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

I don't know that the Have You Missed feature is working as it was intended to...

Peta's brilliant entry on Fried Stuffed Potatoes - 'Papas Rellenas' made the front page this week, but I was the only one to vote for it (granted that I voted three times in the month it was on the HYM page).

Perhaps it would be more interesting if a random member of the community (selected randomly from the Who's Online tool?) was chosen each week to pick five classic entries. Of course, you'd need to have a few week's cushion built into such a system in case somebody missed getting their selections in by the deadline.

And I reckon that you'd need to ask if they *wanted* to participate first, but if they were willing, it might be a cool feature.

Just as we learned a little about the italics when they made the selections, we might learn a little about random members of the community by reading their selections...

Just a thought.



- Jimi X

Seems a good idea to me! (as long as it was as well as Have you Missed, not in place of...)

RhoMuNuQ

I think this indicates that it's a bad idea to allow people to vote multiple times for the same entry. If one could only vote once for each entry, rather than once a week, this problem would not have arisen.

-Martin

We're still trying out a few different ways to run this feature. For example, this week, the selections will be made on a different basis (stay tuned). We're promoting the feature on the Front Page again for a while too.

I'll be honest though, this feature was originally set up as a bit of fun for the Italics, but there were a few dissenting voices so we opened it up to the Community who sadly, bar a few loyal voters, do seem to have lost interest fairly quickly. It's likely we'll be taking this back in-house for a few weeks, which will give the nominations time to build up again.

As for taking entries that had only had three votes, well it was either that or not run it that week. There are still enough nominations for this to run for another month on Community nominations alone, though.

Of course, this is just another small feature that is fairly low-priority in the grand scheme of things. As the one who set it up, I'm not going to be too precious if it's need to not have been a success. How about we give it until Christmas and then see what we think in the New Year?

Jimster

*is still tuned*

I take it you're taking it back in house?

No, Lucinda, you assume incorrectly. We've just decided to do a few weeks of our own picks again to allow the nomination list to build up again.

Plus, like, I'm on holiday this week (and as of tomorrow I'll be offline too).

What did you think of the Halloween picks?

Would you believe I missed them?!

Topical, but not particularly worth reading (no more than any other Edited Entry, anyway). I like the comment someone made this week about the need for smokeworks as daytime fireworks - neat idea

Cheers for the update
-Lucinda