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

*** All this is IMHO, but you did ask & bear in mind it's 4am here.

What would make more people write for the Edited Guide?

***Personally, i don't because i am put off utterly by the Writing Guidelines, which seem to suggest you *must* have technical knowledge of Guide ML. Plus i don't get on with the idea of the article being pulled to pieces and altered within Peer Review. I have done lots of stuff for <./>thepost</;> though. (Hootoo Home of Today; not going off to find link 'cos this long post will probably disappear; the technical problems on hootoo *have* to get sorted; very tired of reassuring newbies on this!)

If it wasn't for these issues i would probably write a Guide entry every week, if not every day. I like writing!
*

What do you think should or shouldn't be on the h2g2 front page? Do you think the front page represents h2g2 as a whole?


***no, i don't, i think it is, in general pretty boring. I very rarely visit the front page; if i do, it's usually while i am hanging around waiting for people on my own convos to reply. Very sad. I think you should at least ensure that one of the latest entries is attention grabbing for newbies, one lightweight, the other factual would be reasonable.

I gave up writing for mainly 'cos the link to it is slithering away at the bottom of the page in obscurity, the regulars on hootoo get signed in & go straight to their PS, the newbies may visit Front Page, but not often after an ACE does their job & gets 'em hooked into the community.

The "search" facility is just a joke, as you very well know, which rather negates the idea of the site as originally conceived. However, if you google stuff, very often hootoo comes up on the first page as a source

What does h2g2 mean to you? Which areas form the most important parts of your h2g2 experience?

**** h2g2 has totally & utterly transformed my life in the 3 years i have been here but not because of the Guide Entries, but the real friends i have made & continue to make; several of whom i have met in RL (and indeed lived with!)

Where do you spend most of your time on the site?
****On my Personal space, journal section, then on other convos, usually my friends journals

How can we improve our existing forums?
*** Not quite sure what you mean by forums

How can we best plug the gaps in the Guide?

***keep doing this sort of thing, feedback is essential to keep it alive and kicking!!!!

, this cannot be easy, especially if you keep paying the hamsters peanuts.....sorry, couldn't resist it! You can offer me a job if you like, i only eat minuscule amounts of peanuts!

*will accept T shirt if you insist*



Terri

Is there anything about the Writing Guidelines that puts you off besides the inferrence that submissions should be coded? Perhaps that could be re-worded. GuideML isn't a requirement (although it will almost always come up in a PR thread if it hasn't been used). I've recommended entries without it, I think. I believe I've heard that the Subs prefer no GuideML at all to incorrect GML.

Not all entries get torn to shreds in PR - most don't. Every entry should receive suggestions for improvement, which can be taken or disagreed with. Unless there is a fundamental flaw with an entry, most of the suggestions are along the lines of punctuation and grammar. Is there something about PR that gives the impression that the entry you put in won't be the entry that gets edited?

Have you put any of your own stuff in PR, or just watched others' go through?

Entries don't get torn to shreds in PR.

Those which need a lot of corrections get a lot of corrections pointed out; those which don't, don't. If an entry *does* get a lot of corrections pointed out, that's a good thing because it means that someone believes in it.

The purpose of submitting an entry to PR is to get it into the EG. As we all know, plenty of entries which haven't a snowball's chance in hell of achieving that goal are submitted to PR. If, however, a Scout or other PR regular takes the time to sit down and invest an hour in looking for errors and pointing out ways in which they can be put right (or asking the author to come up with their own corrections), that reviewer obviously thinks that the entry has the potential to be edited. They wouldn't spend all that time on it if they didn't. Since the author made those errors in the first place, simply saying to them 'Would you mind awfully looking through your entry making the necessary corrections' really isn't going to work in most cases. Sure, you can ask them to run it through a spellchecker, but that will only pick up a handful of most of the errors that appear in PR entries.

I have had my fill of people (not you in this case broe ) who criticise Scouts and reviewers for their methods when trying to help authors with entries which need a *lot* of improvement. Time to take that scratched old record off the turntable folks - it's worn out, and I never liked the tune anyway.

***Personally, i don't because i am put off utterly by the Writing Guidelines, which seem to suggest you *must* have technical knowledge of Guide ML. Plus i don't get on with the idea of the article being pulled to pieces and altered within Peer Review.

No, you don't need any Guide ML. None of my picks, which are mostly from new or first-time authors, have 'perfect GuideML' as a prerequisite. My criteria is that entries should be coherant, grammatically correct, complete and interesting. Most people can write good entries, fewer can write ML (as simple as some bu****s may find it), and I think I speak for most Scouts when I say that headers are the last thing I look for in an entry. Subs can put in missing ML if the entry is good enough. We need content.

We don't pull things to pieces in PR either. Its a review forum. We review entries; people have pulled me up on every entry I've written and pointed out something thats wrong - my suggestion that a housemartin was a savage predator beiong the most embarrassing - but no-one's ever said 'oh, thats c**p'. If you write intelligent material, you get intelligent feedback. Write A3506384 - 'This is discusting' and submit it; well, you get what you deserve. A coherant and intelligent entry will always get space


How can we best plug the gaps in the Guide?

Write more and comment on people's writing more. Peer Review has loads of entries that are attention grabbing, interesting, informative and worth getting into convos over. Terri, I'd LOVE to see you comment in Peer Review, you'd be fantastic and the range of entries submitted would keep you posting here for hours. There are currently no entries on UK Subs, Show Of Hands or your home town, and you can write great entries on all. So why not?

Oh btw - the last paragraph of post 3 wasn't aimed at you either Terri

>I have had my fill of people (not you in this case broe) who criticise Scouts and reviewers for their methods when trying to help authors with entries which need a *lot* of improvement. Time to take that scratched old record off the turntable folks - it's worn out, and I never liked the tune anyway.

As much as you're going off subject with this, Oojamagosho, I have to agree. I've shepherded soooo many entries through PR for nothing and been slated and abused frequently - for offering constructive criticism, just like any reader would - and sometimes think 'well, why bother if the author just wants to bite at what I say?'. None of my entries have been perfect. We're the first stop for the EG; we're here to point out inaccuracies, logical fallibilities, falsehoods and add our own (albeit occasionally limited) expertise to entries. We're assistants, not slaters. And we're volunteers and occasionally make mistakes, which (by and large) we own up to.

The point is, we care enough about the EG to give up our time to trawl PR looking for entries that are great. Whether we find them, correct them, give them pointers or suggest the writers need to do more, we're doing a tough job pretty well. We are no bearpit.

again

Yeah, I did go off the topic of this thread a little. I should have made that comment in one or two of the other threads in this forum, but since so many of the conversations have inevitably resorted to the same handful of people complaining about the way things are done in PR, it becomes ever harder to tell them apart. This thread hasn't done so yet, but I'm sure it well when the naysayers descend upon it. It's taking up far too much of my time - time I should be spending commenting on entries. I think it's time I stopped rising to the bait and just got on with Scouting.

Until I get an email saying otherwise, the criticism will just go over my head - the comeback just pops out once in a while

And you might notice that there's a new little surprise on today's front page - a permanent (at least for the forseeable future!) link to The Post!



P

Didn't notice as it's a long way down but to you all for that one

Traveller in Time delivering < <./>ThePost</.> > when published
"I am trying to maintain a service informing people of a new edition of as soon as it is available
Click < <./>FSB2132005?cmd=subscribeforum&page=normal&desc=Go+to+The+Post&return=ThePost</.> > to be informed of new editions.

Well, why not write the daily entry? Perhaps one day one comes out ready for inclusion in the Edited Guide, but is that the only goal? Any entry available on the site will get readers, any entry will be worth something for someone. "