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

I had a couple of questions about editing and the guide style and this entry http://www.h2g2.com/A401914 kind of crystallized them. I thought that since you were a sub-editor and had seen 1000 times more entries than me, you would be able to answer them.

I understand that the Guide is made up of thousands of entries from all over the world on pretty much any subject. What is the minimum amount of information necessary to create a Guide entry? I mean, you could have an entry on light bulbs, say, that just said that light bulbs screw into sockets and give off light, that they are available at hardware and dry-goods stores, and that colored ones are also for sale. But you could also have a historical section that talked about the development of the light bulb, a section that explained how incandescent light is produced, a section that listed some of the more widely available light bulbs, and then a section that talked about some other uses for light bulbs. I would be more appreciative of an entry like the latter that seemed to offer more hooks for readers and other researchers to attach their own experiences.

Frankly, I was kind of disappointed in the Hostess Fruit Pies entry, most especially by the praise of the Hostess snack food company at the end. The product merits praise, yes, but there is no Hostess company; the brand name is owned by Interstate Bakeries Corp., which also makes a lot of similar sugary baked snacks. A lot of the comments were very general and didn't seem to be based on any kind of factual information - like the list of available flavors. The entry didn't even provide a summary of facts from the fruit-pie package, like the weight of each pie or the nutritional information.

I was hoping that the pie entry would have these kinds of details, but it didn't and I was a little disappointed. In my ideal world, each Guide entry is a wealth of information on a particular subject, written by someone who has done some research on it. I thought that there were probably more things to say about fruit pies, and that this entry just didn't include them.

Thanks for hearing me out.