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

It's that diversity that makes the Guide interesting, though, Elentari. I can see why people would find 'How To Survive...' a great read, but it doesn't do anything for me at all. I'd much rather read about The Vindolanda Tablets. To me, it's the fact that we can do both that makes us unique - in a way, that *is* our voice. It's not in a single Entry but in the whole of what we do.

I think one of the main things people need to remember, and it's been mentioned time and time again, constructive criticism is good. Totally negative criticism is bad not just for new writers but established writers as well. Its really a case of finding that 'happy medium', for every negative, try to either find a positive or at least try and suggest other ways to improve something.
There are sadly, still some folk around who will insist on referring to W*K* and comparing like for like. There's no comparison, we're NOT an encylopedia, how many times have people used W*K* for reference only to discover that details and facts are wrong? At least we know our Edited entries are factually correct, our 'quality control' process is worlds away from W*K*.
We do need more writers, we need more 'output' but these periodic 'outbursts' where everything appears so negative does nothing to encourage new or old writers. (err, old as in established that is )

I was a wee bit worse for wear last night, so I'm sorry for that long rambling rant.

"When MB says, "I know at least one 'old hand' that turns out a stinker of an Entry on a regular basis, but is virtually immune to construction." it makes me think that he should say so in the PR thread."

My problem is not offending people; I think everyone knows that I have no problem with that. Unlike FM, I would rather see a high volume of mediocre entries knowing that - by the law of averages - a few gems have to be turned up every now and then.

B

"It's that diversity that makes the Guide interesting, though, Elentari."

I don't disagree, it's just that the 'quirky' entries are more likely to be unique, whereas a lot of entries (including most of mine) are pulling together info that can be found in other places, whether online or not.

My vision for the guide, for what it's worth, is that someone could be out and about and look up information on the town they're in, that interesting building they've just passed, the name they see immortalised in a statue, as well as things like looking up advice on moving house or so on. There's room for a bit of everything, I think.

>>pulling together info that can be found in other places<<

Well, I think that's called "research"

Though currently, I'm working on entries where the information is there - readily available, even - but not in English!

Yes, of course. I just prefer entries that are a bit different.

Depends on presentation, and which details are put in

BTW, I didn't mean that collaboration is the only true road to salvation just that if a lot of people collect bits and bobs that can't be an entry by themselves, they can evolve into one together.

Nothing against solo entries for the so inspired and inclined

It does, yes.

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Don't beat yourself up Psycorp. There's plenty of others who feel like that and have tried to tell me gently. It took a mallet in the end, but it worked.

Don't get me wrong - I like the constellations entries, but there's only so much that can be said...

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This is what I *don't* get.
Every one stands alone. Every one is different. I have tried to make them as interesting as possible, but I concede defeat simply because I can no longer stand the apathy in PR. If reviewers won't read because they think it's just a list of stars, what chance have I got? B'Elana has already said what won her over. The first step is to read the Entry. I'm honoured I've found a constellation fan in Bel and others who also expressed their pleasure.

Just for comparison purposes, I currently have three entries in PR: Honey and two constellations. Would you do me a favour of reading both and commenting at the entries? Thanks.

A35619537 - Pavo 'the Peacock' -a southern constellation I've never seen, and knew *nothing* about - complete field research. It includes TWO personal research sections by myself, which appear nowhere else on the web. A personal story of a man I knew, no longer with us. Plus a reverend who piqued my curiosity for having discovered 41 supernovae, I contacted him via his website. He just discovered his 42nd, so I added a section on him.

Then there's Virgo, 'the maiden'. A35619500 which includes my own descriptions of 11 Messier objects, and a bio of Beniamin Markarian. Oh and an astrology section, which has raised a laugh or two with the die-hards already in PR.

This is part of the problem of issuing badges for x Entries. There is a presumption that people who write that number of Entries have done so just to bump their numbers up. If I ever get to 75 or 100, are people going to decry my efforts just because I've done a lot of them? If so, why bother? Why should I even care?

Can we just accept that if someone has written 100+ Entries for the EG, that's a pretty bloody good achievement?

The only line I would disagree with in GB's post is 'I concede defeat simply because I can no longer stand the apathy in PR', because I don't think that's personal, but it is true. I think, from a limited recent experience, that PR is quite apathetic. I submitted a Uni project from BobStafford that received just one review in over a fortnight - from GB, in fact. My last effort, 'The Hawthorn', was picked when it was clearly not ready to anyone who read the PR thread. So where GB implies that her Entries have been ignored, I do think that is not uncommon, and it is not her entries alone that aren't being commented on enough.

PR is stagnant. There is not enough reviewing going on, and too much of it is 'add a link to x' or straightening grammar. I'm not interested in adding links at the review stage - I want to know if what I've written is interesting, useful, if I've worked on a different approach if it works and so on. We do need to have opinions back in there; ideas that might help us to improve as writers, ideas on how we might write differently. There aren't many reviewers around, so it needs all of us to encourage and criticise as we see fit. With a guilty look in the mirror, if all of us here simply pledged to subscribe to PR and comment on what we could, we'd be an awful lot better off.


GB:

'There's plenty of others who feel like that and have tried to tell me gently. It took a mallet in the end, but it worked.'

What about all of us that have enjoyed the series, and not stopped to tell you so? I use your series in my amateur attempts to figure out what's what, and I love seeing the snippets of folklore as they appear on he FP. Your enthusiasm shines through in every entry. I for one think the series is amazing, and I'm sure the overwhelming majority who agree but don't post want you to carry on.

It's nice to know that the finished articles are being read when they hit the FP, although if no-one posts it can be disheartening.

My main objective for making the constellation project as interesting as possible was the shock I got when finding the BBC's offerings, take for example:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/space/myspace/constellationguide/eridanus.shtml
talk about basic! I imagined being a schoolchild and looking up a constellation for homework, what would they like to read about that constellation?

A31367856 my article on Eridanus, with the Supervoid http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/6962185.stm which I researched the community for, and included seven different quotes by researchers quoting their take on the mystery.

To be told (singled out, even) that what I have been doing is "boring" and just plugging gaps in a race to complete the project has hurt me deeply. I appreciate what you're saying Rich but I've heard it all before (the criticism) and this was the final nail in my coffin. At the moment I don't even know if I want to stick around, after I've tidied up my loose ends I may feel differently, but we shall see.

I think the problem GB has is that unfortunately the constellation project has quite simply been the only things going through PR at the moment, apart from one or two other Entries by PR regulars from time to time.

So, as with everything you see a lot of, you kind of think - 'ah, not another one' - and I know from my own point of view - 'ah, it's GB - it'll be fine, if there's any problems then it'll be hashed out during subbing'.

And that's most probably the major problem with PR at the moment in that because most of the Entries popping in at the moment are from regulars, the regular Peer Reviewers don't feel they need to comment because they 'know' the quality of the piece is going to be of such a standard that it is comparable to current EG Entries, and past ones.

This is not really what PR is about though is it, we really should be commenting, whether we think an Entry is going to good or not, regardless of who the author is. But that's how a community works though, when you're confident with the abilities of your friends, you don't really bother picking on them...

PR is on a down turn at the moment anyway, as I think many of our contributors are busy. But I am of the opinion that many of the contributors are moving on, they've outgrown h2g2 a little.

So what can we do to draw them back in? Perhaps we really need to look at not the quality of Entries in PR, but how to go about promoting writing Entries in the first place. I will hold my hand up and say I do get bored with seeing biographies of 'celebs' and Entries that appear to be about ephemera,

BUT

it's not the subject matter that is important, it's the writing.

I'm not particularly interested in astronomy, but I know I would rather read a h2g2 Entry about Sirius, than look elsewhere online or in a book because it's going to be be far more accessible and also far more entertaining. And that goes the same for if I want to find out about York Minster (or Uni), or if I want to know the history of the clothes peg.

We need to look past the subject matter and more at the content being offered, the writing behind it. To be put off commenting in PR simply because there's an underlying feeling of 'this isn't Guide material' is, to my mind, rather singular.

We really are at a point now where we can't be fussy about WHAT appears in PR, but we CAN be fussy about how it's presented, and ensure that every author not only improves upon grammar and spelling, but also feels that their own particular voice and interpretation of what they are writing about is valued, but also deconstructed and reconstructed by the PR community in such a way to be entertaining.

I have always felt that h2g2 should be about not just providing information, but doing it in such a way to entertain the reader. If I want plain old info, I will look in an encyclopaedia, if I want something that goes that little extra mile, and makes me smile while I read it, I come here.

I was afraid discussions would single out particular authors, as it has done in the past, I've been a victim of that, Opti has, ST has, and now GB.

Can we please look at the bigger picture, and that is, h2g2 as a whole and how it provides an amazingly unique service, one which I feel is perhaps not accessible enough at present to the wider public. I don't believe we have a problem with the content of PR, I believe our problem lies more in the fact that h2g2 needs more publicity, and updating to allow a wider section of the public interest in it.

I guess what I'm saying is we really need to stop belly-button gazing and turn our attentions to waving out hands wildly in the air and grabbing people as they go by...

I've never quite got the EG/PR thing. I used to meddle. It got me nowhere, so now I watch mostly.

For me, there isn't a project here. Don't we all do enough 'project' in RL, without taking on a thankless, unpaid one here?

As I read them, every Entry is different. The ones that interest me I digest. The ones that might, I dip into. The ones that don't look like they're for me, I maybe don't get round to. My loss, perhaps, but the world's not going to end. Bad scouting? Probably. So is failing to comment on the ones I do read, but I choose to say nothing rather than damn with faint praise. I don't point out irredeemable badness either. You can only give constructive criticism when you believe it'll lead somewhere.

As I write them, Entries are all unique personal challenges. Nothing that went before matters. I don't expect anybody's praise, and I don't provide a service. I don't seek to educate. The entertainment is for me, but you can watch if you like. The (too seldom) collaboration tends to be personal too, built on genuine friendship rather than coincidental proximity.

I happen to think that the best of h2g2 comes about this way, and that h2g2 will thrive or fail by these values. If it needs life-support, it's probably better off dead. Not least because h2g2 won't die. It'll undergo a sea-change, into something new and strange.

I can't wait. OK, I can wait, it's not that big a deal. But the anticipation is there. It's good, it's all , and it's bigger than any single one of us, be we slant, low-number, newbie, whatever.

That's something we should maybe all try and remember when we have the urge to fix it.

I haven't written or commented properly in PR for a while.

Mostly it is RL related - that's not to be avoided.

But PR and how it works is something that we have discussed here over and over and over and we always end up with the same two arguments which run broadly along these lines:

Argument A
PR is where we should hammer out all grammar, typos, punctuation, links etc etc and basically get the entry ready. It is also a place where we should try especially hard to get rid of footnotes.*

Result: 2nd post in a thread could be a long list of "you have a space before a footnote there" "you should use a colon instead of a full stop there" "that's not how you spell necessary" etc etc

Argument B
PR is where we should check facts, offer up links (or improve on links) already provided, discuss the order of the entry and generally get it into a readable shape ready for a sub-ed to do the actual proofreading and editing

Result: it almost never happens.

I've commented before (and it seems largely to have stopped) about people's individual voices being taken out of entries. That could be due to the fact that less people comment.

I can't commit to anything, especially writing since I have been suffering from writer's block for over 6 months now and it's too depressing to contemplate. But I'll try to make more PR comments.

Constructive ones

As for the rest: we really do have to decide what happens at every stage of the process, where the subbing starts and the peer reviewing stops.



*my own personal individual massive bugbear

I must admit to doing the "It's GB, she'll manage" with the Honey entry, too. The PR thread was already so long, and I assumed she was good enough to find whatever little fact about honey it was that I wanted to contribute herself... Sorry, I'll refrain from that kind of thing in future.

The constellation ones *would* be boring if they were simply about Faint Clusters Of Boring Stars. But they're not - she just uses them as a starting point for an excursion into history, folklore, etc...

That makes them more like magazine articles than like encyclopaedia entries. And *that's* where I think the rub is. This isn't an encyclopaedia. It's a collection of snapshots (though there is an update process, albeit slow) of items *of interest to the author that he hopes will be of interest to others as well*. So they can each have their unique voice, a different style, different priorities...



(Sho, just read your comment. That's why I prefer to post "Type A" things in PR - tpye B comments, I'm afraid, will make things sound like me rather than like the author. Though I do find that kind of comment helpful. Huh. Might be time to rethink strategy.)

it's only my opinion, Mala.

I'm well aware of the reason and request for type A comments from my time as a scout. But I think that in times of emergency, which we seem to have now, it would be better to have more of the Bs for a while. Then when we have a better stock of PR entries, we can go back to A and B.

Flippin' heck, I've confused myself now.

Yes, but thank you for pointing out that this is a recursive discussion