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

Why is it that everyone else gets a greeting from an ACE and I haven't yet. Might I suggest that if you're greeting people with roughly the same content every time that you create a text block so you don't (not only you Bob) make typing mistakes and to save the work, especially thinking what to put.

Sorry I go on at everyone about spelling and typing mistakes - that's the secretary in me coming out. A perfectionist I am not. Otherwise.

So - who are the elite, because I am sure I don't give the impression of being adept at all this - I've got no fiddly bits on my home page. But nobody has come to my aid, or even said hello.

And why are threads just removed from my page without my asking? I still had things to say on some subjects and on sauntering through other peoples' homes I find conversations that I had joined in at one point and would like to continue but they don't appear in my list any more.

I realise this site must be absolutely overloaded by now and you have to chuck out some rubbish, but if a conversation is still continuing, shouldn't all participants be informed?

Shouldn't there just be a simple rule, if a forum hasn't been added to for the last three weeks, it should be sorted through for information useful to the guide, converted into an entry (like the "70's" project) and the rest discarded.

Oops sorry, I should have put my glasses on. I have noticed that you have a line "click here for further postings" Take it back. If you drop in I'll bake you a cake

Hi TC - thanks for your note. Reasons for nobody popping in to say "Hi!":

The earlier version of the Guide only flagged new users in the "Who's on line" area for one day - if someone didn't drop in on that day there was no way we could easily find out if you were new on subsequent days. This has now been extended to a week.

Until a new researcher puts something on their home page, we can't leave a message for them, unless they have been contributing to forums. ( I know the fora/forums argument and refuse to change)

In your particular case, you seemed to have settled in well, and I guess that most of us assumed that either you'd been around for ages, or that someone else had welcomed you.

I will drop a note to the Community Editor to get the ACEs to be more vigilant in future! Now that there are more of us, there should be fewer people left welcomeless in future.

Regarding having a standard welcoming text, I had considered that, but I really would rather redo it each time - even if the sense of the message is probably the same the wording will be different. Otherwise we could just have a machine to autamatically welcome people.

On spelling, grammar, etc - I share your thoughts - I used to proofread as part of a job years ago, and can pick out spelling mistakes just by scanning through a document. However, I reserve the right to be lazy and not check my own stuff!


Belatedly, welcome to the Guide, lots to do etc etc....

I look forward to my cake.

Postscript - in answer to your question "Who are the elite?", I consider that you all are!

Thanks.

Now I've chosen you to be my mentor, can you explain to me why I can't find a section on films, except by search? It is not included in the "recreation" part in the list on the start page and there is nothing else nearer. Only a few days ago H2G2 was calling for film reviews. A search of "film reviews" produces three. I know for sure that (over a week ago) there was a jolly good thread going on the film "Lola Rennt" which led to a conversation on dubbing films an the merits and faults thereof. Why chuck out a good conversation and why not at least save the film crit for the film crit section?

There are a few entries on films at http://www.h2g2.com/C8 - unfortunately they are indexed under the general heading of "Movies".

I will see what can be done to make "Films" an option for searching.

Re the forum on Lola Rennt - when sub-editors are working on articles submitted by researchers, they go through forums etc to see what can be added to the original article. However, the onus is on researchers to produce the article in the first place. At some time in the near future, there will be a process which involves people trawling through the Guide to pick up such items as the ones in the forum that you mentioned.

I will check out the Lola forum.


One of the interesting things about the Guide is the way it is run - the number of paid permanent staff is surprisingly small - a lot of work is done by volunteers -unpaid. All of the ACEs and sub-editors fall into the volunteer category. Because of the growth rate of the Guide, I am reasonably sure that fairly soon there will be another call for more volunteers to join the ACEs, sub-editors, or to act as researchers for projects as defined by the permanent staff. If you like it here you may want to get more involved by joining the unpaid team when the opportunity arises!

There are a few entries on films at http://www.h2g2.com/C8 - unfortunately they are indexed under the general heading of "Movies".

I will see what can be done to make "Films" an option for searching.

Re the forum on Lola Rennt - when sub-editors are working on articles submitted by researchers, they go through forums etc to see what can be added to the original article. However, the onus is on researchers to produce the article in the first place. At some time in the near future, there will be a process which involves people trawling through the Guide to pick up such items as the ones in the forum that you mentioned.

I will check out the Lola forum.


One of the interesting things about the Guide is the way it is run - the number of paid permanent staff is surprisingly small - a lot of work is done by volunteers -unpaid. All of the ACEs and sub-editors fall into the volunteer category. Because of the growth rate of the Guide, I am reasonably sure that fairly soon there will be another call for more volunteers to join the ACEs, sub-editors, or to act as researchers for projects as defined by the permanent staff. If you like it here you may want to get more involved by joining the unpaid team when the opportunity arises!

Hi TC - I don't know what happened yesterady when I searched for Films, today the search resulted in lots of entries! I think there may have been a couple of hiccups over the last couple of days.