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

'Another harmful notion is the one that encourages a kind of lowest-common-denominator inclusivity. It's our own little example of politically-correct mediocrity. A decline in EG standards through a prevalence of lightweight Entries is the inevitable consequence of this trend, and one of the nicest ironies is that some of the PR diehards are nowadays railing against just this.

'Lightweight' in this sense means three things. It means shallow in terms of content, flat in terms of style and trivial in terms of effort. Evidence of any one of the three redeems writing, but a worthwhile Peer Review will demand such evidence.

It's too easy to write a banal Entry, and it's not as if we have to. There are a few million worthwhile subjects to wrestle with first.'


Given the fact that I scoured PR for over over a week and barely found three to read, let alone Recommend, I'd be very grateful if you'd revive this and count me in.

In fact the only one I really wanted to recommend was Pin's, but that seems to be against the rules

I knew history would redeem us

If PROD is alive, as I feel more and more that it should be - I came looking for you, after all - I'll link to it from my tagline. My latest journal expresses my frustrations.

Good to see you around, by the way

I think PROD is still alive.
Not too many people got it, though. There wasn't so much downright antipathy but there were a lot of people who didn't recognise a problem.

Hard to know where to go next, yeah?

As somebody said to me today (possibly pertinent, certainly amusing):
When your baby leaves, you tend to cherish the bathwater.

And I freely admit to being one of those

I think my journal has had a decent effect; a few people are re-doubling their efforts to contribute and try to write more diverse and interesting Entries - Matt finished his work on an absolute cracker of an Entry, A5527514 (Rain), and there seem to be a couple of other irons in the fire Not exactly a long-term change, though...

It's certainly hard to keep trying to freshen things up without sounding critical of the majority of writers who are quite happy with the way things are. I don't think it's so much that there's anything *wrong* with PR and the EG necessarily; more that it could be so much better.