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

It's a pity I didn't see this earlier. I'm useless at offering my opinion when the conversation has already reached 100 posts, as every possible opinion has already been expressed.

I will say one or two things, though.

Someone said we should have more original research and less history entries. I wrote 12 or was it 13 entries on the history of Byzantium, and I think they are the best and the most approachable Entries on this subject I've read, by far. You won't find anything interesting in Wiki on Byzantium, although all the facts are there. This was a topic which I was interested in at the time I wrote them, and I think that h2g2 benefited from me writing them. If I hadn't written them, I wouldn't have been working on anything else, since that was the topic I was thinking about at the time. So I will continue to write about whatever is interesting to me at the moment. If it happens to be history, then it will be history.

I approve of the Constellation project, as long as the authors enjoy the writing, and the results are interesting and informative, rather than being just informative. I've told GB that when she feels like it is a chore, she should just stop and do something else.

I haven't been in Peer Review much recently, because I thought it was flowing along nicely. Last time I looked there were more entries in there than there had been in nearly a year. So it appears that Constant Vigilance is needed.

A13970531 for anyone who's never come across that, I can highly recommend it

I recall you complaining to me that people don't read/comment on your entries while they're in PR, Gnomon. Perhaps us "old hands" will see a difference now.

I may have said that, GB, but I don't think I was complaining.

I'll reserve my comments for the new thread, but this is one comment I just can't let pass:
"I have noticed in the past FM's attempts to formulate a one-man Peer Review (oxymoron?) by decrying an Entry or genre of Entries simply because he decided he didn't like them. My personal approach is just to steer well clear of Entries that don't meet my tastes."

Utter cojones, Mu Beta. I didn't like the song analyses because they were dredging up even more uninspiring matter to match a fixed formula. They were also highly cliquey, boring, unimaginative and showed a community far too pleased with itself and which had lost its sense of audience. I didn't think that h2g2 would have been impoverished by the loss of that kind of material then and I don't think so now.

I didn't like your Climate Change rant - sorry - 'entry' because it was *your* opinions solely, without a shred of material evidence to back them up. Even more disingenuous was that you expected them to be treated in the spirit of PR. I treated them in this spirit in which they were posted. Unfortunately for you I had evidence to back up my opinions.

Now that the sad little Fizzy/FM thing seems to have played out (hopefully not for ever), this is maybe the place to get something off my conscience.

I'm certainly not going to defend FM unreservedly. He can be brutal at times, and heartfelt and consistent opinions do not excuse intolerance. If people are minded to shun him, though, maybe they should shun me too.

The most inaccurate things he said in that tirade weren't IMO directed at Fizzy. For instance, he slagged off one of Malabrista's Entries in a way that proved he'd never read more than the title. If that was way out of order, tough, I have to say that his critique of the Drawer was a lot nearer the mark.

If I'd been forced to name the worst Entry I'd read in PR of late, though, I'd have said the Drawer. I thought what FM actually said on that score. I didn't say so in PR, because I had no constructive comment to make, and (maybe) because I'm a coward.

Worse than the inappropriate Newbie two-line bad-DNA-homage we always get in PR? Well, yes. Unfamiliarity is an excuse. Once you're a seasoned EG contributor though, every Entry you write should be a stretch, as good as you can make it.

We did Fizzy no favours back there by treating her like some kind of hootoo Joan of Arc. She's no such thing. She is/was a prolific but otherwise ordinary writer with lots of enthusiasm and a friendly manner. Fizzy is the kind of person hootoo needs a lot of, but as a one-off she became distinctly over-venerated. I think that's what got to FM, though he said it all wrong. He hates/hated a PR that lauds writing that could be better, and that decides quality on the basis of personal relationships.

Let me declare honestly - I deplore that too.

It's a shame we've lost them both. I hope that in each case the itch will draw them back. If they do come back, they will hopefully both change their behaviour a little, and so should we all.

PR is a critical forum, in fact *The* Critical Forum of h2g2. There really isn't any need for fluffy chit-chat there, on a site with plenty of room for all conversational tastes, and with very clearly defined objectives in just a few places.

Nobody here has made a singularly defining contribution, and nobody ever will. It's not that kind of site. The community here is bigger than any of its members. FM was vilified because he thought he could make his own personal rules of conduct: none of us can. On the other hand, my sympathy for Fizzy is moderated by the me-me-me tone of some of her protests. She maybe does believe that her contribution to hootoo is somehow extraordinary, but it isn't. A few of us talked it up, and we all acquiesced. We weren't critical enough, and the Emperor's New Clothes episode was too humiliating for her as a consequence.

Not that FM is the person I'd choose to hear commenting on my own lack of modesty.

It's another case of the twin imposters thing, isn't it? There are no heros or villains here. Pride still comes before a fall, and bullies still get their come-uppance in virtual communities. The sun still comnes up tomorrow too.

For the love of tolerance, can we please have a moratorium on naming specific entries or authors whether present of elvised. It makes it inconvenient when you need an example to make a point, I know. But it has caused strife every time that I'm aware of it happening.

It's an opinion, pailaway.
I hope you're in a minority though.
I can't imagine that the words I used there would cause strife, as you put it.
Who do you think it could conceivably upset? Oh - you're not going to say, are you?

Anyhow, if you think it's as toxic as that, you'd better yikes it, right?

Opinion yes, but not every single thing that comes to mind needs saying.

Here, for example:
>>We weren't critical enough<<

That's a perfectly good observation and a period would have fit perfectly after it. But to follow with:
>>and the Emperor's New Clothes episode was too humiliating for her as a consequence.<<

serves no purpose at all.

If I may just interject a memory and an observation...
When Pin, myself and others sparked the PROD (Peer Review, Only Different) debates, I can recall that I mentioned vaguely that there were certain entries recently picked which were of a lower standard than I would like to see. I decided not to use names or specific entries, for fear of personalizing the debate and because I didn't want to be seen as attacking someone.

Now that Pin shows more courage than I, he is being criticized for that. I do think that in some ways giving specific examples does personalize the question of quality (which is undesirable) but I also believe that what Malabarista said in the other thread is true-

"There's no reason you can't say something needs changing without deliberately upsetting people.

People who can't take *any* kind of criticism - even if it's constructive - shouldn't go into PR."

To me, there seems to be a "damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-don't" condition with regards to discussing the quality of the Edited Guide. If you criticize someone specifically, you're blasted for being rude and counterproductive. If you choose not to criticize someone specifically, you're accused of being an alarmist and you're told that since you choose to provide no evidence of your claims, they hold no value.

Fair enough. It would be one thing to name a specific entry as being an example of something that could have been this, but ended up being that because we didn't give it proper criticism. I would be quite another to name a specific entry as being crap that would be of no interest to anyone.

The problem is that once you name an entry someone else is bound to ask why you didn't like it and keep after you until you finally end up saying you thought it was crap that would be of no interest to anyone. It seems inevitable.

Pin is certainly courageous and while I respect his opinions and thoroughly enjoy his inventive insults I still think that my last post sums up my opinion of where periods should go.

We should agree to differ.

I feel I should further explain one thing, though. "The Emperor's New Clothes" wasn't a throwaway phrase. It was considered, and I think it's the main issue here.

Naked Emperors aren't necessarily contemptible. Imagine a Researcher who considers their own writing to be pretty ordinary, but who's gradually persuaded by peers that it's special. They never quite get over their reservations, so when a critic tells them that their writing's poor, they look to the same peers for validation. Instead of defending the writing quality, however, the peers round on the critic, implying that the bluntness of the criticism is what's wrong, not its content.

How humiliated does that Researcher now feel?

Telling people they're better than they are is very obviously unhelpful in a serious Peer Review forum. It's worse than that, though, because it's ultimately not a kindness. When the boy cried out, we'd all known all along that the Emperor had no clothes.

I assume you're not applying this directly to Fizzy though, Pin.

There are some damn fine Entries in her repertoire: I offer you Margorie McCall, The Hollywood Sign and Size Zero if any evidence were required.

B

You can tell a writer if their entry is not up to scratch, as long as you make suggestions on how to improve it. If the entry is irredeemably bad, there is really nothing to be gained from criticising the entry, as all it will do is make the author feel bad. This sort of an entry is not going to be picked anyway.

If an entry is bad in your opinion and yet it gets picked anyway, then the chances are your opinion is wrong. It may be in a style you don't like but is actually well written. Or it may be about something you think shouldn't be in the guide, but others think should.

I only read the "Drawer" entry once and I'm afraid I don't remember it, so I can't comment on its quality. But it was certainly about a topic which should be in the guide.

Fizzy's best is good indeed.
Which really should have made it easy for a properly-critical PR to bring less good Entries up to the same mark.

I'm not trying to criticise Fizzy, B. I'm saying that IMO the community failed her and itself by affording her inappropriate special treatment.

There are aspects of this we haven't even started on yet, like a tendency for her Entries to be picked prematurely. (Once Scouts develop that habit, there's nothing to remedy it in these times of Slantsloth).

>>I'm saying that IMO the community failed her and itself by affording her inappropriate special treatment.

I'm confused here. I haven't seen the Peer Review conversation in question as I can't find it and Fizzy seems to have deleted the entry. I thought from other comments that Fizzy received no support whatsoever from the community and that's why she left.

The Drawer Entry was only the culmination, Gnomon.

IMO, Fizzy's most recent Entries became immune to a critical PR process. Only a small number of close friends seemed to comment. Possibly the baby-talk and sycophancy put other Scouts off?

When FM picked on the Drawer Entry, the criticism of him focussed on his lack of tact, with few conspicuous attempts to defend the Entry itself. I'm speculating that Fizzy concluded from this that there's a tacit acceptance in the community that her Entries really are as vacuous as FM suggested.

Well, as I said, I read through the Drawer entry and I believe it was quite good, but I didn't give it a detailed read, so I can't really comment on it.

There certainly shouldn't be _any_ chat in Peer Review.

I'm becoming wearied of this unsub game.

I didn't read The Drawer, but I did read and comment on several other of Fizzy's entries. I don't think I'm a member of any fuzzy group, or afraid to criticise, but there are entries that I feel are of lower standard. However I made the mistake of criticising the language in one entry, only to discover the writer was Finnish. His English was so good I'd assumed he was a native speaker and I had to eat humble pie.

Maybe I read between the lines of FM's comments too much, but I thought of three different researchers from his comments, who I thought he indicated quite clearly without actually naming them.

And perhaps that is the way forward - let's confine ourselves to the entries, and not the personalities of the researchers.