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

I don't know if this is the way it always works, or if Mikey did things a bit unconventionally, but when she finished the sub-edits with my University project, I had to paste them into my pages. That meant that I had an opportunity to look over all of the changes. I took the edited versions, looked them over for typos that had slipped her notice, made a minor tweak here and there to things that I had written but she had left untouched, and sent off the result. In this way, I had nothing but satisfaction for the finished product.

This would be a fairly awful way to deal with most articles, since you could have writers that simply undo everything the editor did. But it will work for a collaborative environment like the University. I am now a dedicated University man. I'll probably send only minor pieces through PR from now on.

You had to mention the Atheism article, didn't you? With the setup in place and the joke removed, even Douglas Adams hated the result. Sooner or later, I'm going to have to write an article that replaces that thing.

The joy of sub-ed'ing for Uni projects is that it's a collaborative process. Since I was working with authors that I knew and trusted (Colonel Sellers and Jimi X), I had no problem just giving them the text/guideML of my edits and letting them look it over, make any necessary changes, and paste it in. If I was working with authors I didn't know at all, I might have just emailed the text into the house editors like we do with normal guide entries.

BTW, Colonel Sellers -- I'm working on the update project now with Jimi X. Want the "atheism" entry to be my first update?


Mikey

Thanks for the offer. When I get around to it, I'll let you know. I've got some other things I'm working on at the moment, so it's a back-burner issue.

Well, everybody, judging by what you lot have said, uni's the way for me.

I just found a very nice note from John-the-GURUdener, who is sub-ed for 'Declining English'. I'd put in a longish italicised beg, that the sub-ed please work with me on the article, rather than merely work on the article. He said he would do, and I am feeling very heartened, as I know and trust him to be literate, and not to fold, spindle, or mutilate something upon which I expended considerable effort. It is good to know that (as the Internal kids rephrased it) 'you can't always get what you want, but if you cry sometimes, you can get what you need'.

The Towers fixed the outright errors in the recipe, so that leaves me with no complaints. What shall I ever do with my time?

Heave at those who take out halves of jokes?

Arpeggio, who has removed the Cordwayner Byrd ref from her name and is moving on, for LeKZ

Since it's mentioned, and we have appropriate people around here...

Why do we need an update team? Why not allow people to create an entry which is the updated version of an existing entry, and submit it to Peer Review (or an "Update Peer Review") in the normal way? What am I missing which makes it different?

Good question, Lucinda.

Mikey, any explanations?

Arpeggio, for LeKZ

I'm sure Jimi X or the powers that be could explain this more lucidly than I, but here are some points to ponder:

1) As is, we just barely get enough new entries via the Peer Review/scouts/subeditor scheme to keep putting up 5 new entries Monday-Friday. If we added updates to the process, the number of new entries processed would likely slip.

2) Adding any new facets to either Peer Review or the Scouts/Subed schemes would require increased time from the in-house staff. They are already stretched incredibly thin as it is.

3) If allowed everyone to post to Peer Review every time they had an update on something, the updates could rather quickly overwhelm the new material. After all, it's considerably easier to make a few updates to someone else's work than it is to research and write your own from scratch. Without *new* entries on *new* topics on a daily basis, the guide would quickly stagnate.

Check out the Update HQ @ http://www.bbc.co.uk/h2g2/guide/A496451 for more info.

Hope this helps 'splain a little. I have brain fry at the moment.


Mikey

Makes sense...

Thank you Mikey.


Arpeggio, for LeKZ

Would you take a peek at http://www.bbc.co.uk/h2g2/guide/A580600 and throw out some ideas/info/thoughts comments? This is a very rough rough draught of about 3/4 of an article. Perhaps we could collaborate, if you feel like it?

Thanks,
A/L

OK -- I will get to it as soon as I can, and post some comments in a thread on the entry, OK? I'd definitely be interested in collaborating with you.

Thanks for thinking of me!


Mikey

Super - no rush!

Mikey

OK, I've put some comments in there now. Let me know what you think.

mikey

<-------long post warning --------->

Arpeggio said elsewhere that it might be helpful for her if I do comment on the trivialities of the bits where she and beeline disagree on issues of style and such things, so here I am. This is of course a personal opinion, shaped by where I was brought up and suchlike, with no official weight behind it. Disclaimers apply. Non-Italics only.

-------

"it can be made in virtually any flavour one wants"
vs
"you can make it in virtually any flavour"

Myself, I would go for the latter phrasing, which is less formal, and more fluid. And "you" rather than "one" is far better in my eyes.

------
"Full-fat cream cheese (not the kind with herbs in, or the non-fat? kind which tastes sour)"
vs
"Full-fat cream cheese (not non-fat, which tastes sour, nor the kind with herbs in)"

I prefer not...nor to not...or, but I'm not sure about the reordering: I think it works equally well both ways.

------
8oz :- yeah, that is a little non-metric, isn't it?

mug-full :- allegedly there is a hyphen-freak somewhere in h2g2, so we tend to get hyphenation where there is an option, which I'm all in favour of. See http://www.h2g2.com/subeditors-style

begin! :- I like it with the exclamation mark - it serves to emphasise the break between the listing of ingredients and the recipe itself.

do not boil :- because contractions have been routinely used, the use of the uncontracted "do not" serves to emphasise the instruction without need of italics. I think it's fine as is.

add chocolate :- I think that's fine as is. It's clear from the note that it is referring to sprinkling in bits of chocolate, so I'd leave it as is purely for conciseness.

-----
"heat your mixture up too quickly"

I think the use of "your" is fine here - the plain English reading is apparent, and will be what most people on a worldwide basis will read it as. The dialect reading has pretty much the same meaning, so nobody will get confused. So I don't mind "your" in this case. Obviously, this is unimportant, as the sentence has been rewritten anyway for other reasons.

-----
"finally boils"

Well, it implies to me that the water will take longer to boil than you might expect beause of the double-boiler. If that's accurate, I'd leave "finally" in, otherwise I'd take it out.

-----
"Now for the tricky bit!"

I like this as is. It's idiomatic, and entirely in the style of a recipe, and it conveys the need for care without scaring the reader off even attempting it. I'd keep it.

"have a tendency to" :- yeah, "have a way of getting" would be interpreted as "have a tendency to get" in the UK. Myself, I'd use "tend to get" rather than "have a tendency to get", because the latter just feels over-wordy, but that's taste. Slightly misleading, but no worse than the American original...

"after chilling" :- I suppose a time would be nice, but to be honest, if you can't tell when something is chilled, you can't cook this recipe anyway...

-----

"Commercial ice cream often has as much as two-thirds air in, whereas your home made ice creams are a little more dense. On the other hand, air is reasonably soft, even when frozen..."
vs
"Commercial ice cream containers often have as much as two-thirds air in, and air is reasonably soft, even when frozen. Home made ice creams are much denser, so they must be thawed."

I don't think 'containers' is really a good idea - that makes me think that the plastic they make the tubs of has 2/3 air in it. In this case, I think "your" was indeed a problem. "more dense" vs "denser" - in general I'd use "denser", but "a little more dense" is better for me than "a little denser". The latter makes me wonder what a "denser" might be, and whether it's like a condenser or a dancer. Perhaps those things which turn cars into cubes might be called densers?

<--this concludes the pedantry-->

Don't forget to buy your special issue denser! five pound a pair, hand-made in Germany, hand-stolen in Coventry. If we don't sell it, it hasn't been nicked yet. Roll up, ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls! See the denser make things dense. Just apply it repeatedly to your target's skull and watch them become so dense they can't remember how to stand up. Comes with a complimentary clue-by-four to knock clues back into them if you overuse the denser. Remember, big sticks with a nail in them aren't for christmas, they're for use the whole year round!

The main reasons we don't allow updating (yet) via either Peer Review or an Updating Peer Review are:

* We do not have the resources in-house to manage such a scheme, and because Edited Entries are understandably not editable except by the staff, we would have to be involved. You'll be delighted to know that creating some kind of updating scheme - details as yet undecided - is up near the top of the to-do list as soon as the team is big enough to cope. Hopefully that will be soon... ish.

* We also don't support a proper superseding system - ie a version history for entries, so that when you look at an entry, you can easily see that there's a later, more up-to-date version available. Do we implement such a system, or simply edit in situ, thus losing version history? Good question, but if we need a versioning system, then we need to write one.

In the meantime, Jimi's doing his (completely voluntary) updating scheme, and Researchers can post corrections to the Forums - including links to entries that they've written that update the current Edited Guide.

Mark the Hyphen Freak