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

I hope I have a quiet day today. Fridays, for one reason or another, have all been wicked stressful recently.

I've an entry I want to work on. It's a story that had been passed on to me via oral history (in other words I heard a folk song about it ) and it grabbed my imagination.

But to be honest, I'm not sure if there is any point. Pretty much everything I would say is out there on the web already. And, while it's true that I could tell it my way, (I hope) tell it in an entertaining way, what's the point if it's all out there anyway? if all my sources of information are already available for anyone who would come across the entry, what am I offering?

That's why I don't like writing entries based solely on freely available online research.

The premise that I've seen discussed often here is that we exist for the purpose of creating really well-written entries. People may find the information elsewhere, but here it's presented in a form that's a joy to read.

All the information in the chicken entry that I'm working on as half my NaJoPoMo is freely available online (after all, that's where I got it!), in more detail, and most of it better written than I can do. However, there is no information on h2g2 about chickens that aren't part of a recipe. Should I not bother to consolidate the snippets, edit them, and submit the resulting entry to PR? Or should I continue with my plans, so that someone browsing h2g2 can stumble upon it and hopefully find something interesting that they wouldn't've thought to search for?

Now apply that to someone that actually enjoys writing and is good at it

Well said Amy - I second that

Entries in h2g2 bring information together in a readable way, and I for one enjoy the variety of topics that find their way in here

But no, it is different in the sense that Amy's chicken entry will contain original research, based on her experience of keeping chickens.

There is a phrase which is part of h2g2's culture and history by now, about "filling a gap in the guide". But the 'Hitchhiker's Guide' is the Internet, really, isn't it? Even if we have the best bit of it.

I just don't think I'd be filling a gap if I shuffle it all about and add nothing new. It would just be like shuffling a deck of cards. Imagine you own a shop in a town without greengrocers' shops, for example. If there is nowhere else to buy a carrot, it might be a good idea to open a greengrocer's shop.

But if you own a shop in a town which already has nine greengrocers' shops on the same street as your shop, what is to be gained by going to all the other shops, taking a piece of carrot from each one, and sticking them together as a new carrot people can buy from your shop?

If people want a carrot they will go to the greengrocers.

I think it's more like a bakery, and you know a good combination of ingredients to make a tasty cake, but the ingredients can all be bought from other shops, so why make the cake?

I don't know what you want to write about, but I would be likely to read it if you wrote it in an Entry here.

If you told me the topic, I might be interested enough to search for information, but I might not...

My entry's going to be huge enough as it is, without including personal experience Then again, I don't remember coming across any article that has *everything* at least mentioned in it in one place.

Isn't that the point, though? I don't need research help.

Do it, Amy, do it! Coming from you, it would mean more than any of the sources you researched.

Or you could listen to what I said and think about it.

I tend not to make metaphors without reason.

I metaphor once but didn't understand it.

Well, did it ever occur to you to do it elsewhere? Probably not.

The h2g2 bakery needs cake

Now to carrots...

I do see your point to an extent, as for many of the Entries I have written I have deliberately mixed online and offline sources to check all the facts and make sure the Entry provides a rich picture of the topic.

However, I have also written two Entries that were purely based on online research - just because the information all came from the same openly available medium, that doesn't mean that the same value of checking the facts and providing a rich picture of the topic isn't there.

The other way of looking at it is that h2g2 is an Athenaeum, and your fellow club members don't know the topic you're interested in, so please tell us

If there's a link to a single website that explains what you'd like to say about the topic (no more and no less) then perhaps a journal mentioning the link would suffice for your readers, but if your readers would have to plough through excessive technical detail, or would find that an interesting detail is missing from that website, then perhaps you could write it better.

You see, it's a problem I have, and it *is* a problem. When it comes to history I'm like a heroine junkie.

I read something and go "oh, shiny! That's interesting!" But then a voice in my head says "yes, but what if that guy is talking a load of pish?" So then I have to hear the other side of the story, too.

And *then* I become aware that I have only listened to one spokesman from each side of the story, and they may not speak the truth, so I have to get a wider sample to make sure that it is statistically significant.

And *then* I discover something else and go "oh, shiny", and it starts all over again. I think I'm eventually going to trace it all back to the Big Bang if I live long enough!

...and meanwhile I get stuck in the Public Records Office and feck all actually gets written.