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

I'm not moaning, I'm tricking people into visiting my page.

No really, some of us write stuff too. I've sent stuff in every one or two weeks, but waiting weeks and weeks for a rejection sometimes gets one down.....especially if you are still waiting for your first rejection.

My plan is to cause so much trouble that the editors will notice me and reject all my articles at once. No more waiting!

VIVA LA FRINK!!!!!

Ah, cunning I'd never thought of tricking people into going to my page. Now I have a new challenge to work on.

er...did I say "tricking?" meant to say "convincing"

I find 'persuading' is actually quite a good word in these situations.

great changes to your pages.......... brilliant work munk.

what I really meant to say was "I'm smacking everyone upside the head with my page," but that takes too long to type.

see, it took me so long that Peta got a post in ahead of me....

Thanx peta, most appreciated.

Hmm... It was not my intent to fuel this fire. However, my original opinion stands firm. If the Powers That Be specifically ask someone to swear to secrecy on something, that's one thing. Unless I'm mistaken, that's not what's happening here.

I equate the ability to put links on the right margin to being able to make visual smileys and fish. It's not something that can tear the fabric of this website. It's a cute function that only adds to the fun of this place in little ways, and anyone who holds such knowledge from the rest of the community without a solid reason is being petty and selfish.

If the Powers That Be demand otherwise, they have their reasons. However, it's inevitable that the knowledge will leak out. Those 'protecting' such knowledge are only postponing the inevitable.

That's your choice. Far be it for me to argue the point. I'm just calling it as I see it.

Hey Zach, good to see you involved again. Glad to see you are sticking to your guns, although I don't know that this secret could tear H2G2 apart. I just don't think it is important enough for that to happen. My personal opinion is that the margin stuff is kind of neat, but not really worth hurting my head trying to figure it out. I gave up a long while ago, and even plan on ignoring it when (if) the powers that be make it available to everyone.

Now then,
I'm going to run around and put bumblebees in everybody's pockets. THAT oughta loosen things up around here!

Dance everyone!! By the time you finally release all those bees from your overalls, it'll be time to collapse on the ground and giggle at all this seriousness.

I'll follow up with shots for the allergic, and cookies for everyone.

(how's that for topic drift Zack?)

Ah, and an extra gooey cookie for Zach, with apologies for misspelling his name ealier while I was giggling.

You can keep the bumblebees, but I'll take the gooey cookie, if there's some vodka I can dip it in.

As you're probably aware, I haven't been slow in showing people neat new tricks. I've usually done it to get a few people playing with them to make sure they work.

The XML tricks are not something I wanted everyone to use because we're improving the userpage editing, and part of this change involves offering the user the choice between plain text (yes! No more missing paragraph breaks!), HTML and XML.

At the moment, all user pages are actually XML, but since we're polite, we pass through any HTML tags we don't understand. This is what leads to the problems people have discovered with tags for example - XML expects all tags to be closed, HTML doesn't.

So, when the new page editing appears, we might well have to manually flag any user pages which use XML tags as different from most user pages which we can assume to be HTML. Or we might not. Since we haven't completed this work yet I don't know which it's going to be. Since I'm not keen on making more work for myself than necessary, I haven't told everyone how the XML works. Some people have found out without being told which is fine, but until I'm sure what we're going to be faced with, I'd prefer to keep the potential problems under control.

That's the reason I haven't been upfront about how to use the XML, and the reason that, for the time being, I'd prefer it not to be used on too many user pages.

Guide entries are no problem - they are already flagged differently in the database, so we don't have to worry about them.

I hope this explanation makes some sort of sense, and people realise that we usually have reasons for being inscrutable.

Thanks Jim, that's taken a load of stress of my shoulders. Most appreciated.

In reply to Zachsmind's earlier post: no, your right, i havn't been sworn to secrecy by the h2g2 staff, but as you can see, they obviously don't want many people knowing, and I WAS asked to keep it a secret by the person who told me, and as i have previously mentioned, my word is pretty much my bond.

And I'm not petty, or selfish, but i can't be bothered to argue further, because i'm going to argue with my family about who gets to use the mirror (see, not petty or selfish at all.....)

The protest I launched is definitely not aimed at The Powers That Be, and in many ways is not aimed at the researchers who know the secret and won't let it out. Of course, in some ways it is aimed at those researchers.......but I tend to waffle a lot.

The protest is more like the little kid who can't get any of his big brother's ice cream cone, and gives up, saying "I didn't want any anyway!"

I don't want to be able to put anything in my margin anyway! (Even once I can)

It is a rather petty argument, admittedly. However, it does bring about a more grand, interesting aspect of community in general. Are all men created equal? Or was Thomas Jefferson full of it?

Is it an inclination for human beings to set themselves apart as better than others, or is it natural and unavoidable, based on complex secondary factors that accumulatively lead us to put some people in places of influence and leaving others out of the loop? Is there a method to the madness or is it the luck of the draw?

Or did JFK Jr just forget how to land his damn plane?

and once again Zacksmind enters and gives us all "points to ponder".
monshari

Meeh Tooh!






(Don't you just hate long posts that just say 'Me too'?