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

These guidelines are aimed at making the Guide as boring as possible. For an alternative approach, I suggest you try my own entry, flouting most of the BBC rules at

http://www.bbc.co.uk/h2g2/guide/A615160 - all replies or messages welcome

Beings for freedom unite! You have nothing to lose but your chains.

It's entirely possible - easy, in fact - to write interesting Entries within the rules. Take an interest in something real, something meaningful. Real life and real life problems can be quite interesting. Bucking the system here isn't a freedoom struggle; it's silliness bordering on rudeness. Good people are working hard to make h2g2 a positive environment for Researchers of all descriptions, some of whom are easily bruised. A little consideration is all that's being asked.

On the other hand, the world is full of very serious problems. If you do feel the urge to speak out for freedom, why not give some serious thought to taking up a legitimate cause. Have a look at Amnesty International, for example, and pick something real to fight for. There are a lot of people out there who could really use your help.

JTG

Thanks for your message, John, but you seem to be taking this a bit more seriously than was intended. Sorry if I upset you or anyone else.

Regards n best wishes,

Grime

No worries.

Hello What Is Your A.S.L? Please
Reply Im 17/Female/London...
From Shazzi...

Hi Shazzi,

I don't even know whether or not I have a "A.S.L". If it's something good, perhaps I ought to think about getting one.

Welcome to h2g2. I see that you haven't personalized your Personal Space yet. When you do, other Researchers will be able to post greetings and various and sundry comments there. Have a look around; you'll see what I mean.

Click my name or visit the Aces if you find you need help.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/classic/Aces

JTG

I think the guidelines help prevent the Guide from being mindless badly written drivel. Any knowledge base even a slightly offcentre one such as the guide is still helped by being decently written and informative. Otherwise it just becomes a swagmire of meaningless crap and commercialism (though there is no promotional material in the guide if there was no restrictions you can bet there would be) as I fear the internet is becoming more and more.

It is much better for those looking for certain information if they can find it easily and don't have to painstakingly fish it out of a mass of zany articles that are of no use to them. Don't get me wrong I like the guides informal approach and the personal spin people can put on their articles. But if there's no standards the Guide would stop actualy being useful and thus become a waste of time.

I fear I may have started ranting ah well.

Not at all. That was well put.

JTG

I'm going to take the middle road on this subject, and try to explain it in a way to show why both sides are wrong.

The Guidelines are not commandments to describe good writing in general. The clearest examples are the works of Douglas Adams. If DNA submitted chapters or the entirety of "Mostly Harmless" to the Edited Guide, it would not be accepted because it's fiction. Who here would argue that any of DNA's fiction does not constitute good writing? ...Right, now that's settled.

The guidelines give a *scope* for the Edited Guide. When they set up the Guide, they wanted people to use it as a real reference, serious enough for people to actually consult when they want to learn about far-away places or people or events. If you looked up "New Zealand" and found only poems or fiction or parody, then it wouldn't be a very useful guide, would it? It would be something else.

Most people who open a phone book don't want to stumble across fiction or poetry or especially a parody that listed a bunch of wrong phone numbers as a joke. Actually some of us would enjoy finding that stuff, but why would we look for it in a phone book? So if you don't call your phone company complaining about the lack of poetry or opinion articles in your phone book, then it doesn't make much sense to complain about the limitations imposed by a real guide.

On the other hand, it would be absurd to claim that "the guidelines help prevent the Guide from being mindless badly written drivel." Fiction by DNA, Shakespeare, poetry, interviews, opinion, stream-of-consciousness classics by James Joyce or Kerouac or William S. Burroughs would not be accepted by the Guide, but they aren't "mindless, badly written drivel." (Maybe some of Burroughs might qualify, but the rest is pretty good.) It's okay that they don't fit into the Edited Guide. Perhaps what you mean is that the guidelines prevent the Guide from degenerating into something that would not be an effective guide. It might have interesting things to read, but it wouldn't function as a guide very well.

Sorry, Fredward. I think we agree on this where you say, "..if there's no standards, the Guide would stop actually being useful and thus become a waste of time." I wouldn't call fiction, poetry, or opinion pieces "a waste of time," but those things do not need to go in the Guide, if we want to keep the Guide useful.

Meanwhile, I hope people realize that h2g2 is still a good place for sharing their writings that don't meet the guidelines. Check out a little thing called <./>AGGGAG</.> (Another Galaxy Guide/Galactic Anomalies Group) where we try to publicize h2g2 entries that would not fit into the Edited Guide. Sorry if that seems like a plug, but we argue over this topic a lot, and it's the whole reason AGG/GAG formed. Instead of banging on the door of the Edited Guide and demanding that they let us on stage, we're building our own stage.

I'm going to draw a median down the centre of the middle way and explain why all sides are also at least partially right.

The Guidelines are valuable for exactly the reasons just mentioned; and, as also has been mentioned, there's plenty of room left to contribute material that falls outside their parameters.

h2g2 is also about community and being a safe environment in which people of all shapes and sizes can participate and express their ideas. I believe that the late, great DNA saw h2g2 as something organic, something which would grow and take a unique shape, resulting from the participation of the broadest possible foundation: Researchers from all walks of life who would come and go over time, and who would themselves change and grow. This has been illustrated perfectly in this forum.

Well done, all.

JTG

Hmm.. this is a very peaceful discussion. I applaud everyone for their abilities to see 'both sides' of the issue. However it is not as polarised as all that. It is much more than a yay or nay issue. Much more than a question of 'us or them' and I must point out that AggGag was not created as an ill-considered attempt to replace or compete with the Edited Guide.

Perhaps the word 'alternate' or 'another' in our name, Another Galaxy Guide, has created the impression of our opposition to the Guide. Never! We are not adversaries, and see ourselves only as an auxiliary group of volunteers looking out for the wounded and abandoned whose Entries couldna or wouldna be Guide material. We offer only 'another' perspective, an alternate forum.

The Edited Guide is the Edited Guide and has it Guidelines. These insure that the Edited Guide is a useful, information packed resource tool as envisioned by the founder and mentor. Good stuff, wouldn't have it any other way.

The mission of AggGag is simply to give 'other' voices a 'stage' on which to perform and sometimes to nurse the bruised egos of the overly enthusiastic who might be slapped down by certain overzealous participants in the PR process.

As a POST script (pun intended) it has finally dawned on me, after working with the h2g2PostTeam, that they are motivated and mandated to do pretty much the same thing we do. That's how they came to suffer our presence by offering us the space to build our 'stage'. We just make more noise about it and bait 'the opportunity to be seen' with overtones of subversion which appeal to those feeling intimidated, outcast or disenfranchised by Peer Review.

We offer hope to those who may have been discouraged by, or otherwise misunderstood, the Editing process. We run with the mongrels and the strays and leave the show dogs to strut their stuff in the more formal displays.

peace
~jwf~

Okay, we can all shake hands and agree, but I get to be the squashed armadillo in the middle of the road that got yellow median stripes painted across his butt.

And I get to be the State employee who has to put the BUMP signs in both directions. Facing inward, of course.

Can I be the Hispanic-American in the $75,000 purple Cadillac low-rider who tears out his $10,000 hydraulic/air-lift suspension and watches his Bridgestone clad gold plated wheels dash madly off in all directions? All of which happens in a neighbourhood where few, especially those of the Spanish persuasions, would dare to step out their vehicles.

(Sorry, feeling a little anger of the 'why-can't-people-get-along' variety churning in my belly tonite as I sit warm and snug in my safe middle class white neighborhood knowing 9.9 tenths of the rest of the world is dealing with crappola.)

~p..p..peace~

One phrase they should have taught you in radio..."Don't Step On The Gag".

Don't worry about being safe, Jwf, you're not.

*the web is slow today, and this may be a doublepost but I've refreshed the original page several times and it has not yet appeared*


> Don't worry about being safe, Jwf, you're not. <

B-b-but.. Frank Zappa said it c-can't happen here.

> One phrase they should have taught you in radio..."Don't Step On The Gag". <

Ah, but there's more to Life than Radio, and Life has taught me that Gags are a dime-a-dozen ...while a middle-aged white North American even thinking about (let alone caring for) the way the rest of the world is forced to live is rare ..very rare.

And by what I've been hearing from George the Second lately, I understand it's now also unpatriotic and potentially treasonous.
You know I love to taunt the Mind Police.


jwf

continued elsewhere...

It makes experienced writers look better.
Seriously, however, I think there are people out there who are more drawn to informal articles than well structured ones. We should cater for such people out of respect for our diversity.
How wonderful the world would be if everyone were just like you!
My article (A931772)was critisised for being slapdash; however I thought the style suited the subject matter. If I had put it in my journal fewer people would have been able to appreciate its merits.
Soldier on, basically.