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

I've been working on a series of entries about the First Crusade, and now I need your help.

These entries will be submitted as a University Project. Unfortunately, this means that they won't reach Peer Review until after they've been sub-edited, by which time it will be very cumbersome to make any major changes. Effectively, that Peer Review process will be useful only for spotting typos and grammatical errors (if there are any ).

So I need some of my friends to do the real Peer Review now, by reading through the Entries and telling me what you think of them. Are they interesting/exciting/boring/unreadable? Is the level of detail right? Do I assume too much in the reader, or treat the reader like a moron? I'm not looking for compliments here, just some honest opinions, so that I can tell whether the entries are ready for sub-editing.

If you're willing to help, you can start at A63492302. The rest are linked from there.

I reckon enough people are subscribed to my journal that a couple of people will see this and respond. If you are subscribed, but are not in the mood for Christians slaughtering Muslims, for siege engines and cannibalism, then don't feel guilty - it's not everybody's cup of tea.

I'd be happy to read through them for you.

Do you want comments in this thread or elsewhere?

I've bookmarked the link yesterday (posted in some other journal). I'll definitely try to read them (I loved your Byzantium project), but I'm always so busy with that I can't promise I'll make it.

Thanks, both. You can post comments here. Don't bother with grammar or nit-picking. It's just an overall impression I'm looking for.

I'll read through as well - I've only really rough understanding of the Crusades - so it will be from that perspective, not an historian's.

That's the perspective I want.

I've only just started reading, and I'm already hooked.

Just had time to read the first half of Crusade I -- but I have to nip back here and report that this is exactly the kind of history that I want to read. For me at least you have pitched your narrative spot on. You anticipate and answer the questions that arise; the background is sketched in quickly but in the most helpful way.

The parallels with today are extraordinary! What thousand years? You make the comparison obvious without at all labouring it.

This is a massive vote of confidence -- bravo! Can't wait to get back and read more

I've read through to Antioc so far, I'm well impressed Gnomon. It's far from boring, it has the right balance between story telling and factual detail.
There are some grammar and other minor issues that I'm sure the sub-ed will sort.
I'll read the rest later. This will no doubt be a great addition to the Guide. Well done.

I've read the first one, and I agree with the others. People used to recommend that we pitch entries so that a bright 12-year-old could understand them, and this is certainly the case here. I can see this being a valuable educational resource, as other EGEs have been in the past.

The only concern I have is in the validity of the information, and it would benefit this entry a great deal to link to sources which support the historical facts you use.

Hope this helps!

Icy

Ah, maybe some suggestions for further reading (book list at the bottom, for instance) would do?

Could I list books I read which I definitely recommend you don't read? Some of them are awful!

There is one book which was particularly helpful - Thomas Asbridge's "The First Crusade". My narrative is very much based on what is in that book. I should certainly recommend it at the end of the last entry.

I'll have a nose. It seems pretty engaging - I like the "Some of them are true," line.

First question - is it right to describe the Dark Ages as a time of lawlessness? I've always understood that aspect to be rather exagerated. And Alfred the Great for one was very big on laws.

I loved that line, too - Among all his other talents, Gnomon would probably have made a very successful screen writer.

We're to keep a low profile at work on internet use etc for the moment, so I think I'll print it out and read it in my lunch hour tomorrow.

The line about "accounts differ, but by all accounts . . ." is counterintuitive. It's not illogical but it looks it. Perhaps "accounts differ, but they concur in this . . . "

Sorry, too early for nitpicking

I've read the first two so far and don't really have anything to say except that I'm enjoying them and learning a lot!

I'm just looking forward to reading all these as my American education really didn't cover the crusades at all. I learned more watching Monty Python and Indiana Jones than I did in class.

I just finished the first installment. As a bright but ignorant 43 yr old, I found it very well organized and informative. Nothing struck me as needing any changes.

Some points that niggled me on reading through. In Part One under "The Muslim World", you say that the Shi'ite and Sunni Muslims "hated" each other. While this is the truth, from what I have heard, do you think there is a more "grown up" word for their animosity? To explain their differences in detail would fill another university project, but this word stood out to me as being a little illogical compared to the rest of the entry.

Peter the Hermit's story sounds fascinating. I bet Shakespeare would have written a play about him if he'd known more about him.

Towards the end of this first entry, you explain that Alexios would greet each noble and then arrange for him to cross the Bosphorous. The two paragraphs are divided by another paragraph, and it's rather confusing when you continue in the paragraph starting "As soon as the audience with the Emperor was over, Alexios arranged to ship the noble ..." Could this be placed nearer the other paragraph, or could the opening sentence be re-phrased. Or is it only me who's too daft to remember the paragraph before last and make the connection straight away?

The other thing I was going to mention was in the second entry but I see you've already changed that.