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

This purpose of this thread is to try and get people to collaborate in a joint venture - trying to make the basically good but failed idea of the H2G2 Politics Forum into something workable.

One suggestion is, if we can get a reasonable number of people to collaborate, using the h2g2pf page as a repository of links to political discussions on h2g2. Every time of us found a political conversation on h2g2 which wasn't already linked to on the h2g2pf page, they could just add it.

The current function (a home for serious political discussion) could, and perhaps should, also be continued.

Well, what do you think? Speak up, and if you know anyone that might be interested, drag them over to this thread.

sounds good, but a lot of work - and I'm overbusy keeping up with <./>agggag</.> But there is so much political stuff on h2g2, it'd be criminal not to have a proper page for it.

I'll try to keep my eye out for stuff

This is from 360, does it count?
304?thread=30464919" >F84764?thread=164919&latest=1

Check out the changes I made and tell me if you like the basic idea. Emily, DG, Lucinda and I can all edit the pages (I hope?) and add links to the two archive pages...

I think the links thing is a good idea. Something that's sort of categorized so that people could find topics that they'd like to talk about. I'd probably do it in a table, with headings by subject (Death Penalty, War, Welfare, etc.), then columns for entries and conversations. I might describe each item, but not with more than one sentence.

I think the key here is to provide something handy, but incomplete. If you address all the issues and angles, then it leaves little room for conversation and questioning. I'll tell you straight up, my conversational technique on the boards here is to make a moderately outrageous claim to generate conversation, and then start being moderate and (somewhat) reasonable. Does that make me the h2g2 version of talk radio?

I'd set up a forum for reporting political conversations sort of like Colonel Sellers had for his Group listing or like they have for the university.

I'd probably write it out something like this:

Subject: Reporting from the Political Front

Thanks for reporting from the frontlines of h2g2 political debate. We're interested in linking researchers to conversations throughout the Guide and leaving no political discussion orphaned.

If you wish to report a conversation for inclusion in the Hitchhikers Guide to Politics, please provide the following information:

For a conversation:
General Topic
Conversation Title and F-number
Entry Title and A-number

Brief description (a sentence or two) of the discussion or entry.

If it's an entry you're reporting just omit the forum information.

Examples:
Topic: Abortion
Forum: "Pro/Anti-abortion" - better terms F58078?thread=121568
Entry: Talking Point: Should Abortion be Available on Request? A472295

Desc: Demonica U179294 asks if there's a better way to name the sides in the debate than pro-life and pro-choice. Is there anyone who is against choice or opposed to life?

Topic: Political Philosophy - Communism
Forum: Comunisum? F19585?thread=78657
Entry: Ask h2g2 A148907

Desc: JK the unwise U153345 questions some communist cliches.

Topic: Death Penalty
Entry: State Sanctioned Killing A623369

Desc: Della the Cat Woman U179697 discusses the Innocence Project, the affect of executions on society, and the use of medical personnel to carry out lethal injection. From the h2g2 Post A619283.

Anyway, I say send 7 pairs of male elephants to America, but you can fix up the details in the letter.

Heck, I'll set up the page if you want me to, I'm getting some ideas.

Two Bit, very good ideas. I'm investigating the technical front, and will get back to you (and everyone) soon...

I've been playing with differnt ways of laying it out. This is what I have A703685. I've noticed that GuideML makes tables pretty miserable.

OK, so forget the stuff above. I made a dopey mistake, I thought that adding people to the researchers list meant they could edit the entry - no such luck

That leaves us with three options:

(1) Someone takes over the day to day running of this thing (I have not enough time to do it justice). Anyone want to volunteer?

(2) I, or someone, creates a new H2G2 user with a published password and we all use this login to edit the H2G2PF pages. Not sure if this is allowed or not?

(3) The archives are stored in the conversation forums, so each time one of us finds a new conversation or article we post to a thread giving the name, link and so forth, as described by Two Bit above.

Seeing as (1) is unlikely and (2) might not be allowed, (3) is probably the best idea. It's a bit of a shame though, it would be much nicer to have the conversation and article archives as an entry rather than in a conversation forum...

Any comments?

Looks good, Two Bit. Just a thought - you know how Big Bandwagon was run? Perhaps we could run some debates rather like that - you know, with people signing up for proposition and opposition. Maybe even little polls, like the Marmite haters one. I know it sounds a bit silly, but I was just thinking of ways of generating personal interest without people trying to lynch each other...

Oops, sorry, didn't see your post there Two Bit - Opera, the browser I'm using at the moment, seems to use it's cache more than IE does, I'm still getting used to it.

Emily, the debate thing sounds fun

My idea is to create sort of a resource, if you can't spark debate create a useful resource. Then from therte you may be able to do some special events. The thing about making a resource is that success doesn't depend on direct participation.

If at first you don't succeed, redefine the terms of success.

I don't mind tracking the dicsusion list. I sort of have a list fetish. I like making them, and it should keep me up on the latest discussions, and I might be able to reinvigorate old discussions (which I miss).

As for other types of discussion, I don't want to lead debates and discussions. If we break this thing up into different areas of responsibility more would be accompished.

Making combined user researchers is allowed. There's a bunch of peaceniks that created one. I don't much care for the idea myself. I routinly forget what my password is. I'd hate to have to switch back and forth.

OK, if Two Bit likes making lists that's great

I propose the following then:

* Two Bit sets up either one or two new pages to house the articles and conversations archive as he wants to organise it. Tabular is good, subheadings is also good. Anybody can submit conversations or articles by posting on to a thread on that page in the format he suggested above. You can use the articles I had already collected just to start it off, but you needn't keep the long descriptions if you think one-liners would be better.

* We keep the current h2g2pf page above as the centre of the operation, and use it to link to a variety of pages, with one person basically running each page. For example, Two Bit runs the conversation and articles lists, maybe Emily runs a sort of hosted debate page (Emily, interested?), and others could be added over time.

* We try this out for a while, and if the workload in maintaining it is too much, we think again...

Good proposal?

I have to get some sleep, I'll continue this discussion tomorrow. Goodnight...

why not do it via a guestbook? Just have the text already there in the box as:

> Topic
> Name
(etc)

Then if somebody wants to tell us about a cool entry/thread, they just fill in the box and press 'submit'.

Okay, how do you do a guest book? Is that part of GuideML or a gadget or what?

Does anyone have a perfernce among the styles that I did on that other page. I think I favor the table to end all tables. The code for tables in GuideML is so weak that I can't do what I like to do with HTML tables.

<./>guideml-guestbook</.>
-myre

Here's the page for reporting stuff: A703847.

I think we're converging on a nice solution.

Here are my latest thoughts:

* H2G2 Political Forum as an inter-related set of pages with a common navigation bar at the top (see the entry above for what I mean). You can copy the guideml from the page by looking at Test582211. Use italics without a link for the current page, and put links in for all of the other pages.

* Two-Bit, you can do most of the normal HTML stuff with tables (like and so forth). So, you can probably do something quite nice with the layout. Do you want to have one page for reporting conversations and one for the list, or would one page be OK?

I haven't decided yet. I'm doing them seperate now while I play with it. I'm leaning towards seperate ones.

Personally i think i like the 'invisible tables' version with the two collumns for entries and forums.

What might be nice is to have an indexing entry too. So where it says "Abortion" at the top of the page, there's a link to a very short entry giving perhaps a dictionary definiton of the term, and a list of the topics and debates that surround it. Such as Women's Rights, Catholicism, The States Right to Kill, Euthenasia, Feotal desease testing, Embryo research, Genetic research/Cloning, Children's Rights, the Sancitity of Life etc. Which might not all ways deal with abortion directly but may deal with fringe issues.

Having said that, the table format might do that for you.