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

hi i just joined but have visted alot and would like to volunteer to be a scout. thank you

Hi Storm 198 - thanks for your interest in becoming a Scout. I'm just one Scout and I don't speak for all of us, but hopefully this will be useful advice for you! As far as I know, they're not recruiting new Scouts at the moment, but , all is not lost...

The best thing you can do in the meantime is to try and get up to speed on what the Scouts do, the most important of which is contributing to PeerReview - by helping to comment on other people's entries and get them up to the standard required for the Edited Guide. That way, when the next recruitment drive happens, people will have already seen you around Peer Review and know who you are and that you'd be a useful person to have on the team... compared to someone who just wants a nice shiny badge and the chance to pick two entries every month.

To contribute to PR to maximum effect, it's a good idea to learn the Writing-Guidelines inside out so you know what's required - and more importantly, the kind of thing that will rule an entry out, like being written in the first person. Another good idea is to read all the new entries that come up on the front page to get an idea of the length of entry and quality of writing that the Scouts are looking for when they select an Edited Guide entry - you can find the complete list of entries published over the last month on the Month page.

But probably one of the best things you can do in terms of learning how PR works is - assuming this isn't something you've already done - to write an article for the EG and submit it to Peer Review, and that way you'll be learning at first hand how the process works and what's required.