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

I'm calm, Jimster.

Although I could get very excited by the idea that the EG might one day obviate the need for the UnderGuide. That would be brilliant. Before _you_ get excited , no, I don't think that's what you were suggesting.

My problem here is the idea of using suitability for the UG as reason for exclusion from the EG. That I am calmly certain I don't want to contribute to.

If we stay with the situation where the UG only comes into consideration once it's been decided an entry is outside the EG's scope then I'm ok with it. Ok, though often regretful, as I believe as firmly (and calmly) as I ever did that the lines drawn around the EG are too tight for h2g2's long term health and potential.

All of which is distracting from this PR thread.

I cannot understand what's wrong with reconstructions - every illustration of life pre, oh, a few centuries ago, is reconstruction isn't it? Is reconstruction in itself, a problem?
Waz

We will only ever encourage contributions towards the Post and the UnderGuide if we a) believe them to be unsuitable for the EG, and b) believe them to have some merit that might be of interest to other h2g2 groups. There are few subjects that won't be suitable for the Edited Guide, but a wide amount of presentation choices and approaches.

Well, at least you’re addressing me directly now, Jimster.

Every six months, yeah. I write these things because I enjoy writing them. I post them to PR because I still believe you’re wrong, and that you’re holding back what ought to be a marvellous project.

These pieces are not all the same. The dramatisations were things like Gunson or Lee or Dadd. Nothing in Orgreave is dramatised. It all happened, and moreover all happened just as described. There is no exaggeration, and to call it a sensationalist account is denial.

If this isn’t EG-fit, then you’re backing us into sterile Wikipedia territory. Worse, you’re applying censorship based on political expediency, and that’s contemptible.

You say it might be OK for the EG if I cited the sources. You’re a journalist (you’ve said so) : you don’t need reminding, then, that sources who ask not to be identified must be respected. If you say that h2g2 is different, then that’s only because the journalists can’t confide in an editor. So your objection is tantamount to an admission that h2g2 is prone to pretend sources since it already suffers from pretend editors.

I think the light bulb Entry is inferior because I put no effort into it. Everyone should write as well as they can, and I didn’t. I wrote it because you asked all Scouts (and all Aces, but interestingly you didn’t ask the Miners) to write a piece for PR that week. I did what I was asked to do. I got no satisfaction from doing so.

You asked for us to write for PR that way, since these are fading days. It seems our numbers are dwindling. It seems the quality of writing is dwindling too. And yet you seem ever more intolerant of my efforts to write the best Entries I can. I’ll admit to being a little big-headed, but I think I can probably by now claim to have written as many of h2g2’s truly distinctive Entries as anyone. And yet you acknowledge no place for the best of them.

I don’t think you even read them very carefully, Jimster. You keep making comments about purple prose, for example. Regardless of the style I choose, the prose is always purple. You shouldn’t make editorial judgements without very thorough and open-minded reading. And if you think my writing is too opaque or too long, then you’re allowing the constraints of the system to dictate the boundaries of the art. No true critic would ever do that.

I didn’t speculate about your politics, either. You questioned my truthfulness, and made some comments that offended me, and so I demanded (and still do) that you unequivocally accept the factual accuracy of the piece. I think I have a right to expect a more considerate treatment, if for no other reason that I’ve worked a hundred times harder composing the piece than you have in dismissing it. I acknowledge that today’s postings were at least more civil, but it was undoubtedly you who got tetchy first, so please don’t lecture me about invective.

A split Entry (ie basically the plain-face part in PR and the italic-face part in the AWW) might be interesting, but I would contemplate putting in the effort only if you first gave me the undertaking that the two would be linked together if they were recommended for EG and UG respectively. I can’t see any reason why you would reject this suggestion (given that both would then be subject to your editorial control and impossible for me to alter), but I couldn’t understand your objection last time (to Babbacombe Lee) either.

I think that you also need to listen to Waz, Jimster, and reconsider your notions about what the UG is for. The UG was created to compensate for the narrowness of the central project. The Guidelines cost us more than story-telling. They preclude essays based on opinions and theories, poetry, pure humour, conventional journalism and personal narrative. That means that most of what most people choose to read and write for pleasure has second-class status on this site. The UG is scant compensation for the strictures of the EG. If it’s seen to become an excuse for you barring any development of the EG’s scope, then I fear that the UG volunteers might collectively resign.

I think you should change your mind, Jimster. Admit you’ve got it wrong, that this is the time you went too far. Now that it’s been recommended, there is no satisfactory reason you can give why this Entry shouldn’t go into the Edited Guide.

If you don’t budge, that leaves us with the conundrum of whether we do it all again in six months time. I have to say, I’m starting to wonder if there’s any point. Why work so hard and invest so much heart in something that gets summarily rejected out of habituated prejudice?

On the other hand, we could settle this with a vote, Jimster. If people backed me, you’d have to change the Guidelines, of course. If people backed you, I’d have to write nothing more controversial than light bulbs in future. What do you think, Jimster? Are you so sure of your rightness that you’d be willing to run the risk of losing?

I hope you think really carefully before you answer that. Because if you do think about it, you’ll realise that you’d lose either way.

What I'm saying is there is no reassurance from the *material* that the italicised sections haven't been made up, because they read like fiction. That's not the same thing as saying no made it up. It's all about presentation - there are rules of how this kind of material is presented and if you don't stick to the guidelines you run the risk of giving the wrong impression.

For the material you're presenting, you at least need to confirm how you researched it. If the material is available on another site, you link to it. If it's come from personal interviews, then did you record the interviews? Were they just a chat down the pub? You make quite strong accusations of the constabulary in this piece and they *will* need to be substantiated if they're to receive the BBC's stamp of approval.

As it stands, the italicised sections are the bits that can most afford to lose, because they're the its that risk undermining the points made in the rest of the entry. If you wish to keep them, then they should be proper quotes, with at least an attribution that the quotes come from interviews conducted by the author.

As someone who has actually been paid for their writing, I know a little about how to present material. As a former journalist, I know the rules about how to present accusations that are currently unsubstantiated. As someone who has read the BBC guidelines, I know what we can and cannot do.

Look, I didn't make the guidelines. I didn't create the Guide. But the Edited Guide a specific thing and its writing guidelines have been developed for a reason. If you don't like those guidelines, the answer is very simple: don't write for the Edited Guide. If you think that the Edited Guide is restrictive, then of course it is - we don't accept everything because not everything fits our guidelines and not everything is going to be good enough. But if you choose to write in a style that you know will conflict with the guidelines, then that's your choice - just as it's ours not to accept this entry in its current form.

That may seem like a 'habituated prejudice' to you. That's your opinion and you're entitled to it regardless of its accuracy. But in your insistence that the Edited Guide is somehow inferior without your own contributions, you're being unduly dismissive of other writers who are just as passionate as you, but don't seek to bring down the walls around them just to justify their own needs. And it's those authors who I represent every time I remind you of the writing guidelines and try to help you with your writing. If you're writing for yourself then go for it - well done and I hope you continue to enjoy it; if you're writing for others to read it, you need to make some concessions to their own needs when reading something like the Edited Guide.

I've outlined a number of ways in which you could work on this entry further, so I'll leave it there, I think. If you wish for help with this, I'm here. If you wish to hurl accusations of restrictions and censorship at myself and the Edited Guide, then please remove this entry from Peer Review.

Jims

Well, I thought it was maybe fair enough, even though I didn't agree, till the last two paragraphs. I don't have a clue where you got those from.

I've never set myself above other contributors. The Guide's deficiencies are about its rules, IMO, not about the quality of its contributions. I say again, everyone should write to their limits. A corollary for the italics would be that you should be trying to develop the Guide, not trying to police it.

Change is good, Jimster.

See, you've just proved you've got imagination. You made up your own version of what I said. A little mendacious, sure, but creativity of a kind.

Kind of ironic, that, given your criticisms of the Entry. They're still the only criticism I've heard too; a minority of one. So I think the Entry stays put in PR a while yet. It's good for us all to consider these things carefully, and not just blot them out for the sake of a simple life.

Just to qualify my earlier response and to pitch in with my own :

This issue is one that has been festering for a while now. The question is not 'should the Edited Guide have boundaries' but 'what form should they take?' I don’t think that anybody here would disagree that some kind of boundaries are necessary as, let’s face it, they allow the project to have a sense of identity. Our own personal boundaries allow us to define who we are and what we do.

Similarly, the EG needs to state quite clearly what it will and won’t accept otherwise it will degenerate into an online version of 'Anderson Country' (and we all know what happened to that). But to my knowledge, this was done early on and very little, if any, of this mission statement has changed. Should it change? Is there pressure from within or without for change?

Regarding pressure from without, it’s pretty clear to anybody with an interest in this project that it has become adumbrated by Wikipedia. The reason for this is simple: h2g2 uses an old style publishing model hosted on very new media. Wikipedia’s publishing model exploits to a far greater degree the flexibility, speed and resilience of the new media while at the same time allowing almost anybody to contribute in an unrestrained fashion. Of course, the model has disadvantages when compared to h2g2: The major disadvantage is that the distinctive style of each author becomes a palimpsest of styles, all arising from the lack of any clear sense of attribution.

Moreover, I contend that this is now *the* distinguishing feature between the two projects. People who write for Wikipedia generally do so for very different reasons to writing for h2g2. They do so because they want to weave their little strands incorporated into an interlocking web of knowledge.

h2g2 authors, on the other hand, aren’t trying to contribute to an exhaustive coverage of a topic. They may know something about fishing, Renaissance art or a particularly notorious boozer in the Gorbals, perceive this as a gap in the Guide and try to plug it in their own way. They write more for the pleasure of writing and being read than any desire for encyclopaedic coverage. h2g2 is not so much a tapestry with each contributor weaving in their own thread, more a patchwork quilt. Even the patches in a quilt need to fit a pattern, however, and that pattern has, up to now, been a reasonably successful one. It is also one that is comfortable for the vast majority of contributors to h2g2.

I’ll draw another analogy. I’m a Welshman, and something that most of my fellow countrymen get exposed to at some point is the Eisteddfod. I’m not a great fan of this very introspective, backward-looking cultural festival. No beer, everything in Welsh: it would only take a military band playing to complete my vision of Hell. I think that the culture of my homeland has and always has had a lot more to celebrate than choral speaking, harp playing and poetry written in 'cynghanedd' form. I would not, however, sign to up an enterprise that had been going in more or less the same form for a very long time and start to demand that it changed its rules because I thought them restrictive and that they cramped my style. I would look elsewhere for an outlet for my enthusiasms.

However, this is not to say that everything is perfect and nothing should change. I’ve made my own representations in the past about what I perceive to be deficiencies in the remit of the Guide. I think it needs to incorporate other means of representing information, for example. It may have started out as a 'text-based proposition' but if it stays as such then it will *continue* to be put in the shade by other more flexible sites. I have also seen material being approved in PR and stick on the Front Page which is plainly *wrong* and highly misleading, probably because the editors lack the necessary discriminatory skills in certain rather specialised areas. I can't help noting that if the EG is going to mount the defence of being a primarily a factual resource against the incursion of rather more explorative writing that it ought to do so consistently and that it also rigorously excludes New Age crap and other sundry mysticisms masquerading as objective and factual treatments of a subject. Either there are well-defined and rigid boundaries or there aren’t. You can’t have it both ways.

Felonius has hit upon one of my particular bugbears.

It seems The Guide will allow mysticism presented as facts, but not allow factual accounts presented in a whimsical fashion.

That doesn't refer to this account specifically, because I can see the concerns over the reporting of police intention, however a piece like(from memory) Gunson's Ride, which wrote emotively about a factual event.

surly saying that is just saying that some people's belifs are less worthy than somebody elses ?

No it isn't. It's just saying that some beliefs are *demonstrably wrong*, and that the people who write about them as if they were fact are talking total and utter tosh. I cannot prove that Jesus was or was not the Son of God but I'll wager a pound to a penny that I can prove that wearing a quartz crystal has no effect whatsoever on anyone's health.

"They're still the only criticism I've heard too; a minority of one."

Respectfully suggest you re-read the whole thread, others have said it does not meet guide format.
I feel there's an air of hypocrisy in some of the comments relating to 'pushing the boundaries of the guide in order to force change'.
If the BBC impose a change to the h2 site that researchers don't like a campaign gets launched, threads started all over the shop complaining yet here we have researchers themselves trying to circumvent the guidelines to make a particular item fit to their advantage as opposed to whats already an accepted standard.
I stated way back in post 4 that this article reads like a novel, it still does, it's based on hearsay and second hand chit chat.Advice has been given as to how to make it suitable for inclusion in the guide, it's entirely your choice as to whether you act on that advice, in it's current form if it gets picked again it'll will almost certainly continue to be rejected, a waste of everyones time and effort.
ST.

Some good thoughts coming once again. Thanks all.

FM - particular thanks for typically careful comment. I would add that h2g2 cramps no-one's style, so no-one need look for other outlets. There's no frustration on my part, except very occasionaly when nobody accepts the invitation to think. (We are probably alike in a belief that every worthwhile Entry contains such an invitation).

ST - heresay and chit-chat? You're simply wrong. All of this really happened, exactly as described. And the equation of criticism with Guideline compliance doesn't really deserve a reply, except to note that the value of a piece of writing to its reader never has, and never will have, anything to do with arbitrary editorial rules. That means that the only time and effort wasted here, I'm pleased to say, are those of pedants.

McKtD - yep, ironic that, isn't it? Gunson is certainly a better piece of writing than this one. That door was shut, though, so I keep trying different ones.

FM and/or McKtD - do you think I should remove this from PR now?

Pin

If my opinion counts, I think this should stay in PR. I stay firm in my belief that this is suited for the EG and would very much like to see it there. Of course if I keep recommending it and the italics keep rejecting it that's not going to help much, but in any case I don't want to see you give up.

Of course, you could take the information in this entry and make into a more traditional EG entry, but it would be a damned shame to see your hard work go to waste.

Looks like the author does'nt intend to adapt this for the EG and as in it's current form it will not get selected I recommend return to entry.

ST.

I recommend we go with what's still clearly the majority view and leave this here to make people think.

Honestly, ST, h2g2 has to change or it's simply going to die. There are fortunately plenty of people who continue to make imaginative contributions, and if we all co-operate we can reinvigorate what's still a great project.

On the other hand, there are some people just following the edict of the Rump of the Towers. That's taking us nowhere but steadily downwards.

Work out what you want to happen. Think for yourself. Enjoy the Entry (it's quite a good read, actually)

Don't remove this Pinniped, who knows what will happen in the future

I'm not saying the article should'nt be in the eg full stop. I'm saying in it's current format and style it's not eg standard. Some of the content is hearsay, it's a serious topic and should be written about.

For your information I do think for myself and I accept that sometimes change is necessary, never been against change, if it's change for the better rather than convenience.

I'll make no further comments here now. It'll ultimate;y be an editorial decision.

ST.

In the antepenultimate paragraph, we sterile Wikipedians would change "all to easy" to "all too easy".

Quite a few hyphens would be on my hit list ("power-stations", "tax-payer", etc.), but I know that Pinniped is more fond of them than I.

Right, Pinn, this still needs some work doing to it. First off, you should shove in some headers and subheaders which are relevant to what's happening at different points in the entry - readable prose is good, but it helps if it's accessible too. Breaking the entry up into sections makes it more approachable, especially considering the length of this one.

Hi Alex

Thanks.

I've come to see now that section headers would make this easier to interpret, so I'll work on some and add them.

I don't want to change it much, though. I think I owe it to other hootooers to stick it out this time.

Pin

For ease of getting to the entry:

Entry: The Battle of Orgreave - Monday 18 June, 1984 - A9361334
Author: Pinniped - U183682


Well, I look forward to seeing it with the headers in, and I accept that it's your entry and so it's up to you what you do with it.