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

Entry: BLENDED PERPETUAL BADÍ’ AND GREGORIAN CALENDARS - A87820789
Author: Chewfronta - U15000013

Heretofore there has not existed a perpetual Badi' / Gregorian Calendar. The Gregorian Calendar is the world's most widely used Calendar. Members of the Baha'i Faith use the Badi' Calendar.

I don't think this will work as a part of the Guide in its present form. It is a description of a spreadsheet which is not in the Guide. Articles for the Guide should be self-contained, not just descriptions of other articles or documents.

On the other hand, I think you could rework this quite easily into a description of the Bahá'í Calendar, without any reference to the spreadsheet. You start by giving a brief description of what the calendar is, then explain why it is the way it is. Finally you could refer the reader to an external site to do the actual conversions between Gregorian and Bahá'í.

Good Evening Chewfronta, welcome to Peer Review

Thank you for taking the trouble to write this Entry. However, I feel that it is not entirely suitable as an Entry destined for eventual approval for the Edited Guide.

I'm sure you'll have read a lot of our instructions and guidelines. But if not, here is a link to Peer Review A395589 and our Writing Guidelines A53209

One specific phrase in our Guidelines seems to be the most applicable "Even if the subject of your entry isn't that well-known, the historical, scientific or cultural relevance should be fairly established if you're aiming for Approved Entry status."

My advice to you would be to start again entirely. Tell us in a straighforward manner, something about the Bahai community, and why a calendar is culturally important. I think you've tried to make an entry about a very complicated subject matter indeed.

I'm also unhappy about the need to download software, or use external spreadsheets. I don't think we can accept an Entry with either of those two items in them.

I hate to be the bringer of nothing but criticism, but I am sure that if you take some time to read other Entries that are currently in Peer Review, and look at the way we move them through the processes, as well as reading a selection of Guide Entries that interest you, you will soon find a style of writing and a subject matter that will harmonise very well with the Approved Guide.

There is some very good advice about writing for h2g2 in our Writing Guidelines help page. If you follow this you won't go far wrong.

Good luck!

Lanzababy - Guide Editor

Hello Chewfronta

Speeking for myself I would like to see an entry on
The Badá'í faith the Calendar entry (or post article) could be linked I regret I know little of the Bahá’í Faith or its members and it deserves an entry (I did look on H2G2 unless I missed it).

This is an interesting entry I hope you follow the abvice already given, well done

There is an entry on Tenets of the Baha'i faith: A8378616

(There was, and may still be, a technical reason why we could not put the accents on Bahá'í in the title.)

Thanks Gnomon I missed that

Gnomon wrote:

“I don't think this will work as a part of the Guide in its present form. It is a description of a spreadsheet which is not in the Guide. Articles for the Guide should be self-contained, not just descriptions of other articles or documents.”

The insularity of this comment knocks me down. It is true that when Mr. Adams “invented” the 1st Guide, no one could have anticipated either the incredible storage capabilities of individual computers, nor the Internet as a whole.

Hence, he usually had his Guide refer to other entries in that Guide, because it was the reference work many dwellers in the galaxy used for looking up things. But his work was fiction. Now, via the Internet, we all have access to virtually unlimited storage and virtually unlimited explanations of everything. However, even Mr. Douglas made many references to other works (which he also invented) outside the Guide. Even in fiction insularity could not be achieved.

As an example: go to any online dictionary and look up any random combination of 2 letters, such as, for example, “mi”. You’ll get a hit. Now look up say 7 words by clicking 7 times on successive links in each subsequent dictionary entry. Now Google that final, 7th word. You will get thousands of hits. Yet it is a random word. It will happen with pretty much any random word, regardless of how it is chosen. Also note that Wikipedia will be 1 of the 1st entries in your list, and h2g2 will not be in your search results.

My article has a variety of links to explanations for readers who may need subtopics explained. For only 1 subtopic was there a good explanation of that subtopic in h2g2. I looked. I would have loved to link to a h2g2 entries.

Clearly h2g2 has not attained a level of entries to make it a stand-alone standard of reference.

Furthermore, h2g2 already contains a huge number of articles referring to things outside of the Guide. There are articles, for instance, about the Gregorian Calendar. Yet that Calendar is nowhere contained in h2g2. There is an article about the Mayan Calendar System, yet that System is not in the Guide. To follow some articles, you need a printed calendar or photos from other works, etc.

My article is not about a spreadsheet. It is about a means of promoting communication between folks who use 2 different calendar systems. If h2g2 had the capacity to include such a communication vehicle (a spreadsheet), I would have put it in h2g2. I surely cannot be censured for the Guide’s deficiency, can I?

To remain at all in sync with the rest of the world, I think you will discover the Guide needs to link to more and more things outside the Guide itself. To achieve what you propose would impose such a stranglehold on the Guide as to make it useless. Perhaps that is why, in my 18 years of searching the Internet, I have not once had the Guide pop up in my search results. No matter how anyone slices it, and no matter what eventual success the Guide has in becoming a blizzard, it will—like all other reference sites on the Internet—always remain one snowflake in a blizzard of reference sites.

How tiresome it would be to have to re-type all the existing knowledge in the Internet into the Guide. And for what purpose?

Gnomon continued:

“On the other hand, I think you could rework this quite easily into a description of the Bahá'í Calendar, without any reference to the spreadsheet. You start by giving a brief description of what the calendar is, then explain why it is the way it is. Finally you could refer the reader to an external site to do the actual conversions between Gregorian and Bahá'í.”

One of the instructions in the Writing Guidelines is to be original. The Badí’ Calendar has been amply, and maybe over-amply, described in multiple sites in the Internet. However, for those who need such a description, my article gives 2 such references at its opening. I do not have to re-hash all that.

Perhaps you did not read my comment that opens these comments. If there were somewhere to convert between Calendars, my article would not be needed.

Lanzababy (perhaps writing on behalf of all Guide editors?) wrote:

“…
“Thank you for taking the trouble to write this Entry. However, I feel that it is not entirely suitable as an Entry destined for eventual approval for the Edited Guide.

“I'm sure you'll have read a lot of our instructions and guidelines. But if not, here is a link to Peer Review A395589 and our Writing Guidelines A53209”

Yes, I read them. Even after multiple re-readings I can see nothing in them which my article violates.

“One specific phrase in our Guidelines seems to be the most applicable ‘Even if the subject of your entry isn't that well-known, the historical, scientific or cultural relevance should be fairly established if you're aiming for Approved Entry status.’”

Holy mother of pearl! Ham hocks and artichokes. I am stunned by the absolute bigotry and insularity of this comment. It has so overwhelmed me that I have been unable to reply to comments until now. Every time I thought of coming back to h2g2, that thought slid off my brain as if it were a billiard ball, smooth, round and unyielding. What made it worse is that no one in the h2g2 community objected!

“Cultural relevance to whom? You’re s’posed to be a Guide! A Guide for the inhabitants of earth, the whole planet! Who are you to decide if something is culturally relevant? You can’t! I can’t. There is no topic anywhere that is not culturally relevant.

Did you just mean culturally relevant to London’s East Enders? To the Ainu? The Maori? The Maasai? The Fuegans? Marine biologists? The Universal Postal Union? For whom do you think you can decide? Did they appoint you?

I will tell you this: for whomever you decide, Bahá’ís are there. The Bahá’í Faith is the 2nd-most widespread religion in the world. Bahá’ís live in every nation and territory on the planet. Every culture has Bahá’ís. Ten seconds worth of research would have established this. Hence, just because you, personally, don’t know about something does not mean it is socially irrelevant; nor that its relevance needs to be proved.

A further 10 seconds of research would have shown you the Guide already contains an excellent article about the Bahá’í Faith. Hence, the Guide has already acknowledged Its relevance. Since it is relevant, its Calendar is, ipso facto, relevant.

I am revolted by any concept of any formal or informal agency that believes it a priori knows what is or is not relevant; or what has or has not been shown already to be relevant.

Such hypocrisy! Such blatant prejudice! Read the Guide article on Christian baptism. Nowhere does it establish its cultural relevance. Yet for most of the world—and you are the Guide for pity’s sake—baptism is as relevant as dead mites on a mattress. Article after article is irrelevant to me, and yet is hosted by the Guide. None of them establish any kind of relevance, for me or for most of the world. They just plunge into their topic. Who approved them?!

How dare you?! Why did no one object to such lunacy, in this day and age? How appalling! How staggering! You are based upon a “book” that encapsules an entire galaxy. Do you think anyone anywhere would have bothered to debate the relevancy of Guide articles about this pub on that planet? Ridiculous. Who could know? Who could judge? No more can you. Your comments prove it.

Lanzababy (perhaps writing on behalf of all Guide editors?) continued:

“My advice to you would be to start again entirely. Tell us in a straighforward manner, something about the Bahai community, and why a calendar is culturally important. I think you've tried to make an entry about a very complicated subject matter indeed.”

Creating the spreadsheet was complicated. Announcing this communication tool is not. Using the spreadsheet is easy. Understanding a new calendar system can take some time. Much of life is complicated. Read any article written for the layman about Higgs boson. It’s complicated. Relativity is complicated. The articles exist anyway.

As for the Bahá’í Community—read the article you already have in the Guide. Its language and vocabulary are different from the way I would phrase things, because the author is from South Africa and I am from the USA. Nonetheless, it is a concise and clear entry. I am taken with it.

If you prefer, read the thousands and thousands of webpages already extant on the Bahá’í Faith. You will get your questions answered easily and quickly by people who write well. Originality requires that I do not re-hash all of that.

Of all the subtopics I provided further links for in my article, the 1 topic I did not was for the Bahá’í Faith. This was the one subtopic for which the Guide already had a good article. It never occurred to me Guide researchers would fail to use it.

Lanzababy (perhaps writing on behalf of all Guide editors?) continued:

“I'm also unhappy about the need to download software, or use external spreadsheets. I don't think we can accept an Entry with either of those two items in them.”

If you want to learn about astronomy, eventually you will have to get a telescope. If you wish to see protozoa, you will need a microscope. If you desire to be an accountant, you will need spreadsheet software. There is no shame in using appropriate tools. There is no way to have a perpetual Badí’ / Gregorian Calendar without a tool to actually blend them. The only way it can be perpetual is to have it be on the computer. It has to change every day, all by itself.

Most people who are computer groovers already have a spreadsheet program. Most programs will import the files from the most commonly used spreadsheet programs, such as Microsoft’s Excel. For those who do not already have a program, I directed them to a free and excellent suite of productivity tools, OpenOffice, from Apache. This combination of word processor, spreadsheet, database, etc., is both free and open-sourced. It reads and writes Microsoft files, if needed. If you do not have an office suite, here is another benefit of my article. Ya cannot beat both free and good.

People, the Guide is never going to be the be-all-end-all of anything. Welcome to the world.

Lanzababy (perhaps writing on behalf of all Guide editors?) continued:

“I hate to be the bringer of nothing but criticism, but I am sure that if you take some time to read other Entries that are currently in Peer Review, and look at the way we move them through the processes, as well as reading a selection of Guide Entries that interest you, you will soon find a style of writing and a subject matter that will harmonise very well with the Approved Guide.”

My advice to you is to update what you, personally, want. My article, with accompanying spreadsheet, violates nothing in any of the suggestions and guidelines contained in the Guide. It merely violates what you, personally, want. Perhaps the Guide should have a referendum of its researchers and lurkers to see if the Guide should adopt your desires as policy, or to see if it will take full advantage if what the Internet has to offer. Then it can be a living, growing, vital reference work.

“Because we’ve never done it before” is the single worst reason for not doing something. It is the enemy of life itself. It stifles and strangles.

Y’all seemed to have missed something (not drinks!). The Internet is replete with info about Bahá’ís, the Bahá’í Faith and the Badí’ Calendar. The Guide doesn’t need that. There is nothing helpful or innovative there.

No one has a perpetual Badi / Gregorian Calendar, which is a tool for communication. Here is something else the Guide can contribute to the world. Maybe here is a reason the Guide—and nothing else--may pop up in someone’s search results some day. I am not a genius like Einstein or Adams. I can only contribute a tiny, incremental item or 2. But what I can contribute will be unique to the Guide. And I would do it here because I love the works of Douglas Adams.

If there were a real Guide to the Galaxy, can you imagine how much of it would be devoted to trying to help different entities understand others’ measurements of time? How else would you know closing time?

Bobstafford wrote:

“Speeking for myself I would like to see an entry on
The Badá'í faith the Calendar entry (or post article) could be linked I regret I know little of the Bahá’í Faith or its members and it deserves an entry (I did look on H2G2 unless I missed it).”

Perhaps you missed it because it is spelled Bahá’í Faith.

Bobstafford continued:

“This is an interesting entry I hope you follow the abvice already given,”

I would rather slit my eyeball, thanx.

Here's my thoughts about this Entry.

The section where you describe how to use the spreadsheet would be better on a tab within your spreadsheet itself, so that the spreadsheet is self-contained and usable.

The Edited Guide has guidelines for the content that is included so that people know what to expect - you wouldn't expect to buy a cake in a barber's shop, for example, and similarly h2g2 is a *guide* to life the universe and everything, rather than *being* life, the universe and everything. The Mayan Calendar isn't in the Guide, but you don't need it to be in order to be able to understand the Entry about it and quickly learn something new.

I agree with Gnomon and Lanzababy's suggestions for an Entry on the Badi Calendar using the bits in your Entry about it, and moving the bits about the spreadsheet to the spreadsheet itself, referencing it at the end.

Alternatively, if you just want to advertise your spreadsheet to a wider audience, you can use your personal space or your journal to tell people about it in a more social media type way - not in the Edited Guide, but still within Douglas Adams' h2g2.

SashaQ, Sub-Editor

Chewfronta

From your remarks above it would appear that you've not understood the collaborative nature of the Guide. Peer Review is exactly that, your peers review the submission. The author should respect the views expressed.

As you've stated that you're not willing to participate in our process then we have no option but to return your entry to you.

Lanzababy - Guide Editor