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

I'd like to see more guide entries that focus on health issues. I think that's one area which has been dealt with in h2g2 before successfully, and I'm trying to create a hub of research and advice to further encourage that.

http://www.h2g2.com/A190676

Admittedly h2g2 can't be a substitute for seeing a doctor. That would be silly, but creating a hub filled with vital health information can only further expand h2g2.com's usefulness, and benefit everyone.

We do have a lot of material already in h2g2 about this, but we could use a lot more. So if anyone wants to participate either in the forums or by making their own guide entries on the topic, let me know.

Serious stuff only please, or ideally serious with a touch of humor and occasional silliness. Thanks.

Hey Zach, good idea!
Check out http://www.h2g2.com/A152957 for a pretty complete listing of diseases (bacterial and viral), if you know of any good ones, feel free to hook me up!

I am totally up for a health related area. By all means get to work on it. Medical will need a lot of assistance from categorisation which is why we have shied away from it a bit at this end.

Interestingly, one of the guys at TDV who does the graphics is, handily enough, a fully qualified registered doctor. So we can check out the facts quite easily this end. Why we have a fully qualified doctor doing graphics is slightly harder to understand, but there you go.

Two questions about health-related areas in H2G2:-

One: there are a lot of entries that are going to come out of chronic - not necessarily life-threatening - diseases. "Diabetes" is one example in which I have a particular interest, being diabetic. The example that's already there, though, probably would have been rejected under the guidelines we have at the moment. How and when will entries change in light of new information? A cure for diabetes, for example, could be just around the corner. How would we deal with rare and dying diseases like rabies and smallpox? What information would be worth preserving?

Two: "diseases" is a very broad term, and would probably include, in popular terminology, disorders of a psychological, as well as a physical, nature. Should we aim to include in the descriptions of various disorders ALL their physical, psychological, social and ethical implications? The 'Guide should presumably aim to be comprehensive, after all...

My little corner of the Disease market is strictly the ones caused by bacteria and viral infections...

That's plenty to keep me busy for the rest of my natural days! But if someone would want to do a chronic deisease page, I'd be more than happy to link to it!

A diabetic - now I understand the name Hypoman. OIC. My daughter goes hypo for a different reason - see my Metabolic diseases page. I know how traumatic it can be.

Hope you stay well in the future...

We would have to break it down, as you say. You have congenital conditions, infective conditions, hereditary conditions and so on. A massive subject ... we have time to build though - this is only the beginning...

> How and when will entries change
> in light of new information?

Good question. We're still working on that.

At present, the way it seems to work is like this. You find an entry already approved that has information you think you can improve upon. You can leave a forum post below to add your two cents. That way, people who go to that entry would see that there's new information in the forums. And if we Sub-editors and the Powers That Be ever find time to go through the hundreds of approved guide entries and update them, we'll be looking through the forums of each one for the new information.

Another possibility is to write up a new guide page from your user page, that talks about the same subject. Write up the guide entry the way you would like to see it improved, and then link from that page to the one presently set as the approved guide entry (you can also leave a link to your page in the old approved guide entry's forums. When you have it the way you like it, submit it and put it in with the rest of the guide entries under consideration for approval.

It is still taking us several weeks to get through it, but when we see that entry, we'll see the old one as well, and we'll decide at that time if it should replace the old one or if we can somehow work the two of them together.

We hope to perfect updates in the future, but right now I think that's about how it works. Other Subs can feel free to correct me if I'm wrong.