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

I believe that was fixed.

"often when I have read an edited entry, I find myself wondering about an area of possible controversy in the text, some potential bone of contention"

Which is exactly why I created The Peer Review Archive, A13114739. I'll be adding a chunk to it over the next day or so. I've been gathering entries.

Gnomon's are hard to find, as he always deletes them. Any help appreciated (there's a link at the bottom of the archive to an appropriate thread where people can provide additional entries to add).

TRiG.

Deleting your Guide Entry won't actually remove the PR convo, but it will render it very hard to find.

Links to categories aren't allowed, are they? So you'll have to change the link to the Picture Library.

Neat little entry. I like it.

TRiG.

A32927565 - Uses for outdated Guide Entries

Hi Zeg, you can't link to A23402918 as it's unedited, use the edited version and just type out 'The Legend of Elvis Continues, It's Now and Ever' (original) and The Growing Cult of Elvis Presley (the wrong wording is showing in your related h2g2 links, so you must have something wrong with the Edited Entry GuideML)

Moving the PR thread to the new recommended A-number is a most excellent idea, it's extra work for the Eds though - no-one else could do that unless someone was given some editorial tools.

If someone deletes their PR-version before the sub-ed gets their mits on the recommended version, (there's quite a long queue at the moment) it can be a royal pain trying to find the PR thread.

"If someone deletes their PR-version before the sub-ed gets their mits on the recommended version, (there's quite a long queue at the moment) it can be a royal pain trying to find the PR thread."

That's why the Scouts are supposed to put paste the link into the box when they recommend them, but it's been a long time since that was done regularly. When I was a Sub and a Scout I used to email the Scouts list pleading for this to be done, but no-one even replied to the emails.

There was me thinking I was just being weird or something, wanting to find PR threads for EG entries.

What we need is to find the U number of someone who elvised ages ago, and who is subscribed to PR and PR alone. Then all the PR threads would be there on their PS in fairly accurate chronological order. Unfortunately, most people subscribed to PR are also subscribed to Ask and more journals than you can shake a stick at.

Belated suggestion for TRiG:
Create a new dna account, call it PR Tracker or whatever, subscribe to PR, never post to any convo with it, then link to the U-number in your PR thread archive page. Thus may Bob become your uncle.

I've removed some of the links, and cleared up that point about peer review threads.

I don't think this would be a good help page, since my tone is a bit tongue in cheek, but I wouldn't mind writing for the Post.

Oooh, I like it!

Another slightly sneaky thing I can envision doing with the old entries is to work on building a more international Guide.

Sure, everything you write must be translated. But if you link to the final edited entry, and then turn the "old" one into a direct translation of the final version - perhaps with the title in both languages - it should, in theory, be possible to write a foreign-language version as well.

Or translate paragraph by paragraph, putting the original in italics? It might help this site crop up in google more often, for one thing, and allow things "lost in translation" to be part of the entry.

That is such a brilliant idea!

Updated!

This makes for an interesting read

"Belated suggestion for TRiG"

Thanks, vogonpoet. Don't know why I didn't think of that. Doing it now.

TRiG.

I use the Rinse and Re-use technique for my Post columns: once an edited version has appeared in The Post, I'll re-use an old unedited Max/ Murder/ Rear View to create the next one. I change the title to bring the numbering up to date, and then overtype the previous text between the paragraph markers with the new text. It's a good way to preserve the Guide ML!

Is this going anywhere? I think it's rather a good one.

The last digit of an entry number is a check digit, so the figure would be 3 million, not 33 million. Yes, there have been 3 million pages created on the DNA engine since it was created.

The very first entry was A18. The second one was A27. The third was A36. Most of the originals have since been deleted, but they're still there, just not visible.

I've never figured out exactly how the last digit is calculated - you're welcome to try, or someone else probably knows already.

From looking at a couple of entries...

- Add up the digits of the entry number (without the last, checksum, digit)

- Ditch any tens

- Subtract the resulting single figure from 9 and you get your final checksum digit

I knew it was something to do with 9, but I can't remember what. I thought it might be that all the numbers should add up to 9, or multiples of 9 but maybe not.

Seems to be similar to a book's ISBN, then.

is this ready for picking yet?

It's not really suitable as an Edited Guide Entry, is it? But the Eds might like to use it as a help page.

Never thought there'd be much hope of that. But if anyone knows an online community that would accept it, please let me know