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

This is an extract from an email detailing scouting entries not in Peer Review from the scouts email group, and is written by Mark himself. Apologies if he's already drawn your attention to this, or if you're getting heartily sick of all this.

FOR ENTRIES THAT ARE READY FOR THE SUBS
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If you find an entry that is great as it is, and it doesn't need much work (apart from subbing) to go into the Edited Guide, then:

* Leave a message on the author's Personal Space like this (but feel free to use your own wording, of course):

Hi X.

I've just come across your entry A123456 on XXXX and I think it's great. As a Scout it's my job to find the best entries in the Guide and to put them into the Peer Review system (at http://www.h2g2.com/PeerReview) and I'd love to put yours forward.

If you're still working on this entry, could you let me know as soon as possible, so I can hold off until the entry is ready? If I don't hear from you in a week, I'll assume that it's OK to recommend your entry for inclusion in the Edited Guide.

Thanks for your time!

* If they respond, act accordingly - it's their work, after all.

* If they don't respond within a week, then put it in Peer Review anyway.

LOL! That is so exactly right...in fact, I've recieved several emails from Peta and Anna (re: THE entry), and they both said pretty much the same thing. It was all very polite and "you should be happy to be contributing to the Guide in any way, shape or form you can".

One would hope that the Guide isn't so desperate for entries that they're resorting to ganking abandoned/ half-finished/ un-author-edited entries for bulk. I mean, crimitey, they could go to any ol' college around town and "hire" on english student interns to provide filler. The real problem is the copyright loophole... h2g2 can do pretty much anything they want with what we write. But when respect isn't given to what I write, it makes me not want to contribute to this anymore.

I'm still a little sore about the whole thing, yeah. (Can ya tell?!? lol) I'll get over it. I think what makes me most upset is that I know Peta and Mark personally...I like them lots... I just don't like this new detatched attitude h2g2 has acquired. Maybe it'll loosen up--who knows.

Thanks for hanging out in my corner of the ring on this issue, anyhoo. I'll bet that if enough Scouts felt the same on this issue, there'd be little fear of this happening again.