later when we find out how much of a problem it is.

So there'd be opt-out 'last logged in' and 'last posted' info, and a compulsorary 'AWOL' yes/no flag?

Sounds good.

I was actually thinking of the last posted date being compulsory, as the information is already available through the conversation list.

However, if we have an opt-out last login date, and compulsory AWOL flag, then we don't really need a last posted date at all, at least as far as scouting goes, so it could be made opt-out too.

So basically, I would be happy with a last login date, and/or last posting date being displayed, as opt-in(s), as well as an AWOL flag being compulsory. For scouting purposes, I would prefer the last login date, as it is a more accurate reflection of the lats time someone visited, and similarly the AWOL flag should reflect the last login date.

Hi Everyone,

I've asked for 'display the time a Researcher last posted to the site to be added to the features list. Just checking in with this thread to address points two and three.

I think point one is the most important. Once we have something like that in place, it would be easy for Scouts to assess how long a Researcher had been away from the site. In that case there would be much less need for an automatic list of absentee Researchers or an automatic list of absentee Researchers in any review fora. In a way it's the same information displayed three different ways.

What does everyone else think?

Anna

There is a seperate feature request out there to allow the 'my conversations' pane to be sorted by the most recent date the user posted. If that was implemented then there'd be no need for a seperate 'last posted' field on the home space...