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

Except maybe Mr. "lot of drivel" Shadarr, who I see still hasn't come up with an article, or any other contribution in the last 3 weeks.

People who can't walk the walk are kindly requested not to talk the talk.

Don't worry - I didn't mean to jump on you either!

Having said that, DNA does have a great writing style, so it's hard not to be influenced by it to a certain extent.

Don't sweat on it. All friends here

And if I can get my writing style influenced by Douglas Adams and John Steinbeck and Tom Robbins and Ben Elton and Thomas Hardy and Robert Heinlein and Douglas Coupland, and put some of myself in that heady brew, I'll be writing plenty good enough for my own satisfaction.

I'm not saying it's true, but they've been teaching me in my history classes that we fought in both the World Wars.

Not only that, but they tell us we were on the winning side both times.

That's what I get for attending public school, I suppose.

Perhaps the reason so very many of their entries go in is because... well, no, wait, I can think of two.

1. They belong to the Guide, so the Editors must give a sort of favor to their articles and read them right away. Wouldn't you, if you were trying to get as many good entries as possible, jump to the ones that you trust will usually be pretty good? And

2. They're pretty good.

I understand that you don't think they're very good at all, but I'll admit I'm a bit impressed with them. They're clever and mercifully brief, and I've gleaned a couple of bits of information from them which I didn't always know. You'll be disgusted to know, Cloudesley, that I've sort of been modeling my entries after theirs... but that wasn't the question. The question was how the h2g2 writing team had "slanted the deck," and though I don't expect my theories to suffice, you did ask so very nicely.

If I'm going to quote, the least I can do is quote you properly. "Slanted the stats." Very sorry.

What is going to happen eventually to all the forum entries? With time surely they will get too cumbersome. Is someone in the editorial team going to go through them and lift the occasional gem out and change it from a comment to a mini user page. Or are they just going to be left as is for good.

Oh, how embarrassing. Better than being known for bad grammar and spelling, I guess. No, it's still embarrassing.

The plan is to take the really good stuff from the forums and use it to improve the articles.

And we'll start expiring forum posts after a while (although they'll always be available, they won't always be displayed by default).

and all I want to do is meet and nice girl... :c(

hoser!

True, Jim, the internet was founded on words...it was also founded on arcane codes used by the U.S. Military people. Fortunately, it's evolved from there and turned into something phenomenal and powerful. In addition to words, there are now images and sound to play with; I'd like to see something done in that vein too, since reading text off a CRT screen for too long produces nasty eye-strain.
Will there come a time when images can be posted on the H2G2?
Also, I lost the thread of another comment that I'll respond to here: as I understand it, part of the intention behind the Guide is to make a reality out of an sf idea that could really benefit people. This is reminding me alot of the desire of all those Trekkies to make Gene's dream a reality...in some ways they've succeeded (on a cultural level, anyway).
I hope the Guide fares better than that. Certainly sounds as though it will.

Fruitbat

If you're going to get that nit-picky about it, Canada, the USA and Mexico form North America, not America. There are, geographically speaking, three Americas, i.e. North America, South America, and seperating the two, Central America.

I'm not too sure if you know this, but most of the world refers to the USA as America rather then the USA, due to the glareing fact that the inhabitants of the USA are called AMERICANS, and hale from a country named the United States Of AMERICA. Although, it is strange to note that most Americans refer to the USA as either 'the states' or 'the US'

Actually, I refer to it as America too, and I live in California. So does everyone I know. I've never met ANYONE who referred to the USA as "the states" in real life.

I defense of Canadians... My girlfriend is Canadian, and if I didn't live in the USA I'd want to live in Canada.

While I'm not sure that I am a part of "real life", I've heard many in Vancouver referring to "the States" as part of the "I'm going to the States", although specific destinations are also used.
From what I've heard, "America" maybe a European/English label as many Canadians refer frequently to "going to the States", "...the US". Mind you, the Canadians I encounter (now that I think about it) may see Canada, America and the rest of the world in a kind-of detached way, objectively.

I hope that obfuscates things a bit.

Fruitbat

wow... i use all of those terms... guess i don't count then.