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

Entry: Recumbents recommended - A891830
Author: Recumbentman - U208656

This is written in the first person, the writer hopes that won't be held against him.

Recumbents have so much going for them an entry is surely called for.

Hello recumbentman, , and welcome to peer review.

I haven't been over to your space, but your posting seemed to suggest this is your first time in peer review.

I glanced at your entry, and in answer to your voiced fear that the first person could be held against you, Don't Panic! The site as a whole welcomes all kinds of writing, personal opinion, creative writing, even downright evangelical ranting! I'm not referring to you, you understand.

However, this forum (just the bit they call PR) is intended for entries that fit the much disputed Writing-Guidelines, and one of the key ones states that PR entries should not contain first person references.

Don't Panic! err... still.

PR is just for entries that the author wants to go into what's called the Edited Guide. That means it's been through PR for at least a week, been 'picked' by a volunteer, been sub-edited by a volunteer, that edited copy been read and approved by someone *actually* paid by the beeb to work on this project, and finally appeared on the Front Page as one of the entries published each day on the front page.



so, i shall try to read this some time soon. sorry, it's late, .

but don't start hacking at it just yet. Some great writing wouldn't fit the guidelines, and there are other possibilities. Wait and see.

cya
spiff

This could easily be adapted to meet the guidelines - changing lines to say things like "experience has shown that skids can be controlled with ease etc." Or "Riding a recumbent in traffic one may be concerned about visibility.." and the such like. Easily achieved an d worth the effort to bring this article to a wider audience.

ok, *now* i've actually read the entry; i really like it.

I'm no cycling enthusiast, far from it, but i love the style of this and wouldn't like to see it sacrificed on the alter of the edited guide.

Not that i don't agree, McKay, that it could all too easily form the basis of one or more excellent guide entries. BUT...

I personally recommend that if that is what you choose to do, make a new entry as a separate 'PR' version. and keep what you have written here. You personal style is worth keeping, so do a before and after. And see which one you prefer afterwards.

Don't get me wrong, if you are interested in getting this piece into the edited guide, you should have no trouble. But you'd probably need to change it in various ways. that's the way pr is.

anyway, take all i say with a pinch of and see what others think. I think you'll get a good response to this...

I like the entry too!

As others have said, to make the Edited Guide, the entry needs to be in the third person, which can easily be done. You have two options (at least!). You can write it as a straight third person entry, or you could put quotes round your personal experience and do it as a blockquote.

I expected the entry to be from Just zis Guy, who has written loads of bike-related entries. Nice to see this from you, Recumbentman.

There is the famous quotation heard fairly recently (last few months) of cyclists being 'hooligans in lycra'. Might be worth searching on.

Done it for you!

http://www.realcycles.com/news.php?newsid=59

Jeremy Clarkson, who else? - and the 'hooligans in lycra' is part of the response. He called them Lycra Nazis!

Great Entry, actually. There's the first person thing that needs to be sorted out... Oh, and the title, I wouldn't guess it's about bikes.

HELL

Hi Recumbentman,

As the Guidelines suggest, the reason we don't like first-person stuff is that Edited Guide Entries aren't meant to be one person addressing their audience - rather it's (and apologies for such a tacky description) a 'collective consciousness' sharing its knowledge. 'There is no "I" in team' and all that gubbins

But with a little rewriting (and it has to be said, use of GuideML), most of your problems here can be sorted without affecting the style too much. Your first paragraph can easily be kept as it is if you Blockquote and italicise it - put at the start of the para and at the end of it.

- 'mine sits me up at the...' can be changed to 'This Researcher's own model sits the rider on a level with a car' or something similar.

- The paragraph 'Disadvantages: not great ... it is the shape of the future.' Again, if you Blockquote and Italicise this, you can probably leave it as is.

- 'I keep one there permanently...' to 'This Researcher keeps one there ...'

- Next para can again be Blockquoted and Italicised.

- 'I’ll get round to one eventually' Not sure this adds anything to the entry. I suggest removing this.

- 'Diamond frame bikes ... present protection arrangements.' There is a little too much opinion which (I feel) goes against current safety advice (this would be a good point to link to the entry on Bicycle Helmets - A694596). This could be rewritten as follows:

'Diamond frame bikes might make you feel distinctly vulnerable. You should, as a matter of safety, wear a helmetSome cyclists have pointed out that the wearing of helmets should become mandatory for pedestrians as well.; much can also be said for habitual vigilance and a pair of good rain trousers.'

... and so on. If it's a small use of the first person, a simple change to 'This Researcher' or 'Some people' will do. If it's a hefty quote, either from yourself or other sources, the Blockquote and italic tags are better.

Final suggestion would be to reword the final paragraph. While we're very cautious about commercial links, we do allow them if they link to an informative page (as this does). This might be presented better under a 'Further Reading' header, just to spell out that this link is for informative, not commercial, purposes.

I know some people initially find these guidelines a little restrictive, but they do make the Edited Entries much easier to read and identify with. I think your entry here has bags of potential, and I hope it finds its way into the Edited Guide soon. Any questions, please don't hesitate to ask them here

All the best,

Jimster

How about a link to the pashley website http://www.pashley.co.uk/ The PDQ is gorgeous and used to come in a trike version (with 2 wheels at the front and a handbrake http://www.sha.u-net.com/pashley.gif ). Its also quite unusual among recumbants in having a handlebar that lifts out the way, classic recumbants have steering underneath the riders seat (which puts some people off)

Might be worth mentioning the price difference which I guess is the main reason that recumbants are so rare (the pashley site says £899 for the PDQ and trike versions come in at ~£2000)

I have seen a couple of the recumbents about in Australia, though very rarely on the roads .

Mostly I saw them on cycle tracks in parks , though I emphasise this is only my experience of them .

By the way, at least one of them was obviously not commercially made.

All of the above

Thanks for the feedback! I welcome all the suggestions above and will go for a radical rewrite. The original version will remain in my Personal Space.

http://www.bikefix.co.uk has a lot of good reading material about recumbents, I would particularly direct the curious to "Winning Forbidden" http://www.bikefix.co.uk/forbidden.html

Good luck with the rewrite - it should be well worth it!

Phew! Done it (the rewrite). Hope it satisfies most of your helpful gripes. It's now renamed Cycling: the future is laidback; but I think it retains its identifying number.

~Recumbentman

I like the new title - although I just did a quick guide search for 'recumbent' and it didn't pick up your article for some reason. There might be a technical reason for this (it might be because it's in Peer Review) and if so hopefully someone will tell us.

I just worry that, having advised you to change the title to make it more accessible to people who don't know what recumbents are, that you'll now miss out on anyone searching the guide specifically FOR recumbents! I should have kept me big mouf' shut!

The search did, however, pick up a bit in A386138 (Green Open Spaces in Urban Areas) that mentions that all kinds of hybrid and unusual bicycles can be hired in Battersea Park, London, including recumbents - maybe this might be worth linking to?

What you've written is again very good - so my main suggestions are connected with the order that the different parts of the article come in rather than anything about the text itself...

As someone who's interested in recumbents but has never rode one, I think it might give the best overall picture if you could group together all the bits that explain what a recumbent's like to ride right at the start to really give the reader a feel of the recumbent experience... after the first paragraph when you've explained what a recumbent actually is, you could follow it with the "Steering", "What's it like to ride?" and "Uphill struggle" paragraphs, and then go on to "Advantages" from there (incidentally there's a typo in that heading, but that's easily fixed!).

This would mean that you'd finish with the "History" section and the line about banning recumbents from racing setting bicycle design back for decades would be a great closing line.

My other idea about the order of the thing is in the "Advantages" section to maybe put the "Safety" section before "Speed" and "Comfort"? This is just because the "Advantages" paragraph ends talking about safety so it'd flow better if the "Safety" section came right afterwards.

Finally, just a pedantic quibble about footnotes - I noticed that if the reader hasn't stopped to read the first footnote about the Pashley PDQ being the basis for references in the article, then it does seem a little odd the first time you talk about a 'PDQ'. My suggestion to get round this is that you move the footnote to be attached to the first place that you mention the PDQ. So, just assuming you were to adopt my idea of grouping all the stuff about what one's like to ride at the front of the article, the first reference would be in "What’s it like to ride?" and you could say "an advantage of the Pashley PDQ, for example," and put the footnote just after 'PDQ'.

Of course, I won't be offended if you choose to ignore all of that lot - it's not like I'm the world's greatest authority, after all.

Whatever you end up with, I'm confident this is going to become an excellent entry.

Cheers,
Number Six

Thank you Number Six, I am truly in your debt -- without overdoing it, it is wonderful to have someone not only read your stuff but think about it as well!

You have a point about the order -- it still shows signs of the chatty article it began life as. I'll get to it in a day or so.

I agree about the footnotes too. I don't think I've done the external links the best way, more research in the Clinic needed.

It's looking very good now Recumbentman, and Number Six makes some ecellent points there

Can I give you a few tips on formatting your entry?

The very first header ("Recumbency recommended") in the entry isn't really necessary; indeed, having one right at the beginning of entry is discouraged in the guidelines - "Please don't start an Edited Entry with a header: having a preamble introduction is a nicer way to ease the reader into the topic." <./>SubEditors-Style</.>

Secondly, try putting a ..... tag at the beginning and end of each paragraph - it'll introduce an extra line between the headers and the text.

And thirdly, you may want to see what the entry looks with subheaders instead of headers. This is a purely personal view however, not an h2g2 guideline - I find that big clunky headers on very small paragraphs make an entry look a little too busy. It's your entry though, and you should do with it as you wish.

Yeah . . . getting there.

This is shaping up to be a really terrific entry, Recumbentman.

You can't link to an unedited entry, however (you might put the small unedited entry about the Dubin bus driver 'I see no bicycles' in a blockquote in the body of this entry).

There is bound to be stuff on the net about the ordinary car/bus/lorry driver's inability to see anything that isn't box shaped. There's a technical word for it which escapes me at the moment, but it's something to do with drivers looking for specific shapes and 'deleting' non-conforming shapes like bicycles and motor-bikes (or powered two wheelers - P2W - as they're know in the road safety world). I'll do a search at work and see if I can get a good link for you.

Zarquon's Singing Fish -- in reply to your earlier bit about "hooligans in Lycra", there was also an article by Tony Parsons in the Daily Mirror, 5 August 2002 called "I just don't Lycra these cycle yobs" and the phrase "Lycra louts" turned up in some Irish newspapers just after that; there were some editorials in angry response to the proposed EU introduction of the Dutch-style "driver takes responsibility by default" rule in cycle/motor contact cases.
~R