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

There's a lot of amateurish, incompetent, or downright incorrect stuff online. Where do you yourself go to for quality content?

That's the point of this place, innit?

OK, we're amateurs, but we have a review process to ensure that the stuff is at least factually correct and interesting to read.

But we've harldy covered a speck of dust in the galaxy of subjects out there to write about, so. yes, we need to turn to other places.

I think there are two types of subject out there - populist and academic. If I want to know anything to do with popular culture, then crowd-sourced sites like Wikipedia are pretty good. And if they're inaccurate, then caveat lector - it was only popular culture I was looking for, after all. It'll change tomorrow.

For academic stuff, I prefer print-published books. I used to work for a print-publisher, and know the rigour that goes into the review process. You can't just hit the delete key to remove things on the bookshelf.

Many public library networks make quality websites available to their patrons. College and University libraries probably do this as well, but once you are out of school they are no longer available, for he most part.

It really depends what you mean by 'quality' doesn't it? And I assume here that you mean good, not poor quality. The term 'quality' alone is meaningless. It is a subjective thing.

If you think a man trying to eat breakfast cereal with electrodes attached to his arm is 'quality' then it's here:-

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r5WDpK9Ezu8

PP.

Quality is not meaningless, it is merely indefinable. It precedes our attempts to define it. "We know it when we see it."

If you haven't read it, I recommend Robert Pirsig's _Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance_. Pirsig tried to define quality and it led him to be institutionalized for a while.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pirsig%27s_metaphysics_of_Quality

Yes, there are lots of adjectives you could apply to quality, depending on what you're looking for at that time.

In manufacturing industry and the like, quality is reduced to whether or not something meets the specification. It makes it very easy to measure.

Now if only we knew how to specify things...

People have tried to get me to read Pirsig's book, and I tried, but I couldn't really get into it. There are many other books that people think are important to read, and I've been able to get through them for the most part.

depends what sort of stuff our looking at really; quality is ... quantitive, or at least, related to the level of confedence you want it to have, dependant on the importance etc, of it to you.... 'Fix my computer ' stuff, I@m fairly gun ho about so long as it looks a relatively saine potential solution and I can see it, or something very simular, on a few teacy sites, I'll just try it, but, anything medical or sciency proper, I only use peer reviewe papers, or stuff on sort of offical sites, which is written by soemone who's more normally lan accademic publisihing peer reviewed stuff, who's done some more 'general' writing, for the general consumption market, as it were... - e.G., looking at stuf on NhS sites, or soemthing, even then, I'm dubious unlesss I see it referencing back to peer revieweed papers... but... kinda depends why your reading it really, I guess....

Thanks, 2Legs.

Science and Literature are two different balls of wax, metaphorically speaking. I doubt that Shakespeare and Dickens had to prove that their characters met a standard of scientific logic. Scientists might write beautiful prose, but if their theories are unprovable no one is going to care very much.

oh... exactly... and, for some strange reason; I guess given all the hours... hudrends of hours, I spent reading proper science, scientific papers, and writing science stuff, back in my accademic days, just acclimitised me to it; I can't actually read more general science stuff properly; it just doesn't soak into my brain!; which is very odd... specially considering how under powered my brain's been recently due to... various ailments - i was struggling to be able to think how to make a sinple cheese sandwich; just became cognatively so difficult to do!; yet could soak up paper after paper, of science stuff, and stats... most odd! now the former has got easier, and the latter, probaly gotten even easier too

Where is the content of what? The contents of a packet of dehydrated soup?

The word "quality" is one thing, but the noun "content" is even more amusing.

What do you write? CONTENT!
When do you write it? NOW!