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

Hello

I am interested in becoming a Sub-editor volunteer.

What happens next?

MegSpace20

Oh, hi, Meg! Welcome to h2g2.

I see you're new today - did you sign up just to become a sub-editor?

An <./>ACE</.> will drop by your personal space soon to welcome you properly and give you a quick tour of the place.

You should probably write a few Edited Guide Entries of your own before you become a sub-editor, so you can learn first hand how the process works and get acquianted with the Writing-Guidelines and the house style. That's the usual way round. Though perhaps our wise and powerful Editors will let you skip straight to the subbing.

Why don't you have a look around PeerReview while you wait for an official answer from our Editors? You can comment on works in progress there (since those are the entries you'd later be subbing) and, of course, you can submit one of your own.

If you don't know what to write about, you can check the <./>FleaMarket</.> for abandoned entries to finish instead. That would be a good way to learn to work with what other people have written.

Good luck! And if you need any help, just leave a reply here and I'll be happy to answer any questions. I'm not an automatic message, and I'm a current sub-editor myself.

Hello

Yes I did sign up to become a sub-editor, haha!

I'm interested in a career as an editor and figured some volunteer work would be good experience and found out about h2g2 on one of my google searches.

It would be good to just skip to editing for now as I am currently a student with lots of work on but I am interested in writing too.

Do you enjoy being a sub-editor? What is the best advice you can give me? And how many hours do you put in per month?

MegSpace20

Hi again.

As I said, I'm not sure you can become a sub-editor without having a few entries under your belt - it was a requirement when I joined, but things may have changed now. I'll write the Eds anyway, to alert them to this thread. It might be a while until they respond, though; the entire site is switching over to another system on Tuesday, so they're just a bit busy!

I joined as a student myself, and managed just fine despite 60-80 hour workweeks for Uni and a part-time job, so it doesn't take up *that* much time. There are a few sub-editors who can do three or more per week; others do a few per month. But they do ask that you take time to work on it regularly.

I've fallen behind on the sub-editing bit myself (I'm also a Scout and a CommunityArtist and volunteer for The Post, our community newspaper ), but it's certainly great practice if you want to get into that kind of thing.

The best advice I can give you right now is to familiarise yourself with the house style and the Writing Guidelines, since you'll have to keep those in mind when you're working. I don't know where you're from, but among other things, we use British English in EGEs, so if you're not used to it, you should brush up on that as well. Read through the other Sub-Editor pages, especially <./>SubEditors-Style</.>, those will give you good pointers.

Last but not least, you need a working knowledge of GuideML, the markup language we use on this site. It's more or less a simplified version of HTML. You can look at the basics here: A187229 and the things specific to the Edited Guide here: A264520. There are also more articles about it in Category C801.

If you want to practice your GuideML, I recommend either creating a new entry to play around in or simply writing something in your Personal Space, where you can also experiment a bit with the different tags.

Also, jaz'd has left you a message in your space and would be happy to help you with any other problems you might encounter onsite.


Hope that wall of text hasn't scared you off!

(Editors e-mailed to draw their attention to this thread. )