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

You're in doubt about the definitions of townies and locals, so why mention them at all?

I read somewhere that the word "snob" meant (once) a townsman (of a university town) as opposed to a gownsman (viz. student or academic). That was the time when all students and academix were male. Not that long ago.

I have to agree that the footnotes are a bit unwieldy. In the case of notes 1,2,6 and 7 - ie. the abbreviations - they could easy be explained in parentheses in the main text.

Other than that, typo here:

heavily *alcholic* and cheap.

"cheese, biscuits, and a range of chutneys and preserves" - are these really the drunken snack of choice of Oxford students? No pizzas or anything? I'm not saying you should change it, just that it amuses me. There's something very Bertie Wooster about it.

Come and do the time warp

*small note, entirely my own opinion* Long footnotes are a pain if you read the contents by hovering your mouse over the number rather than clicking on it, because the box soon vanishes. If it disappears before being able to read to the end then it is too long

I think there is an entry on the collegiate system of Cambridge and Oxford, although it's not edited and needs a little bit of work. A1052353

How much are edited entries supposed to be humourous? Certain aspects of this seem rather tongue-in-cheek.

I would really like to see this expanded to include Cambridge, with a mention of the musical genre 'cheese' and a contrast to 'ents' (some Colleges in Cambridge have bops, which conform to the school-disco with alcohol model, others have ents which may have live music or named DJs or more alternative music).

Oh, and in Cambridge JCR etc is the Junior Combination Room - you might like to point out that this is both a physical room and a section of the student body (Junior being undergraduates, Middle being graduates here, I haven't heard of a GCR but presumably in Oxford there is another meaning to MCR).

What earthly use to anyone would a humourless article on the Oxford bops be?

Cambridge is surely a different fish kettle, not recommended to unstitch and redo this entry for the sake of.

Kelli, you really should read The Third Policeman which has an entire sub-plot in footnotes.

Hovering is only satisfactory for paltry five-word-or-less footnotes, and to show if it is worth scrolling down or hopping down to read the whole note.

Long Footnotes Are Good

They allow for a short entry to be read at speed and elaborated at leisure. This is nothing other than linking, the whole strength and glory of HTML.

I don't mind extremely long footnotes - like one line of text and the rest of the page as a footnote - that way reading the footnote is just like reading the main text.

It's the hopping back and forth that makes matters awkward. Footnotes on a printed page are also a lot easier than on a screen. Footnotes are a good thing when used sparingly.

Perhaps I'm spoilt with broadband, where the hops are instant. Scrolling doesn't take that long though, does it?

It's not the length of time it takes - it tends to interupt the flow and make for a very stacatto read. Anyway Zophiel can't be getting much out of all this footnote quibling, so I'm going to leave it at that.

Oxford and Cambridge different? I'm sure we'd all like to believe that. If the author doesn't want to include Cambridge bops then that's fine, I may even go and write a separate article (I have exams, so am procrastinating), but I thought that the two are similar enough to go together in a single article.

Ah, then by all means procrastinate in collaboration with Zophiel. Can't help, I'm afraid, I'm a TCD man.

Come to that, how are Oxford (or Cambridge) Bops any different from any other hall party in any other university in england? Is the point of the article to explain the term?

I don't know really - no experience of other universities' bop equivalents.

I'll go away now - I'm not entirely sure of the purpose of the article so can't really comment.

Well the author's not been around again for nearly 2 months and I too am unsure what the entry is trying to inform me about, so I'm going to tentatively propose moving this back to entry.

Kat

I might as well second the move then

Myself, I'd send the entry to the Flea Market - I do think there's enough there to start someone off.

Gosh what a lot of comments! Thanks for all your input.

* Cheese and biscuits as night time snack for students - certainly, not pizzas or real food because few of the colleges allow students to cook anything or have any kind of cooking appliance in rooms.

* Inclusion of Cambridge "ents" - am starting there in October so maybe I'll write something then. Possible problems with the title, plus I am led to believe that Tabs don't know how to have fun.

* Footnotes - are very silly I agree (with some of you at least), I must have found it amusing at the time or have been reading papers with very long footnotes. Of course you don't HAVE to read the footnotes, although clicking on the little blue digit can be hard to resist!

* Back to entry/fleamarket - well, it is your choice I guess. Frankly I'm a little disenchanted with the whole h2g2.com thing and would rather not interupt listening to the Quintessential Phase (or whatever else I might be doing) to make further alterations, for now at least.

Catch you later, I'm off for some
Zophiel