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

You know, there's rarely a day passes that you don't make me giggle, B'Elana, bless you!

OK I have tinkered with that "code" (or markup language, it's probably the same thing to me) does it look better now Alex?

So as not to upset Alex and Skanky, then, Jimster - can you please remove my Field Researcher badge. I'll submit a proper project and earn it in their eyes.

I aim to please, GB

Gnomon, this is not about you and your Field Researcher badge, Rich said very clearly that he thinks you deserve it; it's rather about how to handle the university project and the awarding of the said badge in the future, and you've somehow got 'in the line of fire', if I may say so.
I agree with Rich, that if the badge is rewarded retrospectively , I start wondering why anybody should want to go through the hassle of setting up a project page, advertising the project and looking for other researchers to join in, searching for a sub-editor, and being in charge of five + entries. If it is rewarded retrospectively,people really could get ideas ( e.g. I have four entries which could be categorised as don't know, something like: typical things in south-west Germany )Just another one and bingo ? That can't be it, and no, don't worry,I don't intend to even try doing this.

Nevertheless, my badge was awarded retrospectively, even though I didn't produce a project by Rich's definition. I'm the only one so far to have got one in these circumstances, so I think it is about me and my badge.

Thank you, Gnomon; that's very (g?)noble of you

I did say Gnomon deserved it, Bel, but I was drunk and fluffy at 3am on a Sunday, and was quite embarrassed when retracting it back in post 19. Deserving something and actually getting it are two different things; take the statement 'I deserve a pay rise'!

Apart from that Bel, I absolutely agree with you

Not specifically you, Gnomon; but the awarding of badges restrospectively for Entries on a theme. It's not personal

I know it's not personal.

Now everyone have a big hug...

"The University was originally designed as a way that people could collaborate. If there was a topic that required 10 entries, 10 different researchers could contribute an entry each and each would get a Field Researcher badge."

If I could contradict this, sorry. The way the Uni was set up originally was that only the organiser got a badge. Any Researcher contributing entries did not get the badge - so when I did my Paris project, Blues Shark and IanG didn't get a badge despite writing entries for the project. The draw of the Uni in those days was that not only would the entries be on the Front Page for an entire week, but that our names got on there as well. Also avoiding PR as well was a huge relief for a lot of people, although that's not why I wrote my entries.

The Field Researcher badge was extremely rare at one point, only very few people had one. I don't know how many there are with one now.

The decision to be made now is whether the badge is what the Uni is all about, or if it's about the entries. I doubt I'd write a project now, because you get less time on the Front Page, so I can't really see what the benefit is to the author to work on that many entries at once, unless the badge is the reward. From what I can remember, there were badges given out when the Uni was closed because people had put some 'themed' entries through PR, so the argument that it's not fair if the Uni was closed doesn't really hold water.

Are we trying to make the badges the thing to work for (the reward as mentioned above) - in which case no-one should get one just for writing on the same subject over time, but should write all the entries all at once so they appear either together, or very close together. Or are we encouraging the writing of entries, in which case it doesn't really matter if they are awarded later on, as long as there are five of the same subject, in which case how 'tight' does the subject have to be? I've written entries about dogs, but I can't see that they are the 'same' subject because they are all very different.

It's still only the project organiser who gets the badge, although (s)he can suggest that somebody else who has significantly worked on all the (min.) five entries gets a badge, too. I have no idea if this is done, though, and how often it occurs. I think the field researcher badge is still rather rare, I've only seen it on few PSs, and it took me a while to find out what it was for

Sorry if I got that wrong about the number of entries needed to get a badge in the past.

I know that I didn't approve of the original University because entries didn't go through Peer Review, which was against the spirit of h2g2 in my opinion, so I never submitted anything into it.

When the new University came out, I was delighted to see that all entries have to go through Peer Review, so I still get the chance to tear them to shreds/improve their content dramatically. But the big advantage of the university, in my opinion, was that you could write entries that were linked together, which was basically impossible any other way in the past.

Now that the curators can add links between entries, it is possible to make joined entries without any need for the University.

That's only my perspective. I'm sure the Eds have a different view.

I've only just found this thread, and perhaps I should have a while ago

As the first contributor to the renewed University, I was intrigued to see retrospective Field Researcher badges given to Researcher's who had more than five Entries on a particular subject in the Front Page queue, especially when I had requested to add an Entry to a Uni Project I was in the process of doing about Forgotten Heroines in the past, and was quite rigidly told NO.

But that's a moot point really, just a little gripe on my part. As for the badges business, well it seems to me we can just add anything here and there and give out badges - which I don't see as the point of the site. Sure I like getting badges, but I don't write purely to receive them. I write (and research thank you) about things I am interested in, have knowledge of and am passionate about, much like every one else contributing to the EG, I would hope.

Anyway, back to the Uni.

I feel that the renewed Uni served a purpose of getting people to write more Entries for the EG, and that was all. There was incentive of a badge. It's nice to see the more prolific writers amongst us starting Uni Projects, but hopefully the creases can be ironed out properly.

And this, I feel, is rather a large fold. Get it right. If the goal posts keep moving then people are going to take their ball and play elsewhere.

The Researchers have spoken. The Editors seem oddly quiet...

I think we've scared them off. They'll come back out of their sett when they feel less threatened...

*leaves by burrow*

They still haven't taken back Gnomon's badge. I think they should, not out of any particular policy on the University, but because Gnomon is offering to do a proper Uni project to get it back. How can anyone talk about the importance of building the Guide and turn that offer down? </>

I'll do the project to earn the badge whether they take the badge back or not.

As the second contributor (and first sub-editor) to the new University, I was rather surprised by the enormous amount of work that went into both mine and Matt's projects. When I completed that work in both cases I was working against a sort of deadline (even though for my project I kept moving it ahead) and following rigidly all the Uni steps. I don't entirely think it's fair that someone should be accorded a badge for not doing all the work that I did, and that, for example, Matt has done.

On the other hand, we can look at individual cases all we want, and say, wow, such-and-such a Researcher has made an awesome contribution to the EG, he or she should be honoured in some way. But he or she should be honoured with a badge that is deserved - like the '25 entries' ones for when you do finally write that many. When work is drawn out over a period of time, and the Researcher is not given the task of drawing the entries to a closer state of completion, finding their own sub-ed, etc, it's really not quite as enormous a task as a Uni project is.

I don't like seeing badges undervalued by there being more and more of them, but maybe a different way of recognising our most dedicated non-Uni-project-in-the-strictest-sense Researchers could be invented.

Haven't seen you around in a while echo. Back from Internet-less land, eh?

A well-reasoned and well-phrased comment, as usual.

TRiG.