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

Hi Jim

As you may or may not know there are some suggestions being floated among various members of the community about getting some official recognition for entries which are good but which are not suitable for the Guide as it currently stands.

The idea which seems to be gathering the most momentum is the creation of a parallel or underguide which would compliment the guide itself.

There are various things being suggested, most of which would require some degree of technical impmelentation. These vary from a new official volunteer group, through an additional forum, to the creation of a new category of entry.

I think the new category of entry is key. This would be analogous to the 'Edited Entry' 'Help Page' 'Personal Page' title that goes on the existing screens, and would need to have a title like 'Underguide Entry' or 'Parallel Guide Entry' or 'Recommended Entry' (though we have to be careful not to confuse people with entries which have been recommended for the Edited Guide).

So - my 'quick' question is would creating a new kind of entry need to wait for the next release, or is it something which can be done relatively easily. I use 'relatively' in an elastic and - er - relative sense of course!

It would be helpful for us to know whether or not we are asking for the moon, a geo-stationary satellite, or a whole new galaxy!

Take care, and thanks

Ben

PS - if you are not the right person to ask, can you point me in the right direction?
Thx
B

What you're asking for would require a lot of reengineering - our article status codes are messed up enough as it is without inventing a whole new status. So it would have to wait until a new release *and* be judged as something that it's worth spending significant amounts of time developing.

I'd be very surprised if this was likely to happen in the forseeable future given the major amount of work that would be needed (changing everywhere which displays status to understand the new status, developing tools which allow the status to be set, permissions to allow a new group to set this status on articles, etc.

You're better off concentrating on actually choosing and promoting these articles internally - it would be possible to define something in the GuideML which marked an article as 'The People's Choice' for example, they just wouldn't appear as such in lists (like search results etc.).

Damn!

Thanks. It is always helpful to know how difficult a proposed change is technically before going too far down the line of wanting it.

Bother, likewise blow!

Oh well.

Thanks again, Jim, it is much appreciated.

B

Hey Jim!

It's another prospective UnderGuider/Miner etc being a pain in the proverbials!

We were wondering how difficult it is to implement categorisation? i.e. when the UG gets up and running, would it be technically easier to implement a new categoriation scheme, or use the existing one? Are either feasible?

Ta!

FwT

Technically, it's always easier to use an existing system. At present you can't do that because only site editors can categorise articles. We certainly wouldn't create a whole new categorisation system for you.

It would be easier for you to simply create a whole bunch of pages which linked to the entries, and formed your own categorisation that way. You don't need any tools to do that.

I thought you might say that... kinda hoping you would too!

Hi Jim,

leaving aside the 'underguide' issue...

Would it be a good idea to re-do the article status system so that different sites could decide their own status system (h2g2 might want edited/unedited/help, other sites could use more or less different types).

Until another site comes to us with a real need for a different set of statuses (and bear in mind that the names of the different statuses are entirely up to the site) I don't see a good reason to change things.

Is any functionality (ie user-editable/non-user-editable) currently tied to statuses?

"Edited" entries aren't editable except by site editors. Other statuses affect whose page they appear on, for example help pages don't appear on people's personal spaces.

The main reason to avoid changing or adding statuses is that the current set is a completely messed-up hodgepodge of values which make no logical sense, and I'd want to sort out the whole list before I added any more, which is a frankly boring process.

Ah, guessed as much. Well, fair play to you.

Hope you've had a nice weekend.

Frankie