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

Hi MJ,

Just taking advantage of your invitation to drop a note to your PS re the way PR works.

Now, Annie has just resonded to Wilma's Entry on Papaya suggesting that some verb endings be changed from -ise to ize. (eg tenderise > tenderize etc).

This is actually wrong. I did reply with the following but thoought better of it anfd have dropped it to your PS instead :

"(Note to Sho and MJ. This is an area where I think PR does not work well. Far too often, PR'rs are making suggestions concerning spelling which are plainly WRONG, leading to confusion and cluttering up of PR threads. I don't think PR'rs should comment on spelling at all. It should be left to the subeds)".


As I said in the thread, this very same convo did crop up in PR of another Entry within the last day or so.

h, it was 2legs' Entry about Screenreaders and Speech Synthesisews

http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/brunel/A3545697

Hiya Al

Valid point there mate It is a problem. I have fervently had the opinion that spelling and punctuation and grammar problems should be left for Sub Editors to deal with, as they have the specific EG Guidelines. Anyone else should leave it to the 'professionals' as such. Peer Review is about content, not spelling etc. Like I said about newish writers, some of them have what would be considered extremely poor grammar and spelling (and sometimes this is due to fast typing or dyslexia) and when a Peer Reviewer highlights these it can be a little disheartening, especially if there are quite a few errors.

However, at the same time, it's best to get the glitches ironed out before it gets picked/subbed. Ahh, what to do...

I think we'll always have a problem with spelling when this is such an international site. Other than adding something more to the Writing Guidelines (which are invariably not read all that much) I don't know how we can fix it, apart from leaving it for Sub Editors to do after an Entry gets picked. It is after all not that much of an issue regarding the content of Entries that go into PR. The use of a good UK English Spellchecker by a Sub Editor will find all the spelling misnomers I believe.

So, yeah I agree with you there, but then the Sub Eds might not, because it leaves a lot of work for them to do But they do have the badge for a reason...

Well, I think there's a difference between typos/dyslexic glitches (which can legitimately be pointee out in PR)and wholesale changes to spellings (e.g. -ize to -ise).

Thus, in that thread I hyperlinked above, Annie was trying to get the author to change from -ize to -se, and several PR'rs told her that -ise was perfectly acceptable and, in fact -ize is American English. However, she is persisting with it in Wilma's thread.

As I said, this type of thing should be dealt with at Editorial level.


Ref 'some of them have what would be considered extremely poor grammar and spelling (and sometimes this is due to fast typing...'

Well, the Guidelines say that Entries should not be put into PR until the author thinks it is complete (and, I interpret, accurate). I see far too many Entries submitted to PR that are blatantly not complete (i.e, should have gone into Writing Workshop) or have not been spell-checked. (I agree that the dyslexia issue is a special case)

Again, stand by the fact that spelling and punctuation problems should be left to the Sub Editors. They earned the badge for that purpose, let them use it.

<>

*sigh*

That is wrong.
I was trying to get the spelling to be changed from -ise to -ize, which is the _correct_ English spelling in those cases.

But I'm sick of it.
In future I won't correct anyone's spellings.

So if anymore things like this happen:
F47997?thread=1734255 and F47997?thread=2003536 (same entry when it hit the front page)
I won't feel in any way responsible.

Aniie<<Thus, in that thread I hyperlinked above, Annie was trying to get the author to change from -ize to -ise,

I meant this to say 'from -ise to -ize'.

The thing is, wee're both utterly convinced we're right. You, because of you're OED, me 'coz of my 'Practical English Language', by Michael Swan.

For this reason I firmly believe that there is little place for correction of spellings in PR, except for obvious typos.
It should be a job for the sub-eds.

I've seen far too many instances where an author has changed a spelling, then changed it back again, then again.... because of the differing opinions of PR'rs, who all think they know best as to what the'preferred format' is.

And all the convos concerning these are distracting from the main content of the Entry.

"It should be a job for the sub-eds"

I have gotten a little paranoid about letting any errors slip through PR after that debacle above.
That was obviously "left for the sub-ed" who didn't do the job, it didn't get a "final polish" from the eds and the result was...an entry full of errors on the FP. Am I the only Researcher who takes pride in the polished entries?

But as so many of my fellow peers are on my case I will back off, over and out.

'Am I the only Researcher who takes pride in the polished entries?'.

Well, no; 'coz I also take pride in my final 'polished' Entries. I frequently use EF to get minor glitches put right. In fact, quite recently a glitch appeared in sub-editing/Editing, which hadn't been there at the time it left PR

F1897336?thread=665095&skip=60&show=20

Yet another.

I am losing faith in the system -

Editorial Note: This conversation has been moved from 'Somewhere in England...' to 'The Nearly but Not Quite Official Peer Review Discussion Forum'.

yes, but recently when I was throwing a wobbler about PR (on Annie's space I think,I'm not sure now - annie can you help?) someone (could have been Gnomon or Skankyrich) came over and pointed out that since thre are very few eds, the sub-eds are very busy and it had been agreed that the PR process would do as much work as possible on the style as well as the content.

I could be remembering this wrongly.

But I also think that we should be concentrating on the content in PR. Then, if it's the only way to get an entry picked, we could/should go through spelling/punctuation/grammar and GuideML.

Personally, I think PR is for content only, and that the writer should be largely of the opinion (genuinely) that when they put it in PR that it is ready to go.

Perhaps we need to promote the Writing Workshop a bit more? and/or be a bit rutheless about getting things taken out of PR and put in there (pretty much as the scouts do with getting things out of PR and into the Flea Market)

I agree with promoting the Writing Workshop more, but there are a few flaws. Let's have a look at a potential process...

You write an Entry you think is worthy of EG inclusion. So you submit it to the Writing Workshop for a bit. It languishes in there with only a few commetns as it seems the Writing Workshop is not viewed as regularly as PR.

3 weeks later you put it in to PR to see if you get any interest there. The usual PR things happen. 3 weeks later it gets picked. Then another 3 weeks later it's edited. Then another 3 weeks later it's in the EG and Front Paged.

Awfully long process isn't it?

The way PR is working at the moment, we could very well do away with the Writing Workshop and have Peer Review as the Workshop that irons out all the faults before EG inclusion...

But then, because Peer Reviewers are so used to doing the bulk of the Editing, there's no distinguishing between newcomers to PR and the regulars. Everyone gets tarred with the same brush as such and you get the same animosity about PR as there seems to be with some new potential EG Entry writers...

It's a bit of a Catch-22, but that's why I wanted to create the Peer Review Discussion Forum, so we can flesh out these concerns/ideas!

Looks like it's working nicely!

Great idea Sho

I have my moments!
? I think we're going to need it!

hmmm,

In order to make an omelette...yada yada

I'll bake a and brew some ...

ok, so here's an example of an entry which is to all intents and purposes, finished (as far as the author is concerned) All that (according to PR) needs to be done is to put the headers in. the Author obviously hasn't got a lot of time to do this, so this means tha an entry which was put in PR on 30th July 2005 is still there and not leaving any time soon. http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/classic/F48874?thread=721922&latest=1 It's the Katherine Ann Porter one. What's the procedure here? As far as I'm concerned if it's only a matter of style, the sub-eds could do it. But then, the author hasn't been back to say "ok, I think it's ready"

I gave up when I started running again. so if you don't mind I'll have .

please. Thanks.
I though PR was supposed to make an entry presentable for submission. Something with terrible grammar is not submittable. And some of that grammar is awful. I'm not talking "-ise" matters of commas. I mean, like fragments, disagreeing pronouns, etc.

need one of these.

you're right Leo, I get a bit peeved when I see silly little grammatical points being referred to in PR, like a fullstop outside of a footnote or the like. These issues can and should be rectified by a Sub Editor. It's content that matters after all, and if there are major grammatical or punctuation gaffs, sure highlight them. But missing commas or spaces between words that need closing...hmmm.

But then, a proper job is one that's done thoroughly...

ahh, me

Well, in some of your PR entries I made corrections to sentence structure for purposes of clarity or flow. Is that something I should have left to subs?