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

When Jews Attack...

Only on Fox...

Hell, I didn't even get a chance to see that show, bummer...

Hullo. Just me, wandering through.

I was going to say "I'm just wandering through with a link that's probably totally irrelevant to the thread of conversation." However, a quick scan of recent posts shows that my link to an Onion article fits right in. Check out
http://www.theonion.com/onion3631/christian_right_lobbies.html
for a few chuckles.

Yeah - the Onion altered their indexing a while ago (and removed a lot of the older material). My personal favourite one is the Jews suing God for breach of contract...

I would like to join this merry band, if I may?

"Initiation protocol for new members is as follows:"

"Report your intent to join in the currently active Business Forum (that being, obviously, the one with the highest number and most recent posting)."

Well, here I am.

"Name your chair."

Seeker after Objective Beauty and other Impossibilities.

Is that it, or do I get a leather apron and a special handshake?

Pattern-chaser

Only if you want...

Shush, otherwise everyone'll want one...

A leather apron....?

Who will know? Noone´s realy hanging out here anyway lately. Where is the lot?

We have a saying round my way, which I just made up for tradition's sake - You Are The Lot... So explain - where have *you* been, my friend...

I just love how this place goes quiet for a while, then someone jolts it back to life again. But the silences have grown longer... have we run out of things to rant about?

Someone read the recruitment standards?!

Welcome, Pattern-chaser. That really is all there is to it, I'm sorry to say. But then, I did mention that the membership benefits were rather dismal. We did put some research into a secret handshake, but the results weren't impressive. The original design called for members to gently grasp each other's left pectoral with their right hand, but the women cried out 'sexism' and it had to be abandoned. All future attempts just didn't manage to capture the males, and so the issue was dropped.

Well my first rejection of an h2g2 Entry anyway...

The entry on Paganism has been officially rejected.

Quoth Mark Moxon:

""There are many interesting elements in this Entry, which is quite well
written. Unfortunately, the generalities are rather too sweeping. A little more
research providing extra factual content would really transform what's already
written, which is good so far."

I thought it was evident by what I had written that a broad definition was neccesary for any defintion of the word Pagan to work.

I wonder which specific generalities he was referring to?

I don't think that entries should be so exhaustive. If he wants a factual content about neo-paganism there arlready is an excellent book, _Drawing Down the Moon_ by Margot Alder that at nearly 600 pages doesn't explore it fully.

So I have got the problem that my little compialtion at http://www.h2g2.com/A447509 is to be put under the funny pages. This isn´t funny (although I do like loughing about it). Does it sufice to be put onto the list of FFFF, oh my colonel?

By the way, Lear, I have been to New England, experiencing what the new world has to offer. Very interesting. Perticullarly Vermont.

Hi Zen,

My entry on Design was rejected, also by Mark Moxon, IIRC. A diminutive entry compared to yours (which definitely deserved acceptance, IMHO), mine was rejected because I only defined what 'design' is, and didn't attempt to describe the different methods of design that exist or have existed!

I couldn't agree more with you when you say "I don't think that entries should be so exhaustive." A complete treatise on design could take more years than I have left, and occupy multiple volumes!

The upshot of the prevailing editorial policy is that the Guide is becoming less unique, and more like (say) Encyclopaedia Brittanica. I don't think this is good, but I'm unsure what can be done about it, if anything. Any ideas, anyone?

As this is a quasi-religious forum, perhaps we could consider reviving some of the more colourful South American religious practices, and offer an h2g2 editor or two to the Lord of the Winds...

Meanwhile, I continue to toil on the increasingly long "God" entry. I'm sort of enjoying the process of refining it continually but I am beginning to doubt it will ever "play down the middle" enough for the eds to swallow the thing. Apparently, playing down the middle means remaining completely neutral towards the cherished idea that God is a giant invisible monkey. Sigh.

On the bright side, I found a cool flash game.

http://www.tommunism.com/flash/nailjesus/index.html

Found that sort of funny.

*sheepish look*
Sorry Engländer - but it *did* seem funny to me... I even laughed...

I would be more apt to work on 'improving' an entry to get in the approved guide, if it didn't take about 3 1/2 months to get any official feedback. The peer review scheme doesn't seem to be any better than the old system from my POV...

I loved the flash game!

At least with Peer Review you do get quasi-official information from the Scouts. If they like it, it usually goes through. But yeah, it's way more bureaucratic than it was before, and so things take forever. But on the upshot, it gives you more editorial control. Someone could have taken that God entry and simply filtered it until it met guidelines, and then TG would have blown a fuse... like I did with Atheism.

Englander: Sure, I'll put it up. I know that I've read it before on a t-shirt or something, but it will work. I can give it a link all its own, or, you could give it to Austin for the jokes page, either way is fine by me. One thing, though... one argument for the use of GuideML is quality of appearance over different skins. That page looks kinda ugly in Alabaster.

What do I have to change (from Html) so it will work in Guide ML. I am to lazy to look up myself. And I don´t like Alla basta (i.e. in badisch/italien: well, that is enough (*smack your fist on the table*".

I'm very sorry to hear about the rejection, ZenMondo. Of course, the real threat with Peer Review is that you may never know how much is enough, whether you are indeed making progress according to Scout consensus, and if the entry is retrievable in any form -- unless suddenly you have the perfect combination of words and your entry has been accepted.

At least with rejection by the old system, you know you've been rejected. There's no such guarantee with Peer Review. On the up shot, you can revise and get feedback again much faster.

I agree there are inconsistencies afoot regarding entries that seem incomplete. I've complained a couple of times about entries that have very obviously been processed incomplete (Dogs and Science Fiction/Fantasy) only to be told that incomplete entries are perfectly okay by h2g2 standards. Now, it seems, they are not.

Or perhaps they are okay or not rather arbitrarily. Perhaps some personal prejudice does factor in somewhere. Or then again, perhaps the standards for Peer Review are higher and incomplete is becoming less okay all the time. In any case, I wish I knew more. It seems at surface that any entry related to religion that doesn't toe the Christian line is being put to much higher standards than the rest.

After over a year of researching, and from my experience with the Scouts to this point, I can definitely point out the policies:

- Articles are required to be complete. Except when they're not.

- Articles are required to represent an international point of view. Unless that point of view is British.

- Articles are required to be reasonably well constructed, with good grammar and spelling. Until they get to the subs.

- Articles on controversial subjects are welcome. As long as everyone in the community agrees with it.