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

Entry: Legionnaires’ Disease: A Case of Modern Technology Turned Against Mankind - A872769
Author: Farlander - U206300

hi, poured blood, sweat and tears into this article. (wrote it because people just weren't paying enough attention to this topic and dismissing it as 'unimportant'. besides, it happens to have something to do with what i'm researching in the lab) do you think i should separate part 1 and part 2 into two different articles, or keep them together? thanks.

What a cracking piece!

I knew close to nothing about L.D. until I read 'The Coming Plague - newwely emerging diseases in a world out of balance' by Laurie Garrett, and your work outperforms it

You could link to A506396 Gram Stain Technique and most probably a wealth of others.

BTW, links in GuideML can be done like this:
Gram Stain Technique for h2g2 links,
some web site for external ones.


I see there already *is* an edited entry in the Guide:
A378498 Legionnaires' Disease
and the Guide's policy is to have *1* entry per subject

However (and although it's from one of the most prolific writers here), it leaves out a lot of the information you give. F46792?thread=61308 (hanging off there) has all the questions:
"Is it contagious? How do you catch it? What's the incubation period? How serious is it? Can it be cured? What treatments are available? Why isn't this article finished?" - These questions are answered now!

I'll try to get Jimi X here, I'm sure there'll be a way for this one to make it!


Bossel

Oh, and to answer your question: I'd say keep them together and (as you already did) indicate where the Eds can split it. This way, it'll get recommended in one piece but you'll get two entries for the price of one. However, we'll have to resolve the collision issue first.

Hi there,

Very interesting article, but very dense. I'd split it into two articles. I think that each part is nicely self-contained and both stand on their own pretty well.

Also, if they were separate entries, you could perhaps fill the first part out a bit more. It's a great story, but there are times when I glazed over slightly. It reads as if you set out to tell a really good story, but got weighed down with too many facts and people after a while.

For example:
The 'scene' where McDade leaves the party and goes to do some more work, discovering the bacteria in the process, is excellent - really vivid, almost filmic.

However, I tended to lose track of which organisation (or acronym) did what, when and why. And sometimes I'm not sure who is important in the story and who isn't. For instance, the CDC is introduced near the beginning as just one of a long list of organisations, but becomes quite important later in the story, whereas we never hear about the New Jersey Health Department again. Therefore, I'd focus on the role of the CDC. I also like your idea of the CDC starting out as heroic and failing in the eyes of the public - its a good character!

I hope I'm making sense. These are obviously minor gripes with what is an excellent entry!

Gubernatrix

Gubernatrix, keeping them in one piece and splitting them in the last stage of the editing process is the established procedure for big articles Otherwise it would cost *two* (or more) Scout's picks to get them into the system, they would need to be picked on the same day and extra care would be required to send them to the same sub.

thanks . will see what else i can find and rectify. on the other hand, i might want to watch my back just in case there are some cdc people lurking around...

oh, and speaking of which, maybe i should wait and see what becomes of the article first...

I agree this is an excellent entry.

I also think it needs some tidying-up in various respects. Nothing major, you understand - just to make it that bit more suitable for this readership, that bit more readable, and that bit clearer in structure. And - dare I say it? - that bit more concise.

I'm not going to make a whole long list of suggestions here, just mention two or three to give you an idea.

For example, you refer to something called EIS but don't say what it is.

There's also some unnecessary repetition in the entry: for example, you repeat a definition or explanation of a microphage.

There are also some highly scientific-sounding expressions which I am pretty sure could be simplified for the layman without catastrophic loss of precision or distortion of meaning. For example, you write at one point: "failed to identify the elusive etiological agent responsible for this peculiar disease" which I think just means 'failed to find the cause'. We already know that it's a disease, it's peculiar, and the cause is elusive. And besides, you'd probably hate having imposed on you the quaint British spelling 'aetiological'.

I don't think the scholarly references are needed here, so cutting those out would reduce overall length.

In this and other ways the entry could be tightened up and reduced a bit in length, such that it could go in as a single entry. I for one would prefer this, because then all the related information would be kept together in one place rather than dispersed.

So I do hope that this entry will be picked for the Edited Guide, and you can then work with the allotted Sub-editor on honing and polishing.

Meanwhile, if you have the time I suggest you go through it for expressions that can be simplified, and repetitions, and play around with the order in which the elements of the story appear. Check that whatever needs to be explained has been explained, but concisely and only once. Stuff like that.

One other thought. You write: "1976 was not a good year for the medical community. It started in January with an influenza epidemic which claimed the life..." Well fair enough, it wasn't a good year for medics, but it wasn't a particularly brilliant year for the soldier at Fort Dix or the US population at large either. All I'm saying is that you are not writing here for a medical community (which is perhaps what you are more used to writing for) and it would be good to think more in terms of an educated lay readership and pitch it accordingly.

Congratulations on an excellent entry. My comments here are really minor, and do feel absolutely free to use, abuse or ignore them as you wish.

Bels

Great entry

I agree with Bels' point about the scholarly references not being needed here, at least for the majority of readers...

However, some readers might well appreciate the inclusion...
Could the references be included in a thread attached (subject line: *Bibliography* maybe?) after it has been edited, then those who really want that info can get it

six7s

If the references were in a thread (or a separate entry, for that matter) readers would have to click back and forth, or have two windows open.

One possibility would be to incorporate the existing footnotes into the main body, and put the references into footnotes. I think that could possibly work better. Of course some of the references are web links, which could also go into the text.

Another possibility would be to put each remaining reference at the end of the appropriate paragraph.

Just some odd thoughts here - it really needs looking at in depth.

You mean I actually defined 'macrophage' *twice*? I guess I didn't proofread it as thoroughly as I thought I did. Will give it another once-over and try to smooth out the technical bits. Thanks for pointing that out - I know it's rather verbose and erm, bossily scientific. (writing scientific papers tends to have that effect on you)
Am not sure what to do with the references, though (any ideas, anyone)? On the one hand, it *would* make more sense to, as you suggested, bung everything in the footnotes; on the other hand, I've had it drilled into me never to put references and footnotes together. (and even though for most people, the 'scholarly references' are not needed, I think I'll keep them in there for people who are doing semi-serious research on this subject so that they can look up the papers and books for themselves ) I guess papers and electronic media don't go very well together.
Thanks for coming by and reviewing my article, and thanks for your positive input!
Cheers.

You mean I actually mis-spelled 'macrophage' as 'microphage'? I guess I didn't proofread my post at all.

>Am not sure what to do with the references, though (any ideas, anyone)? On the one hand, it *would* make more sense to, as you suggested, bung everything in the footnotes;

No, I didn't suggest that.

And the question of references is not because this is an electronic medium, but simply that h2g2 is not a learned professional journal. It is for lay people.

Something else you could try is using A links for the references. For example, I do this in A834383, where in addition to a few footnotes there's an Appendix which is rather long for a footnote, so I've put an A link in the main body, and return links in the Appendix to get you back to where you were.

I have to say, however, that I've no idea whether this way of working it will be approved for the Edited Guide.

Er... you mean we can actually do anchors with GuideML? I thought that wasn't 'approved' GuideMLly - ie that it won't be supported. But I tried yours and it did... how do you do anchors in GuideML? Is it the same as HTML?
Erm, yeah, I know this is supposed to be for the layman, but my scientist ego is hoping that people who are doing a minimal amount of research for their projects will stumble upon my articles, and will want to know where I got all the info from, so I guess the ref has to stay. But yeah, maybe I could link them the way you did... or maybe link to another page (not submitted for review) that will have the full list of refs. Do you think that would work?
Thanks for coming by so many times . Maybe I should mention that I have another article out? It's A876756... I think. It's about Flesh-Eating Bacteria. (six says I'm being morbid, and that he doesn't dare to leave his house now )

In the Edited Guide, if you link to another entry, that entry must also be in the Edited Guide.

I think the best thing to do in your case is to unfootnote the existing footnotes, and put your refs into footnotes, except for the ones that are just links, which you can link in the main body text or using the tag. It may mean repeating some links in more than one footnote, but hey, that's life.

A876756 seems to be a table of definitions used in another entry, but there's no link to the other entry

aargh i meant A876701. sorry. a bit wolly-headed today.

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