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

>>I think all volunteers worth their salt know when to hand back in their badges<<

I'm not sure I do. I know I don't comment nearly as much as a Scout should, and I know I rarely make all my picks, but I became a Scout for a special reason in busier times (advocating edgier Entries) and only lately realised I'm a specimen of an endangered species.

I could and maybe should resign, but don't we need everyone we've got?

OK, now I've started, I guess I should finish...
I don't agree that the site's visibility is the problem. The problem is surely in making people stick once they've found us. The boring funcionality doesn't help, but the factual EG restriction is IMO the real killer.

Why don't we just open up the EG to quality peer-reviewed writing in every genre? (ie combine the scope of the EG and the UG). What is so sacrosanct about the Guidelines? Don't we need in these sparse times to pool our writing efforts and maximise its range? When people who want to write poetry, or practice journalism, etc etc come here, why would we ever want to tell them that their interest is sort-of welcome, but will never be admitted to the Central Project?

The right Guidelines should just say no profanity and no malice, and of course no plagiarism. That's all we need, isn't it?

Um, no.

What use is an encyclopaedia when there's not at least a reasonable expectation that its editors didn't just make it all up?

When you open it up to fiction, the factual entries lose credibility.

I think we could keep EG and UG with their respective foums, but non-EG writing should be more prominent on the FP - on the same level as the EG. Then you'd maybe draw in more people.

I've made a topic on Ask requesting (politely) those who don't contribute to PR to explain what it is about it that puts them off. Hopefully that will get us some useful answers from those who, unlike pretty much everyone who has posted so far, aren't experienced PR writers and users. A different perspective should be helpful.

The link is here: F19585?thread=6671300

Good idea. Thanks.

I'm put off both the Underguide and the Alternative Writing workshop because they both sound rather anarchic. Are they?

Go, read, and find out for yourself.

The reason I don't really write for the EG any more is mainly because it feels that h2g2 doesn't get that many readers. I'm also trying to get another blog started and get medical podcasting started as well.

If the search facitlity worked it would be great because people would be able to find our entries. When I search for 'the immune system' on google, wikipedia is the first one that turns up.

Well, yes. The search engine here is terrible, and also prevents h2g2 from being found by other search engines, as far as I'm aware, in a somewhat misguided attempt to cut traffic by bots.

One can but hope that that will be improved in the site redesign...

Reply to Mal at #142:

>>What use is an encyclopaedia...?<<

The EG isn't an encyclopaedia, for at least five good reasons:
1. You've already just acknowledged that the site's search engine is useless. So whatever the EG is, it isn't referenceable and it doesn't have a proper index.
2. You're point about >>a reasonable expectation that its editors didn't just make it all up<<: sorry, but that horse has already bolted. The EG contains a lot of inaccuracy and facetiousness. Try these particularly dire examples of both these defects at once: A180901, A3141, A5086. There are plenty more out there, though I admit most of them are a little bit funnier, or at least longer, than this witless rubbish.
3. The EG can never be comprehensive, but an encyclopaedia must be. There will always be major subject areas uncovered. We're simply not numerous enough to fill the gaps.
4. If the EG was ever intended to be an encylopaedia, then Wiki usurped that project long ago, and has taken it far beyond what hootoo could ever achieve. In any case, why attempt to replicate what others have done to death already?
5. Encylopaedias are not meant to be stimulating. They're meant to be condensed and informative. Distraction is avoided in encylopaedias. Distraction and stimulation are really what hootoo is all about.

To borrow someone else's phrase, h2g2 is almost, but not quite, entirely unlike an encyclopaedia.

I still think my suggestion deserves consideration. I don't want to stop people writing in the classic EG style. I just want to admit creativity, and to showcase the extraordinary range of quality writing that we're keeping hidden in the back room.

Pinniped

So, the Front Page header, "Write an entry for our online Encyclopedia", should read 'Write an entry for our online Guide to Life". Who knows, perhaps the word 'encyclopedia' puts off many a prospective writer.

No, I still think that would put a stop to "classic" EGEs, if there's no distinction.

You'd have to write "you can actually believe this one" over the top of anything that's not meant to be a fiction story...

I've just taken a look at those examples you've posted. All three are from the pre-PR days, and one of them isn't even an EGE.

So isn't that exactly the kind of thing PR is meant to keep *out* of the Guide? They don't have merit as creative writing either, so would relaxing the guidelines make them more suitable?

No. Of course they shouldn't be in anyone's version of the Edited Guide.

Mal - I have to say I'm disappointed and a bit shocked by what you're saying here. You seem to be suggesting that h2g2 has value mainly as a repository of fact, and moreover that such a role is so important that such content needs to be clearly bounded.

My opinion, FWIW, is that h2g2 has value mainly as a community of clever communicators who fire off each other, and as a repository of quality writing conceived and refined in that spirit. Fact has nothing to do with it.

I'm not saying the Edited Guide is the most important part of the site.

I'm merely saying that if you're giving people free rein to make up whatever they like *with no distinction whatsoever made* that the factual Entries will dry up entirely.

It'll become a mere amateur fiction site.

That's not what we need. There are plenty of sites that do that.

'Mal - I have to say I'm disappointed and a bit shocked by what you're saying here. You seem to be suggesting that h2g2 has value mainly as a repository of fact,'

Well, I also regard it as a repository of fact - delivered by the best of us (so I don't include myself here) in a humorous and entertaining way. There are a very few of us who achieve this, but those who do, do so admirably. Others, whose efforts to deliver what they consider to be hootoo style humour, is strained and painful to read. These people should leave the humour aside and just stick to the facts .

I've largely stopped commenting in PR because I perceive that some researchers deliberately misinterpret what I'm saying (not usually the researcher on whose piece I'm commenting on) and turn it back on me - with some venom!

I've also stopped writing for the EG because, as somebody said above, it appears that it's little read after it's reached the FP, so the end-result doesn't justify the effort put into its production.

A

I'm not talking about a free-for-all. I think we need Peer Review, so that getting into the Edited Guide in any genre will always be subject to a quality audit. I really don't see why factual Entries would get rarer under those conditions. A lot of people like to write them and others like to review them. Why is that going to stop?

It's almost as if your real problem with this suggestion is different from the one you're stating. Is there something else? If so, please say. I honestly want to know. To me, an Edited Guide that includes all writing genres is an obvious ideal. The fact that something else exists, and is defended and preserved, must mean there's something here I'm missing. But in seven years of honest asking, nobody's ever given me an answer that even begins to change my belief.

Oops. That was to Mal, #155

Look, accusing me of dishonesty and acting "shocked" that I have a different opinion from yours isn't going to get us anywhere.

You're acting like the UnderGuide is a second-rate, much poorer institution than the Edited Guide. It's not. If anything, it's much more difficult to get a piece into the UG than the EG.

Is it the name that's a problem for you? I don't believe in rebranding, but hey, if you like, call it something different.

What rationale is there for combining them?

Accusing you of dishonesty?
I was assuming you're being diplomatic!

The rationale is the rationale of this thread, ie: Reinvigorating serious writing in h2g2 and getting more and fresher participation.

The current, bounded Edited Guide is a minority interest. Now, you might think that poetry is a minority interest too. You might think that essays (ie learned opinion pieces) are a minority interest. You might thing that fiction is a minority interest, and that intermediate genres on the fact-fiction spectrum are minority interests. You might be right, too.

But if we put them all together and admit all of them into our one showcase of the Edited Guide, we're sure to generate more interest. That's the point.