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

"but it [the UG] certainly does not provide readable material that one can also use as a reference."

Not true. Take a look at a few entries under A1077833.

Who thinks it's a good idea to rebrand the UG? I like the name. Granted, the name came about as a misunderstanding, but the progenitors of the UG chose the name for themselves, it wasn't forced on them to show how inferior creative writing should be.

"- Peer Review + Writing Guidelines = 2,700 words
- AWW + UnderGuidelines = 3,500 words"

That's kind of a ridiculous thing to say . There are three UnderGuideLines, and they are seventeen words long (I know. I wrote them.). See <./>UnderGuide</.> The UnderGuideLines page has some material covered also on the AWW page, and is mostly suggestions, rather than restrictions. Our longwindedness should not be confused for restrictiveness.

Pin and I have a longstanding disagreement over this. I don't agree that the two should be merged, though I understand his line of reasoning and I try to respect it. Personally, I wouldn't care to have most of the PR crowd in the AWW. I'd much rather have AWW folks in PR.

"The AWW is also a terribly cliqueish place, which, quite frankly, is what keeps me from venturing into there to review things most of the time. PR is just a little bit better at being, well, objective about reviewing, as long as the author is willing to work on it."

*spits out food*
Well that is truly about the most bizarre thing I've read this morning. PR is more objective and less cliqueish? That's really fascinating that you think so, Mala. And I don't mean to be patronizing or rude (though I can't help appearing that way sometimes). Sincerely, I am fascinated that you've come to that conclusion. PR is a very cliqueish place, not all the time, but far too much of the time.

"If we let in fiction then any chance of being taken seriously would go flying out of the window."

Now I'm not agreeing that fiction should be in the EG, but I do wonder whether we've all agreed that "being taken seriously" should be our major aim. What's our real objective?

But I have not come to distract the thread. I just saw a bunch of things that I thought needed addressing.

Am all for increased exposure of UG entries, and Post articles for that matter. Wanted to actually recruit new members to the site, but that was roundly ignored, so much so that Alex didn't include it on his list of ideas. And that's fine, since there wasn't much enthusiasm for the idea. But I thought I'd try to bring it up again

I don't really see cliques in either forum, however, I see the same familiar faces in each. I can't speak for Mala, but you see more different faces in PR than you see in the AWW. As you know I've ventured there lately, and before the Stretcher started, there were generally three people commenting in the AWW. It's better now, there are a few new faces, but I think I know where Mala got her impression from.

re post 178 Alex

and article A36186924 where you talk about search engine robots. I can't for the life of me understand this no-follow tag within the edited guide entries, if that's what I think you are saying. My reasoning is that if a subject is searched for on google and one of the guide entries came up - then this would be a perfect,simple to achieve way of getting both wider readership and potential new members, in one easy stroke.

I can understand this 'no follow' rule within the general pages, conversations and personal spaces. I am not fully cognisant of search engine optimisation myself, but it was what my husband did for a living, before he died, so I understand a little bit of how it works.

>>What's our real objective?

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (Earth Edition).

Nothing more. Nothing less.

That is what this site is. When it stops being that, I will take my entries elsewhere. We can fiddle about with underguides, ateliers and other things. They are good, they keep us amused. They promote a culture of enlightenment, they improve our writing skills. But the purpose of the site is to write the Guide.

I'd like a discussion of the "nofollow" tag, because I was the one who suggested it. Nofollow ensures that the search engines don't wander off into the intricate maze of unedited entries and conversations, because the search engines were hammering h2g2 so hard that the servers couldn't cope. With the nofollow tag on Entries, only the Edited entries get indexed, which is what we want, isn't it? The Edited ENtries get indexed because the Category pages which link to them have a "follow" tag on them.

Yes, but that's only the one link. Wouldn't it be more sensible to allow them to link among themselves visibly, too? Just keep the non-EGEs out.

But all the links in the Edited Entries are indexed.

But that still means they only show as one link, which doesn't help the search rankings.

I don't understand what rules Google uses to order its results. When we changed the system so that Google indexed the Edited Entries (before that, it didn't index anything on h2g2), the h2g2 Entries came second in the list after the Wikipedia ones. Now they're lucky to make the second page of results. What changed?

If an Edited Entry has 20 links to it from other Edited Entries, then won't it show as 20 links?

No - because as far as I'm aware those aren't counted; that's exactly where the problem lies. It's just the one link (or perhaps up to three, if you're lucky) in the index.

Well I misunderstood the system, then, when I proposed the present metatags to Jim Lynne.

But what's the alternative? Should Entries have "follow"?

Maybe I'm wrong - but that's what I'm reading into it.

I think the suggestion of including a "nofollow" with every HREF is a good one; we can still only allow the bots to trawl EGEs and those can only link to EGEs or external sites. But it'll show more links.

As it stands, the bots will index any Guide ENtry if they find it. If they find a link on an external website to an unedited Guide Entry, they'll index it.

So what does the nofollow do, then? It just prevents the bot from adding any pages referenced in the links to its list of pages to be trawled. If we changed nofollow to follow, then the Front Page (which is linked to on the left hand side of every Edited ENtry) would be added to hte list and would be indexed, but it is indexed anyway. What else would happen?

As far as I'm aware (and correct me if I'm wrong, as this is by no means my field of expertise) it's not just a problem of the entries not being indexed (they are) but of the page rankings being influenced by the number of links *to* that entry - the number of references the bots find to it.

So if we allow all the connections between entries to show up, that'll mean they see more links, and thus, that h2g2 gets bumped up the lists if someone googles a term contained in one of them. It'll make them more visible, perhaps even bring them to the first page of a google search return, which I believe is our goal.

That's why I always try to add plenty of links to other EGEs in mine, in case the nofollows are removed...

Hi - I believe its not so easy as just having many links, but that the pages linked to should be relevant, and if possible to pages with a high or higher ranking. If the links are to irrelevant pages, or those with low ranking, this will pull the ranking of your page lower down on the search results.

But not lower down than having no links at all

So while outside links are important, so are any links at all...

So why don't we just ask Jim to change the default setting for Entries to "index, follow" instead of "index, nofollow"? He has separate control of category pages, entries, and conversations, so he could easily do that. WHat would be the disadvantages?

Well, all the links in the entries - I don't mean the ones hte authors have added, but the ones around the outside provided by the system. These pages would then be opened more often for indexing, but would be found to be "noindex" so they wouldn't be indexed. Would this flood the servers?

I don't know. I'm sure there must be a good reason, but I haven't a clue what it is.