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

Entry: Fauveau’s Breastplate - A87936529
Author: Pinniped - U183682

Gnomon told me that PR is depleted.
I know this is unfinished, and back in the day I would have taken time to refine it, but I decided that moving quickly could be a requirement.
Be as critical as Chou like, then. Indeed if you’d like me to take it away and do it properly just ask. (Of course those of you who remember me will foresee a risk of it coming back heavily romanticised. I quite fancy myself as Sean Bean - he used to live just up the road).

Yrs,
Pin

Dunno who Chou is or where he came from.
I’m sure we used to be able to edit posts to conversations...

Hi!

This is a very good Entry I think. Maybe think about a sub-title? Also some headers/sub-headers would probably improve the structure.

I would also explain what carabiniers are when you first mention it. I imagine there are quite a few people who don't know it. You can also do that in a footnote if you don't want to disrupt the flow of the Entry.


And no, it was never possible on h2g2 to edit posts.

Thanks for this
I’ll wait to see if there are more suggestions, if that’s OK, before incorporating all of them.
I’m a bit rusty with the conventions of the EG, but I should be able to tidy this up and it will be good to do so.
Because of the Pliny thing, I’m wondering whether the info pages I can access are live or just relics. If you could point me at a pukka current set of Guidelines, that would be a great help.
It must have been a false memory about editing. Possibly I was once more careful with previewing, or maybe the Autocorrectors have got more zealous.

The main page of Peer Review has been updated only recently with new text. I would guess all the links on the PR page are still relevant. And yes, they have the same content in any skin (because as it says it's just a skin )

I think the most important thing is that your Entry is understandable to the readers. It's best to imagine your readers have no idea about the subject at all. Thinking about it you may even have to explain to them about what the battle of Waterloo was in one or two sentences.
Also I think your Entry has a good length to read. It is generally better to write more short Entries than one very long one because the long ones somethimes are quite intimidating and can't be read in just a few minutes time, if you know what I mean.

Hello Pinniped

I'm pleased to meet you - I have often encountered your work in the Edited Guide (especially since I became one of the Editors in 2014) and always appreciate how you conjure up the atmosphere of a historical event.

This Entry is no exception - thank you very much for sharing it with us.

Superb how the story segues back in time before returning to the present day but, like Tav, I wonder if you could work in a couple of headers to add texture for a reader's eyes to engage with.

Should 'carabinier' have a capital C at first mention? I note you lightly define the term as relating to heavy cavalry first, then define it fully in the historical section

The only bit I wasn't clear about is the penultimate paragraph, as I see I misread it as saying the foe helped the French - the link to the Battle of Waterloo Entry will be helpful A5403881 but a mention of who was Blucher in this Entry could be useful Maybe the sentence about Hindsight fits better after Wellington's report, and then the paragraph can end with 'As it turned out...'

Superb concluding paragraph

Hi SashaQ

Likewise, nice to meet you.
It’s unusual to be complemented on my EG stuff, because most of my effort went into what was the AWW and the bulk of my output is in the Post archive.
I think I probably split the Scouts, with a succession of Entries that deliberately pushed the boundaries of the Guidelines. Some of them were definitely a try-on, while some others I thought should have been accepted. You might not remember Jimster, but we clashed too hard for him to concede anything.
I’m left wondering whether a greater acceptance of creative writing might have given h2g2 a distinctive proposition in its losing battle with Wiki.
All a bit academic now though.

Thanks for your comments, all of which are valid. The Entry needs more work all round. Do you want me to pull it while I fix it, or just leave it there as-is until I’m ready to post an update?

Would you like me to resubmit some of the rejected offerings, the ones I consider more nearly EG-fit? I could post links for you to look at some of them if you like.

As regards new content, I’m guessing that you’ll value general interest stuff over specialist entries. In other words, the next thing I attempt probably shouldn’t be about the intricacies of industrial metallurgy...

Pin

Just leave the Entry here in PR, even if you don't have the time to do updates right at the moment. You have more chances to get some more comments that way. It doesn't matter if an Entry is in PR for a few months. It takes as long as it takes.

I would say yes, try to re-submit the Entries you think are good for the Edited Guide. We'll see what people think of them now. I think things changed a lot in PR and the Edited Guide since we took over from the BBC.

The content is quite diverse at the moment, but yes, it probably shouldn't be too specialised.

Yes, as Tav says there's no rush so you can leave the Entry in PR while you work on it

Yes indeed we would be pleased to see more of your work. Specialist Entries can work (there are a few technical maths and chemistry Entries around, for example) but they would need to have a 'hook' to explain why a non-specialist reader would find the topic useful to read about.

In relation to creativity, <./>thepost</.> is going from strength to strength these days

Thanks for this. I’ll do more work when I can.

Now tidied up (with headers and links added and suggested changes incorporated)

This is an interesting, if sad account.

I wonder if your account suggests that the British had better cannons, or simply that they were deployed better?

One quibble - would 'dragoons' be better than 'dragons'? the latter might be correct, but it conjures up a vision of winged beasts!

Dragons would have been , and Daenerys knows they’d have made a difference.
But you’re quite right, they should have been (and now are) dragoons.

As for the cannon, probably both.
But what you really shouldn’t do when it comes to cannon is ride straight at them in a straight line from a long way back.

Something else you shouldn't do with a cannonball when you see it rolling along the ground towards you is try and kick it like a . A fair number of British soldiers at Waterloo did.

Would you consider adding a link to: A87837619

<BB<

That’s a great Entry BB.
Pleasure to link it (from the first line, naturally).
(It never occurred me to see if someone had written about it. I should have guessed, really...)

Why would anyone kick a cannonball, btw? Presumably they didn’t try it while actually engaged in battle. That would be even weirder.

Yes it happened and many had a foot amputation as a result

OK, I think I get the scenario.
Some proportion of the round shot fired in the battle will miss everything and so won’t lose their energy in a normal impact. They’ll come to ground at a shallow angle, bounce a few times and finally roll to a stop.
If a soldier sees a cannonball coming towards him in that way, he might instinctively try to deflect it with his boot. Only it turns out that it still has a lot more momentum than he expected.
And to that cause of injury, you can add other soldiers who didn’t see the projectile or at least didn’t try kick it, but were still hit in the foot or lower leg by it. This collective group makes up the vast majority of survivors of a cannonball impact (because if you’re hit any higher, the cannonball is still flying and so way more energetic).
I buy it. Severe but non-fatal foot injuries caused by cannonballs would have been fairly numerous in battles of the time.
You get to learn some weird stuff on h2g2...

Absolutely and you are contributing some interesting items, feels good I hope.
This is going to be a good entry

There was an alternative to the cannonball.

Case shot! 20 to 60 or more musket balls in a canvas bag. When the cannon was fired the bag burst and a cloud of shot cut down the advancing troops. Horrible stuff.