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

What do you suggest? Older entries need a lot more than a grammatical check.

In reply to Rudest Elf's comment:

"
It's true to say that there are one or two little annoyances, but we wouldn't still be here if it were that bad.

No, the real elephant in the room is the current state of the Edited/Approved Guide. "


You were given the opportunity to assist, when you were given Curator's permissions. It was apparent that you had no desire to use these permissions and your badge was subsequently removed.


It is so sad to hear the broken record of 'How bad the Guide is' continually voiced by you RE. How I wish that this was backed up by some helpful actions on your part.

I am not prepared to see you diss those who have found the time to help.


I do thank those magnificently helpful people who continue to find and fix problems in Edited Entries, and also to read our backlog and give feedback on our content.

"Older entries need a lot more than a grammatical check." You're telling me?

"You were given the opportunity to assist, when you were given Curator's permissions. It was apparent that you had no desire to use these permissions and your badge was subsequently removed." "How I wish that this was backed up by some helpful actions on your part."

That is absolute nonsense. Ask the good folks at Editorial Feedback if you're not willing to look through my conversations. In fact, I'm prepared to bet that no one has made more effort than I have to remove typos, poor grammar, etc, and to highlight on numerous occasions the sad state of the Guide. Nothing changes.

I have reported on hundreds of Edited Entries, and taken a look at many more links. I stopped when I realised that cleaning up the Guide is not considered to be a high enough priority.....and no one else was doing much (if anything) about it.

There are some brilliant Entries. Sadly, they are islands in a sea of dross. Read a few, follow a few links, and you will see.

So what do you suggest?

I suggest the Guide Editors come up with a plan to go through the Guide systematically - removing the worst entries, and making every effort possible to update, detypofy and clean up the rest.

This will take time. We need to start now if we want a Guide we (ok, I ) can honestly be proud of.



Ps I won't continue to bore everyone by mentioning this again.... No promises, but.

OK, that's 10,000 entries. How long do you reckon on average to fix each one?

http://www.singlegrain.com/blog/the-differences-between-successful-websites-and-failed-websites/


Didja ever notice how many of the most successful
interwebby thingies have an oo-oo sound in the name.

Hootoo.
Yahoo-oo.
Goo-oogle.
Lulu.


~jwf~

Please feel free to revive the 'Guide Revised' project. U14449759 We made a valiant attempt to go through each and every EGE.* Of course we are aware of the size of the problem, but to state that most of our EGEs are a 'sea of dross' is rather a nasty remark to make, Rudest Elf.

I say again, we need to have positivity and helpfulness - not criticism; and dare I mention an eeny-weeny bit of gratitude or even a little awareness and recognition of all the work** the volunteers do?

**without which there would be no h2g2, and no forum within which to moan.

*The Guide Revised began when we were still under the ownership of the BBC, since then much volunteer time has been used actually saving the site.

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You had the power to fix the issues. You didn't. Your license to complain is withdrawn.

Hi
Just popping in to say that it is those first "fillers" that endeared me and some of my friends to the site. So Dopadish, so silly, so je ne c'est quoi, que'lque chose que'lque chose humbly unassuming.

And, by the way, what happened to the Earth entry which had as its sole content: Mostly Harmless

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On de-typofying older entries of accumulated quantum fluctuation errors, more to the point would be an instant backup made of every approved entry as soon as posted.

You had the curators badge, and with that came the actual power to correct issues.
I know you had it, because I removed it.

The site almost always works well for me - perhaps Whiskey has a Trojan Elephant.

The OED defines flake as "portion of ignited matter thrown off"

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Mostly harmless, indeed.
There is sometimes an unnecessary compulsion to make
the Guide into a Wikipedia. Polite, proper, accurate.

And always a pushback from those who remember that
the Guide portrayed in the books was something else.
The Mark Two especially.

Cosmic absurdity versus academic credentials.
(Though I confess to seeing little distinction.)

Hopefullly we will continue along these parallel paths
in peace and harmony. It is where the two visions inter-
sect and inter-act that we get the true bifocus that gives
us a clearer picture of the nature of the universe and our
place in it.

~jwf~

That comment Milla is shocking

I don't see why - there was no secret made of the fact that people's volunteer badges were removed if they were no longer active in the scheme. It happened me, too, and I have no problem with that. When someone retires they don't keep wearing their uniform from work.

Imagine again. Sub-editors correct for typographical errors, house style and Guide-ML. It generally takes a few hours to sub-edit an entry, but when you get involved in rewriting sections of it, and that inevitably involves re-researching it, well, frankly it can take far longer than the entry took to write in the first place. On a couple of occasions I've spent many weeks struggling with content issues on an entry, only to hand it back as a lost cause. I'd happily have rewritten them from scratch, but I can't do that - it's the author's work.

It's not a sub-editor job. It's one for researchers to do, and it would be just as quick to write each one from scratch. We'd also guarantee that every entry is up to date and peer-reviewed properly.

So, how long would it take to update 10,000 entries - 13 years worth? My guess is another 13 years. But the people to do it aren't here - they're out there.