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

Why aren't the various talking point conversations turned into entries - like the "Call for Entries" are? Surely an entry on whether God has a beard would be the perfect addition to the guide?

(If written in a suitably factual manner... )

The idea of the Talking Point topic is to spark a lively conversation based on the suggested topic, the more varied the opinions the better; whereas the Call for Entries are intended, right from the start, to concentrate as much information as possible. The two things serve seperate functions. The most suitable topics for Talking Point are ones that can't really be resolved. On the other hand, Edited Entries should represent what is understood to be fact, inspiring at least as much confidence as, let's say, the average brand of deodorant.

JTG

Oops... the function they serve should obviously be 'separate'.

JTG

It just seems a little wasteful for all that lively conversation to effectively waste away unseen, though - I realise that generally the topics are too controversial to be edited guide entries - but could they go under the title - "Views on 'Does God have a beard?' " - or something similar?

I know - they can still be found in a search, etc, etc

Maybe you could suggest collected the highlights in an archive... a scrapbook, or something like that. Drop Peta a note with your ideas; if something more eye-catching could be created from the raw material, then it would be a shame not to do it.

JTG

Thanks Lucinda

You're quite right, there is an awful lot of good information in the Talking Point entries. Call for Entries were becoming incredibly unweildy to edit in-house, one of the topics generated 60,000 words, which poor Sam had to edit into an entry. This is incredibly time consuming, and we've only got Sam, Crusader and Anna editing.

So Talking Point was created to be a balance to this, somewhere where people could talk and share information without having to feel that they had to give facts or actual information that could be edited into a guide entry.

If we have a subject that we think people may be able to give facts on AND like to talk about, we will and have done, run the subject over both Talking Point and Call for Entries. So the Call for entries might be 'Homework tips' for instance and the Talking Point be 'Experiences you had at School' - Hopefully this will encoourage fact posting to the Call for Entries page and keep conversation over on the Talking Point area. That's the theory anyway...