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

I don't mind too much when fellow-researchers make typos during a conversation. Not everybody has the same spelling ability, especially our foreign friends. HOWEVER, when I read an article, I expect the spelling to be correct; it has passed through the hands of Editors, and what else are they for? I particularly object when the article comes from H2G2 itself. I refer to the article for 'The University of Life', which contains the word 'rosta'. THERE'S NO SUCH WORD!!!! There's rota or roster, but not rosta.

This is not an uncommon mistake. One of the women at work made it a couple of months ago. It's just one I wouldn't expect to see here!

Nobody's perfect, and this includes the sub-editors at h2g2. In general, you can leave editing nit-picks in a thread attached to the entry and the folks at h2g2 will get around to fixing it eventually.

In the more distant future, changes in the editing process at h2g2 will likely reduce such errors. Entries submitted for approval will receive feedback from various interested parties at h2g2 at the "Peer Review" page. Then they will receive the attention of the sub-editor. And at the end of the process, the entries will be featured on the "What's Coming Up" page for a final once-over by anyone who is interested.

The more recently approved entries have not gone through this improved editing process. It will probably be another month or two before we begin to see the effects of the changes.

Which entry had the mistake?

I don't believe most of the University of Life entries are in the Edited Guide yet. At least not the ones done by Field Researchers.

Of course, I reserve the right to be mistaken.

The error is in the actual 'University of Life' page - the one you are taken to when you click on the 'University of Life' link on the H2G2 front page. That's why the error annoys me so much. It's not an error that a researcher has made. The page must have (I think) been prepared by the H2G2 team. The sentence is 'Find out who is working in the University at the moment by looking at the rosta in the Halls of Residence.' It's in the second paragraph, final sentence.

Surely you have spell checkers.

Yes I do, but I'm not a member of the 'official' team.

And don't call me Shirley!

- X

(I'll point that out to the paid staffers and have them fix it.)

Fair enough - we make mistakes. But what's this 'I expect' stuff? How much do we charge you for using this service, Cheerful? That University page was written by someone who is not a trained journalist, and mistakes slip through, even when proofing is done. Everything we write is hand-coded XML, and if you can find me a half-decent spelling checker for UK English that can cope with arbitrary XML tags, then I'd love to hear from you.

I don't mind criticism - I welcome it - but I really can't just sit there and be all fluffy and polite when you say this:

"HOWEVER, when I read an article, I expect the spelling to be correct; it has passed through the hands of Editors, and what else are they for?"

That sentence betrays a lack of appreciation of what the Editors' role actually is (fair enough - we're not explicit about our job descriptions anywhere). Yes, there's spell checking, but we also manage over 150 volunteers, plough through ridiculous numbers of postings every day, try to get through the old submissions queue (you don't see the rejections we have to perform), create schemes like the Peer Review and University and gawd knows what else.

Sorry if I sound grumpy, but we are doing what we can. If anyone genuinely expects perfection, then I'm afraid we can't provide that here, and I challenge them to find somewhere that can.

There. Rant over. I'll go back to my scheduling now.

BTW, this should have been posted in the Editorial Feedback forum, too, if that helps. Hence our delay in getting stuck into the fray.

And the fact that I got side-tracked and never alerted the team...

Excuse me for butting in.

I agree with Mark. Entirely.

After a few weeks of reading things here I gave up nit-picking on spelling mistakes in every day use. Some people have even admitted to being dyslexic and I admire them for joining in all the same.

All the work done here is voluntary and if an entry doesn't have much substance, or doesn't tell me more than I know already, I am not one to complain. The beauty of it is that you just start a thread (with a relevant and eye-catching title) and add your little bit yourself.
If a spelling mistake alters the meaning significantly, I feel justified in pointing it out. For example, there was an entry up for approval on "Ackee". I read it and came across the expression "a considerate number of Jamaicans in London" or something. That amused me, and the author happily altered it to read "considerable", once I had pointed it out.

To go back to the subject of insubstantial entries, I am a bit at a loss. If I look up, say, the place I am planning to go on holiday, or somewhere I know, I expect to find at least some historical data, some really "in" places to go, some obscure attraction or something that shows that some effort has been made to Research with a capital R. But as it is voluntary, no one can demand of the Researcher that he do this. And the Editors can hardly hand it back like a schoolteacher and say "You haven't put much effort into this". And after going throught the writing and editing processes, no one is likely to say, "we won't recommend it".

How to standardise the level of research in an entry??? Don't ask me - the last thing I would do is discourage someone who has thought of and actually got round to writing an entry.

I have had lots of ideas, but when I get on to the site I spend so much time reading forums, I suddenly realise the kids will be home from school in a minute and I'm not even dressed yet, and don't have any time left for constructive writing.

However, I have made a resolution to change that and will prepare some things off line and paste them in when I log in next. Watch this space!!!

PS I got into this thread via MM's page because I was checking out everyone who is going to Amsterdam

Thanks TC - kind words of support.

One the subject of the depth of entries, now that the queue is (almost) gone, we hope to be able to do something about this. With the queue we had no choice as to what went in the Edited Guide, as we had to spend all our time on the queue to prevent it getting out of hand. However, now that we're moving to a Peer Review system we are not tied down by a promise to check every submitted entry; instead we simply look at the best entries that are picked by the Scouts from the Guide. In this way we can spend more in-house time on seeding and creating content.

In other words, we are beginning to gear up an in-house staff writing team who can do everything from simply helping Researchers to complete their own entriesm all the way to creating entries from scratch on subjects that nobody has written about. We are certainly not going to diminish the role of the Researchers - this site will always be written by the people, for the people - but it does enable us to fill out areas of the Guide that otherwise might never be filled.

The timescale on this is not definite, but as time goes by, we hope to be able to provide an in-house 'helping hand' to Researchers who want to create excellent entries, but who might not have the time or skills to do so. In this way we can all work together to create great Guide Entries.

Should be fun!

Talking of timescales - I sometimes wonder if I'll be sitting here doing this (chuckling over forums and formulating answers and whatever) when I'm 80. Is there any plan or will it all be played by ear? As far as I am concerned, H2G2 is the optimum use of the internet - as opposed to sites where people just write every bit of rubbish that comes into their heads and to more "official" sites which are planted in the web and remain unchanged for 3 years.

Hey! Maybe it's just cool to say rosta as opposed to roster. For example there are plenty of ways to spell some words (eg e-mail/email/e mail) but just try looking that up in a dictionary. Oh well. Hope that this incredibly useful insight has helped you in your paranoid quest to discover the real meaning and spelling of rosta, I've been the Ha Ho Man and you've been the Cheerful Dragon.And why wouldn't you expect to see smelling pistakes at the Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy?

Hi there; I´m new at this, but I feel that I just have to correct you. Of course "rosta" is a word, maybe not in english, but with at least two functions in the Swedish (extremely useful in Sweden)language. Rosta =1: to make toast ;2: what happens to iron if it gets wet and nobody dries it of. There! You learn something new every day. By the way, I´m not dyslcxtc, my fingers might be, but I´m not.
Cheers

Editorial note: this thread has been moved to the Editorial Questions forum.

I don't expect perfection, especially not from researchers. I've been a researcher for over 18 months, which is long enought to learn that some people type at the speed their minds work, which leads to typos galore. And I appreciate that there's no such thing as a spell-checker that can cope with HTML or XML or GuideML. However, have you considered writing an article first, putting it through a spell-checker and THEN putting the tags in? That might solve the problem.

And no, I don't know what the Editors do, because nobody has ever told me and I don't know of anywhere on this site where I could find out. I just assumed that articles that were written by H2G2 personnel (as I assume the 'University of Life' article was) were subject to a higher level of control or checking than the articles written by 'common or garden researchers' like me. If I'm wrong in this, or if I've upset somebody by pointing out a typo, I apologise.

I don't feel it's the fact that you pointed out a typo that offended people. It was the language you chose to do it with. When on the internet, writing words in all capital letters is considered shouting. And you did indeed say, 'I expect the spelling to be correct.' Newspapers, book publishers, and encyclopedias all get it wrong now and again, and they charge you for the privilege! So I think perhaps that ruffled a few feathers.

In the future, simply be Cheerful with your requests. I've pointed out typos dozens of times, and it's never been a problem. What seems to work best is a smile and the implicit understanding that errors plague us all now and again. Anyway, it could have been much worse. If the word had been spelled 'rasta,' it would have conjured bizarre images of people with dreadlocks smoking weed.

I wasn't aware that using capitals on the Internet implyed shouting. I was using them for emphasis. In e-mails I use italics (assuming the e-mail editor can cope with them, which most can), but you can't do italics in a forum posting. I sometimes use asterisks round a word for emphasis in a forum posting, but I'm not sure if this is widely recognised. Are there any guidlines anywhere? If not, would somebody like to compile some?

I know I said 'I expect the spelling to be correct'. I'm expected to get the spelling right when I create a document at work and I was merely applying the same expectation to people doing a job on H2G2. OK, so HTML / XML tags can screw things, but you can either get your spell checker to accept them (by adding them to the dictionary) or ignore them, or type the article first and add the tags after you've checked the spelling. OK, so I'm not paying to read the article (except via my phone bill), but I assume the H2G2 staff are paid to write the article.

I expect spelling to be correct in books and newspapers, especially now that a lot of the work (if not all of it) is done on computers, all of which have spell-checkers, and especially as I am expected to pay for the privilege of reading them. Bad grammar in newspapers or magazines also annoys me, but that's down to the individual journalist (a lot of whom don't seem to have studied English at school). Bad spelling is inexcusable.

One of the most amusing spelling mistakes I've seen was in a spelling dictionary (no definitions, just how to spell the words). There was an erratum slip tucked inside with an apology for a mis-spelt word. The word? 'Illiterate'!

Asterisks are appropriate for denoting emphasis.

In general, the internet is far less formal than any other medium. Even corporate business is typically carried on in a less formal manner. And because it is easier to change mistakes, it seems they are generally made more often.

I found a couple of useful sources.

The Core Rules of Netiquette (a book excerpt):
http://www.albion.com/netiquette/corerules.html

Rule #10, not surprisingly, is 'Be Forgiving of Other People's Mistakes.' This includes spelling errors, according to the text. You'll see a lot of useful general information at this site.

Another useful guide is here:
http://songweaver.com/netiquette.html

This second guide includes information of a more technical nature, including the capitalization issue, the proper way to quote other people's emails and posts in your own, and so forth. Please note that this document includes spelling errors.

CAPITALS ARE SHOUTING AND REALLY ANNOY PEOPLE - USE WITH EXTREME CAUTION. (they're also harder to read...)

*stars* are bold

/slanty/ stuff is italics (the first / pushes them over, the second / stops them falling over)

_underscores_ underline ( _but_use_like_this_for_underlining_lots_ )

MiXeD CaSe is "zany" - otherwise known as "highly sad"

SkR¡PT k1DD135 are evil and should be shot on sight.

I can't think of anything else.. most of these are widely recognised (with the exception of italics). Some email readers treat them specially, so it's a good habit to get into.

You'll find the more you use the 'net the more tolerant of grammar/spelling you become. Follow the standard interface rules - strict output, tolerant input - and you'll do fine.