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

I don't know that I had any family that served in WWII, possibly my mother's father.

J'au-æmne, for the tale and the links

s to phone a few people before they leave work.

David- about that overenthusiastic email, I have considered sending quite a few to librarians myself after my honors project!

Both of my grandfathers fought in WWII. One was a mechanic on a Liberator (don't know the number- sorry) that flew patrols over the Bahamas. He was based in Florida, and always claims loudly that he's going to go back someday.

The other one (deceased) was in the Pacific Theatre. I think he was demolitions in the Philippines.

We (as in the university I work for) just had a lightning strike! At approximately 13.30 local time. It took out cooking facilities in the refectory and also caused all the computers to shut down. The ones on the issue desk couldn't be rebooted for half an hour because all of the people in the Systems team had gone to lunch at the same time.

And now, of course, the sun is out, the sky is blue, and no-one would believe there had just been a storm (unless you go near the refectory).

I was the only supervisory person around at the time, so had to run around the library like the proverbial headless chicken to check that everyone and everything was OK. Jolly exciting, but rather bizarre.

David

(responding to Scandrea's message) I may be biased, but I do think that library staff are the unsung heroes of the academic community.

[MTG]

Huge bang of thunder just now. Just as I was about to go out. The heavens are pouring bathtubfulsof water down on London right now. I think I might stay in another half-hour.

Scandrea, the Liberator was the B-24. I am definitely going to rootle round for photos of dad's 13th mission, when the bomber got seriously flakked and did a ground loop on landing.

David B, I once had a client ask me whether I could hide her data in the middle of the hard drive.


The first soldiering in my family was my great-great-grandfather's brother, John, who joined the Army of the Potomac in the Civil War. It was a scam. John got into the suttling department and thereafter sent orders to my great-great-grandfather Daniel, who ran a general store. I still have a couple of his letters detailing soldierly IOUs.

Daniel's oldest son Isaac (my great grandfather) is a bit of a mystery. He was a collector of occult books, went to lectures at Princeton Unversity (I have the notes he took), and must have been in the military in some respect because I have a gold object, the head of a bat (baton) inscribed "To IRCassel from his friends at West Point 1881". I know nothing else about him.

Isaac had two sons, the elder of whom joined the Marines 1900-1905 and fought in the Spanish-American War in the Philippines, and the younger of whom joined the Army at the end of World War I. I've written about Daniel previously. The younger son, Cresson, was my grandfather. He was extremely frail and thin, and was put to work as a cook. I have one of those rotating camera photos of the 16th Company at Camp Greene in North Carolina, all the soldiers in their flat hats and puttees...


PWM, you sail as well! What sort of ship will you be handling? Does it have crew or do you solo?

{Courtesy}

MR got me thinking...

I don't visit the front page, Ask h2g2, the underguide or, well, anywhere except this very page, but not quite for the same reason.

I don't know when it happened exactly, but it seemed as if one day I showed up here and it stopped being a friendly place. Was it because there were more people? Was it because I could no longer get a feel of the place? I don't know...

Put on top of that the fact that the PTB themselves seemed to create a rather large chism - h2g2 should be more less a community (which it seemed to have become) and more what it was envisioned to be, an edited guide to Life, the Universe and Everything. Which, of course, is very well and good except that the community was already there and it felt as if the PTB were saying bugger off, we don't want your kind here. But even on top of that, I was thinking where have they been these past years? Where the Italics themselves were once cavorting with the researchers in their silliness, where the very first edited guide entries were written more like stories (with fictional researchers), often with tongue-in-cheek?

And now with the launch of the mobile h2g2 (Again! The news sites are writing as if the site before now had been the soup before the entree) again I feel like this place is at odds. Frankly, it seems to archaic, that h2g2 is too at odds at itself to be of any actual use. Sure, when you go to use the search tool or go into the edited guide alone, you'll probably find something that quite possibly might resemble what you were looking for, but how much of that information is new? How much of it is even relevant anymore? Can you really find the name of a great pub Manchester that also happens to serve fried oysters? I doubt it.

h2g2 is just a novelty as it stands and that is the reason I stopped going about elsewhere. It just feels too fake, too at odds with itself. If you want a real guide to life, the universe and everything I wouldn't tell you to vist http://www.bbc.co.uk/h2g2/guide/ - no, I'd tell you to visit http://www.wikipedia.com . Wikipedia has got it right, and I imagine that if wikis had taken root before his death, Douglas Adams would have used them himselves. There they have truly edited entries, edited not by a select few, who decide what content is and isn't worthy for a push to the front page or edited guide, but by *everyone*. Everyone decides whether what you have to add to the subject of, say, dishwashing liquid is worth a read, and if you've left something off someone else will come along and change it. How long does it take for a guide entry to go through the editing process now? How many researchers are still around to correct any changes to any entries that they've had accepted? Is the guide, as it is now, truly revisionist or is it stagnating?

I think it's time the BBC gave more thought into the actual form and process the guide takes and begins to seperate the DNA sites from the edited guide. They're too at odds with one another and I'm really worried what will happen to the community once the BBC realizes that this guide thing wasn't worth all the trouble after all.

I have to admit I have to disagree I still enjoy contributing to the Edited Guide and I still think it's valuable.

You know what's really odd is that I put so much of my spare time into it that when someone insults it, it upsets me.

There are lots of differences bettween us and Wikipedia and lots of reasons that I choose to spend time writing for the Guide and not Wiki. One of them is Peer Review, the feedback is invaluable and always makes my entries better.

Ben's post article on h2g2 and internet-land, which I would urge you all to read (A3764063) contains a lot of this arguments that we're having now.

Mind you I'm off home now to do some more revision so I won't be around much.

Do remember that the BBC isn't stupid, they know how many hits we're getting, and just recently there's been a cull of BBC websites, the fact that we survived indicates that someone out there likes us - and I would think that it also indicates that we get a decent amount of traffic.

Kat dear - I can't be online today but if you want to ask me a question you should have my e mail address - [email protected] is the one I give out online. If you are on the Scouts user group then you'll have the one I use more often.



Z

I hope Jim Lynn has the servers ready to accomodate the spike in traffic after the movie opens.

[GDZ]

There are and have been a lot of debates in the last couple of months about whither the guide.

I've just heard that the folks who are trying to fix my laptop can't. Since the reason it was b*gg*red in the first place was because of advice given me in a support call to Sony, I guess I'll contact them.

This weekend is going to be spent trying to get an old Dell I've got up and running. If that fails, then I'll have to see how I am for cash, and go out and buy another PC.

Hey ho. At least I am not actually worse off than I was before.

Ben

I can't help wondering whether the movie really will bring new people in or not. How would people find out about us? Are we trailed in the credits?

David

I've read what Ben has written before, Z, but thanks for pointing it out for others that might not have.

If I can't bring up concerns I have with the site than why should I be able to express my opinion about anything at all? The fact that you find it insulting gives me pause.

And I do have to wonder at what point the BBC will either decide to continue on with this or stop it altogether, and I think it is a valid concern. Some of the most popular sites on the internet have hits up the wazzoo but you have to ask yourself several things, those being:

- Does this site have a practical application?
- Is the site sustainable?
- Is it worth the bandwidth and server upkeep?
- Is it economically feasible to continue it's support?

I don't know if you were around then Z, but some of us can remember the foop, when h2g2 ceased to exist because the financial supporters of The TDV answers to all of the above questions was a resounding NO.

There's more than one kind of Wiki out there as well, and most of them have a place for comments and discussions on the very same page as the "entry" - this is where people discuss ideas on their writings with others.

And since you read what I wrote you know that I expressed concerns with how at odds our entries are - while Wikipedia is rather exact and lacking in the humor (and indeed the human touch) department, the guide's very own entries don't seem to hold on to the very qualities that some researchers remarked that they appreciated - the EG entries are becoming frequently humorless and more exact.

I'm not saying lets all abandon h2g2 and start working on Wikipedia, I'm saying that the Guide could greatly benefit from a more Wiki-like schema, where the changes are constant, where ideas and discussion on the subjects are always ongoing, and where there's a smoother line between the guide entries and the community so as they're not so much at odds with each other.

Sporky, would this debate be worth starting a dedicated thread for?

Also - I didn't read Z's comments as a criticism of you deciding to discuss the issue - I read them as a reaction to your specific 'attacks' on the edited guide.

I remember a conversation I had with GTB about 3 years ago, where I was saying that the EG was boring and pedestrian and dull and all sorts of other things. His response was that it meant a great deal to him and it upset him when it was attacked. I liked and respected GTB, and I held back on the public attacks after that.

Like many of us, Z finds the site as a whole to be very important to him, and like many of us, he gets nervous at the thought that the BBC may decide not to continue to fund it. If we are to debate the future of the site, then we need to be very accurate in how we express ourselves, and *very* accurate in how we read what has been said, so that we don't end up fighting about things that people have not in fact said.

There are several active threads on these subjects, and I am not sure that the Atelier is the best of of possible fora for them.

Ben

Back to an earlier topic--I'm with you, Ben and KerrAvon. Just because an artist is famous doesn't mean his or her work has to resonate with everyone. I've always thought Warhol's a hack.

I've only been at work for a hour this morning and I've already had to deal with one incredibly rude New Yorker, one complete dimwit, and someone who's Southern accent was so pronounced I couldn't understand a word she was saying. I want to go back home.

Ack, I meant to provide a new word.

PS - Sporky - Z said he was *upset* when other people insulted the guide, not that he was insuted by people debating it.

*puts on flack jacket*
*looks for foxhole*
*finds a cushion and cuddles up next to Dave and Ag*
*hides while other people hurl emoti-bombs around the Atelier*