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

So tell me, why do you pick nits?

It's the same school of though of monkeys using bugs as currency.

That's lunacy

I'm afraid that doesn't make any sense to me. Could you put it another way? I am genuinely perplexed and interested.

Exactly. Lunacy.

I nitpick mostly because finding errors in edited entries bothers me

That's what I want to know. Why does it bother you? What do you think will happen if a bracket that has been missing for six months continues to be missing?

I'm not saying it really improved the quality of the guide very much, but leaving those things in looks somewhat unprofessional. Not that we're very professional though...

A missing bracket is my worst though, I've reported bigger stuff a more often.

Unprofessional? Have you noticed how that word is used to put people on the defensive without coming up with a real argument. Teachers want shorter working hours - don't ask why, don't explain why this isn't possible, just accuse them of being unprofessional.

Are you arguing that professions or professionals comparable to h2g2 have no typos in their documentation? Is the success of Penguin Books or Gollanz dependent on their publications being entirely free of spelling errors? Will the Times newspaper's reputation be harmed by a missing bracket?

Is nit picking really about h2g2 or is it about the nit pickers themselves? How do you feel when you find a nit? How do you feel when an Italic fixes a nit you have found?

When an italic fixes a typo it provides the glow of things in their right place in the universe - similar to picking up a paperclip by the photocopier and putting it in the paperclip tray.

Admittedly it doesn't change the world in any significant manner, but in some small way has altruistically made the world a better place, with no thought to small inconvenience of pointing out the perceived error or misplaced clip.

Possibly: League Of Obsessive Nitpickers

Pimms (LOON)

But in this case the nit picker is not picking up the paperclip. They're expecting someone else to interrupt their planned work to pick up said paperclip.

Who benefits? What are the cumulative effects of multiple, random paperclip events?

I'm sure if LOONies could correct the errors themselves they would (as in Wikipaedia).

Multiple 'tidying' events should make the world a tidier place, which reduces cognitive dissonance, thus making people calmer and happier (think of the differences between entering a tidy room and a chaotic one - it is easier for the mind to make sense of the information it is receiving, so one is less stressed by the environment).

Errors in entries that can be noticed, no matter how small, interrupt the flow of understanding, and marginally (and unnecessarily) increase the stress of reading. LOONies are altruists helping all researchers by highlighting the flaws.

Pimms
(words - I don't say sense - fall from my mind, like milk from a spoon)

That's an interesting attempt at rationalising behaviours that benefit nit pickers by imagining that they benefit everyone else.

What if it turns out that the levels of anxiety you feel when you see a nit turns out to be unusually high?

I don't find that typos and small error of punctuation increase my stress levels at all. Which one of us is more representative of the population at large?

One missing bracket unprofessional? No. But after a series of them, it does start to look bad. I still say that the bracket was pretty stupid, it was my worst one, but words like 'om' or 'thier' appear and I think that's worth reporting

I think you're drawing way too much into this. I don't think that's there's a pshycological issue, which you seem to be implying

Me - well actually, you are probably more representative - but that doesn't make your stance more admirable than mine.

Pimms
(at the centre of an egocentric universe)

I believe that well-written text free of all typographical errors is an aid to more effective communication, even if, as you rightly point out, small errors appear to have a minor, even subliminal, effect on most people's comprehension.

It behoves those who spot the impedimentia to make some effort to smooth the way for those people (perhaps everyone) who would benefit (even slightly) from its removal.

Do you ever pick up litter that someone else has dropped?

I'm not asking everyone to become a LOONie, just to respect the marginally valuable task they perform (like telephone sanitisers)

Quite. That was better than I could have put it!

But what could be achieved with the Italic time currently used up paperclip moving?

Is the perceived marginal value (and it is *very* marginal, isn't it?) not going to be easily outweighed by more forward looking projects?

There are other paperclips. Without them, would we already have the UG? Would we be closer to providing Community Art for clubs and societies?

And is it a psychological issue? Possibly. It strikes me that some people get quite addicted to nit picking. Could this be because they get some sort of psychological reward from the process?

That's like saying 'if we take away the ACE volunteers, the italics will pay more attention to everything else'. Editorial Feedback is a necessity, as is pointing out errors

I don't get a pshycological reward.

And we wouldn't have the UG, because we're not waiting on italic input anymore

(UG Editor)

You appear to be arguing that the ACEs *make* extra work for the Italics. I would have thought the opposite was true. Surely the ACEs were set up so that the Editors wouldn't have to spend their time meeting and greeting.

This is not the point. Okay, I made a poor example. How about 'let's stop greeting people' and that would create less work

That's still a poor example. Can you think of one where the work is being imposed. There's a difference between choosing to tidy the paperclips and being told to do it.