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

No.

I disagree with Pin on this for a bunch of reasons. Heree's one to start with: one of our strengths is teaching people how to write, another is teaching them how to subedit, and a third is teaching them how to BE subedited. We fail in those areas if we explicitly makethe author the ultimate arbiter.

I think that people are more willing to accept authorial arbitration on personal pieces, so if the guide explicitly accepts them, then a lot of the problems and frustrations Pin had go away.

Ben

Yes. But I don't believe that reviewers, sub-editors and site editors should be able to jam their changes down an author's throat. I think that in 99% of situations, writers will be able to work happily and reasonably with reviewers and editors. But in the case of an irreconcilable difference, the author should be given the option to withdraw his or her work, or allow the change to be made. We cannot force the author to attach his or her name to something that he or she cannot abide.

This is a version of the policy that the Gem Polishers used, which if I recall correctly (and I may be mistaken), you articulated.

Also, I think that it's significant that that sentence about writers being the ultimate arbiters is within the context of a point saying that we need to consider the suggestions of others.

I've added an inelegant place-holder sentence there to make this clear, until I can find a better way of explaining this concisely.

>> But in the case of an irreconcilable difference, the author should be given the option to withdraw his or her work, or allow the change to be made. We cannot force the author to attach his or her name to something that he or she cannot abide.

That works for me. I think.

In practice I think that there's a dufference between the fact-pieces, which tend to be more collaborative, and the personal pieces which are personal.

I suspect we both sit somewhere near the mid-point of this debate even though we are articulating it from opposite ends.

Well, in practice perhaps. But for me, my fact-pieces are usually solo, and in some cases I would describe them as being personal. For a few of my factual entries (very few) I have become very protective of them through the long process of researching, writing and rewriting them. I can understand when authors are unwilling to see changes made that they do not approve of. Fact-pieces can be personal as well, and I think that we need to allow for that, even if it makes me sound like a bit of a prima-donna.

There's a quote I have at the top of my Edited Guide Writing page from John Steinbeck:
"Our species is the only creative species, and it has only one creative instrument, the individual mind and spirit of a man. Nothing was ever created by two men. There are no good collaborations, whether in music, in art, in poetry, in mathematics, in philosophy. Once the miracle of creation has taken place, the group can build and extend it, but the group never invents anything. The preciousness lies in the lonely mind of a man."

I'm sure I could be dissuaded from agreeing with that quote completely, but I think it's an interesting statement.

I'd point Steinbeck at the King James Bible, but it is the exception.

So here's the question; are we at our most valuable when we *teach *writing / subbing / being subbed? Or when we provide a vanity platform for people who should perhaps be blogging?

My early pieces here make me wince, and I still find some of Pin's more purple stuff unreadable, though he swars blind it's his best work.

This is a post for your philosophy thread, and I'll post there when I am on a device with a decent keyboard.

You are doing stirling work, btw, and if I had to vote noe, yes or no, on these guidelines it would be "yes"

... vote now ...

No, I agree that Steinbeck's statement is too strong. There's a lot of really wonderful collaborative stuff on h2g2. Some it has been produced by you. I do think that some of the things we think of as collaborative are very much shaped by the intention of the editor or compiler.

I look at it differently. I think h2g2 is a place for writing. Especially good writing. If a gifted writer comes to h2g2 without the need for honing his craft much - great, let him share his writing. If a writer comes to h2g2 that needs more work, then also great, let's teach him what we know about the process and hopefully he'll someday produce something great (and if not, it was worth a try). I don't think h2g2 needs to confine itself to working with unskilled or moderately-skilled writers. Or else who would teach them, and where would they go when they improve?

I agree that we are getting into the realm of philosophy. But the new writing guidelines should, I believe, be perhaps the clearest reflection of h2g2 philosophy, as for instance the Declaration of Independence is (supposedly) to my country.

Was that a collaborative piece?

I am loving the debate and energy here at the moment, and am thrilled how it's revitalised the place.

The Declaration collaborative? Not exactly.
I only brought that up because I was just studying its Lockean roots today . Actually, the Declaration is an example where a horde of editors removed some of the most interesting bits. They also improved it here and there. "we hold these truths to be self-evident" was "we hold these truths to be sacred and undeniable" before Franklin patted Jefferson on the head and said, "Let's see that quill", or the 18th century equivalent.

Anyways, I have edited this entry a bit to make this point more clearly.

I like the new verssion better - it's bang on if you ask me.

Now... How about something suggesting that simpler is better, that purple prose is self-indulent and tends to be unreadable,, and that its better to use muscular verbs and nouns than flabby ones bolstered with adverbs and adjectives? (That sentence being a good example of how NOT to do it!) You know the stuff: break up your longer sentences into short ones; avoid saying the same thing twice; organize your piece in a logical order, start with your main point and explain it so someone who reads only the first line of each paragraph still gets the outline of the whole; eschew obfuscation; review, rewrite, simplify, rinse and repeat. Essential for the factual pieces, and good advice for the personal ones.

Hmm. I think that is definitely too specific in terms of rules, and maybe too specific in terms of the types of suggestions I was trying to make. Because of the huge variety of entries that could be held against these suggestions, there are going to be some that don't fit with the "simpler is better" idea, for instance. Very specific suggestions like that lend themselves to misinterpretation, which is why I'm trying to keep this list of rules and suggestions down to the bare minimum.

I think of this list of suggestions more as principles for Approved Entries, rather than an actual guide on how to write better. I don't think it would be inappropriate to link to a more detailed guide to the writing process though.

Yep, a separate guide on how to write well, perhaps with links to some text books would be good.

The trouble with writing guidelines is that they constrain possibilities.

There need to be a few clear rules, Two IMO, and you've got them both here - no plagiarism and no hurtful intent. The important point to remember is that every stipulation is a constraint, and so there should be as few as possible, enforcing only those things that are indisputably necessary.

The suggestions here are well meant and pretty well expressed. I agree with them in content but not in context. Great writing that completely contradicts them is possible, and we want to receive it, don't we? The idea of a "how to write well" guide is probably going too far (who's good enough or indeed arrogant enough to contribute it, for starters?). Ben's idea about stipulating simplicity is certainly going too far. An adherence to it would constrain the stylistic scope of the Approved Guide, and probably also the range of Entries.

Maybe the needed 'long' document, the one with the suggestions, isn't a set of writing guidelines at all. It's a set of reviewing guidelines. There was once an idiot set that said you shouldn't write in the first person, remember? The strange thing is that if they'd flipped it round, it would have become reasonable. Reading in the first person is the thing we don't need.

Am I wrong in believing that writers need to be afforded the fullest freedom, whereas editors need to be reined in and obliged to justify their intervention?

Personally (!) I view guidelines like these loooong and sometimes intermittend white things on the road: They give you a line to guide you along the road but you have the option to ignore them.

Translating to Writing for the Guide I think of the Guidelines as optional and I have the option to ignore them and write what I like and how I like.

The guidelines help one to get a piece past the Editors so said piece does not get rejected because it contains unsuitable content or is a blatant copy of someone else's.

Rules on the other hand help the Editors decide when to reject an Entry for the EG, like "No racism allowed".

So... imo Guidelines good & helpful, Suggestions are fine & informative, Rules are needed.

Cheers!
Martin
---
I know where my towel is. It says so on the towel.

I think we fundamentally agree, Pin. I agree that there could be examples of great writing that contradicts these suggestions. That's why they're very consciously called suggestions, rather than rules or guidelines. Do you not think this is explicit enough?

There is nothing in these guidelines that unreasonably constrains the writer. The writer is free to submit anything, as long as it is original and abides by the House Rules. Like you, I think that those are entirely reasonable constraints.

The suggestion part is just as much, and probably more, directed at reviewers and editors. They're "writing guidelines" only because (1) the writer must be aware of the criteria that editors (reviewers and volunteers are effectively editors in the absence of a large staff presence) judge their work by for inclusion, or else rejection and acceptance are arbitrary and (2) because the word "writing" refers to both the noun and verb sense. Perhaps "Editorial Guidelines" is better?

The writing guidelines are, and always have been, more useful for reviewers and editors than writers. When do you see people referencing the writing guidelines most in PR? When they're trying to exclude something. I think that is not the case (at least not as much) in this formulation. The battles of exclusion are going to have to be fought on the basis of an entry's merits, rather than on its adherence to a prescriptive list of checkboxes.

I also think, Pin, that the text about the frame of "intention" regarding the Suggestions shows that the writer is in control, because he or she controls his or her intention.

For instance, rather than saying "Entries should be at a reasonable length" (with the inference that they shouldn't be long) I wrote "length should be appropriate to your entry's purpose" and gave an example of a short and long entry.

If you don't think these guidelines give authors "the fullest freedom" then I think you must have lost it, finally

As I recall, I lost it circa 1973, in the back of a Cortina. Things have been much better since then.

No, it's not the writers' freedom I'm worried about. Writers will write what they want to write. I'm worried about giving a pedantic kind of reviewer licence to constrain.

I'm not knocking you, Jordan. I admire what you're doing here. I broadly agree with what you propose. It's just that I don't understand why we need to specify what we're looking for, when we seem to agree that what we want most is something we couldn't have anticipated.

So what if they do? You want to set the bar high and claim that "excellence" should be the only factor, (have I got that right?)But how is excellence to be determined? And by whom?

Or let me flip this around at you.

How would YOU re-draft what Jodan has here, bearing in mind it is a Help Page, not a manifesto, and intended to help people write (and reiview, and critique) material for the Guide.

I'm not sure that this does specify what we're looking for. If anything, I think it restricts the pedantic reviewer from enforcing arbitrary rules, and forces him to focus on real things.

Another advantage is that it gives the necessary illusion of consistency. Whether something is good enough will always be a subjective, and probably relative, judgment. Having a set of consistent principles will prevent the cries of "clique!" we heard so loudly during PROD, for instance.

I would say that the purpose of the Suggestion section is a combination between focusing reviewers, providing a set of criteria for writers to be able to defend their work against (or giving the illusion of consistency) and providing a simple way to orient new writers within the site.

Of course, I do think that the most important thing about this is the stuff it leaves out.