Firstly, a word on the difference between Edited Guide Entries and Guide Entries. Guide Entries can be written at any time, on any subject desired, and complex webs of them have formed many diverting sidelines such as role playing games and pantomimes. They will appear in the h2g2 search engine, but not in the select group of entries that forms the Edited Guide.

To become an Edited Guide entry, Guide Entries have to pass through various barriers such as Peer Review and subediting before reaching the Front Page and being proudly displayed to anyone who might happen to drop by.

However, due to the internal workings of the website, two copies of the entry now exist – the edited guide entry, and the version that stood before the entry was recommended and left Peer Review. It is impossible to alter the edited version beyond a few minor tweaks without going through the whole Peer Review process again, but the original entry can be edited any time the researcher feels like it. It will never appear on the front page or the lists of edited entries, but it will crop up anytime someone searches for the subject, and can cause confusion to those new to the guide, especially if the edited version and the original have different titles, such as The Growing Cult of Elvis PresleyThe Growing Cult of Elvis Presley and The Legend of Elvis Continues, It's Now and Ever.

So here are a few suggestions for what to do with these poor, outdated entries...

Rinse and re-use

Next time the urge to write an informative non fiction article on any subject sweeps over you, don't click straight on the Write an Entry button. Rather, go to one of your old, outdated entries, sweep it clean of information by use of your delete key and then write your new entry over it. Using this system, it is possible to write any amount of Edited Guide Entries with just one guide entry. The only problem with doing this is that the old PR threads remain attached to the Entry, so confusion can occur between the subject of the Entry and other PR threads.

Cancellation

If you're a particularly neat person, or you just feel like spring cleaning your personal space, cancelling your old guide entries couldn't be easier. Just go to the Edit Guide Entry page, and scroll down to the delete entry button. This will remove the entry from your Personal Space and the h2g2 search engine, though it is possible to retrieve them if you require.

Turn them into writing-of documentaries!

One thing to think about before you delete your entry is your peer review thread. If you delete the entry, the conversations attached to it will become extremely hard to find for anyone who wasn't already subscribed. So if you had a particularly long and gruelling peer review, or a particularly successful one, you can leave the entry standing as a part of a writing-of account of how your plucky little entry struggled into the Edited Guide.

Spice it up

Are you upset that your entry didn't make Editors Choice of the Day, and therefore didn't get the picture that it really deserved? Try adding your own picture or blob from the h2g2 picture library.

Translate!

If you're multi lingual, it might be an interesting exercise to provide a foreign language translation of your guide entry. As an advantage, your entry would appear more frequently on multi national search engines such as Google.

Site navigation could very simply be tidied up by adding a brief English disclaimer to the foreign language version, incorporating a link to the final edited entry.