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

Entry: Aircraft Spotting - A665958
Author: sidsaucer - U187806

This entry has attracted no critical reactions during the two months it has been available. I would hope that it can be assessed soon so that understanding of the hobby can increase before several English and Dutch aircraft spotters face trials in Greece, where the hobby has yet to catch-on to any significant extent.

Hi,
I quite liked the entry, with the caveats that:
* it could do with some more formatting and GuideML to give it some visual structure;
* the allusions to the Guide (dead tree version) got a bit wearing after a while and could do with being thinned out.

Apart from that, a good entry.

The FM

This could be a really good article, but I agree with FM that the alliusions to the orig. guide were wearing. One thing that is noted in the Writing-Guidelines is that forcibly trying to be humourous can be well... trying.

Basically I agree with Felonius Monk, and S'pe;lug:x, that GuideML would certainly improve this, and the h2g2 references are excessive.

Additionally, you mention that "In the UK for example an Air Observer Corps was formed and latterly its members would have played an important role in the event of a nuclear attack occurring against the United Kingdom."

It isn't clear how in a nuclear attack Plane Spotting would be useful, as you don't explain, how. Also you mention that AOC, but don't mention why they were set up, or when. I suspect that they would have been formed in one of the 2 world wars, but you do not say. Also I don't think that the word 'latterly' adds anything to the sentence, when "...its members would have played an important role...", seems to express what you mean just as well.

I think this has the making of a good edited entry, although I don't think this is ready yet.

One comment of Silverfish's comments: GuideML is *NOT* as necessity, even though many scouts act like it is, clear formatting can still be done in plain text.

For example

THIS IS A HEADING
=================

This is a subheading
--------------------

This is a footnote[1].

To Scouts: surely asking for GuideML can put people off? Exactly what we don't need.

----
[1] Hello World!

Clearly details of the Air Observer Corps could be expanded, but preferably in a separate entry by a former member of the Corps. I simply find it interesting that a Corps that originated with a defensive requirement to visually identify threats from the air, developed within a generation, into something that was effectively a secret service waiting to assist survivors of nuclear attacks particularly those intended to have retreated to official bunkers. How much of that AOC history is in the public domain I do not know.

The messages advocating GML strike me as somewhat authoritarian. How long does that language take to learn and what would be the benefits to readers of altering the format of entries such as this one to GML?

Hi sidsaucer

As a non-IT type person, I can guarantee that GuideML *is* easy and does not have to be learnt as such. I just crib from http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/alabaster/SubEditors-GuideML whenever I need it.

As a scout, looking at whoever knows how many entries a month, a clearly formatted entry can make the difference between your entry being given the attentionit (hopefully) deserves. The more it looks like a standard edited entry, the easier it is for us to envisage picking it. It's not that we're lazy (necessarily!) just busy busy volunteers.

Having said that, the point made above about using other forms of layout if you don't want to give the GuideML a try are just fine.

Hope this helps

i like the entry quite a bit except for the multiple attemps to be funny and the multiple mentions of DNA's books. if that was taken care of, i would go for it right away

Seeing that there *is* an Edited entry 'The Answer to the Ultimate Question...' (guess what's in there), I'll go for it

Congratulations!

This entry can be spotted on the ComingUp page because it's on it's way into the Edited Guide now . In brief, you'll have to wait another couple of weeks before it'll gently land on the frontpage becuase there'll be some fine tuning from a SubEd plus another one from the in-house team. However, the course is set!


( for the pilots!)

Bossel