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

When I was 14 I got a severe telling-off for a essay I had written in English. It was because we were doing a project on the Future, and it was the second essay I had written that contained diagrams. You see, back in those days, English teaching was all about the Written Word, and anything which detracted from that, even though it aided communication, was seen as being in contempt of its aims. It was almost like using a ruler in Art class.

Well, I've used diagrams now for more than thirty years and I continue to use them. The world has moved on from the written word being the sole means of communication, and no more so are the boundaries blurring than in broadcasting. We get digital radio on our TV's and computers; television on the Web, interactive programs during TV broadcasting. We can see all kinds of material organised effectively into a coherent presentational format. And yet, on hootoo, we still have *no diagrams*.

This just isn't good enough, I'm afraid. I don't buy the argument about h2g2 being there for 'original factual writing'. We can't all be Douglas Adams, but we can certainly give the current drab, totally text-based format a drastic makeover. I want to start a campaign for inclusion of diagrams. I also want to see some work done on the following:
* Establishment of an editorial process for inclusion of diagrams in the Edited Guide
* Amendment of GuideMl to accomodate diagrams and cross-references to them
* A process for submission and uploading of diagrams
* A set of guidelines for which diagram formats are acceptable and how they will be rendered in different skins
* Creation of a team of 'community illustrators' who, like the Community Artists, are well-versed in these processes and can manage the process of diagram inclusion.

I propose at the end of this campaign, if there is sufficient interest, to come up with a concrete set of proposals for this change to the way the EG works. Please, get involved if you can. I want this to be a success, because I care about the health of the Guide and its relevance in the greater context of the Web. If there is no interest, I can only assume that people are happy to see the EG take another step towards being a ghetto for song deconstructions and reviews of video games.

The first thing is that it's *relly* difficult to get people to volunteer for art because it takes much longer to do the artwork than say, sub an entry.

I'd personally like to allow people to upload their own pictures, etc, which I think is half the point of your campaign.

I won't join, though I support you, because I do see the bigger DNA picture these days.

That's fine: I can see where you're coming from and appreciate your reservations.


Allowing people to upload their own artwork would be a welcome first step towards the goal I have in mind.

There are lots of entries for which tables are just not enough. And diagrams, every educator knows, carry info much more effectively than text. We are advised to approach technical books by looking at the diagrams first. So I'm with you.

This is the thread which finally cause me to snap: F48874?thread=1195323

Entries are not being written because the medium makes it too difficult. In the same vein, I want to write an entry about the Riemann hypothesis. It contains *equations*. Now, because of the limitations of DNA I can't use these as effectively as I would like, so I would have to somehow indulge in some prolix hand-waving in order to set forth my ideas. Which means I don't end up writing the entry.

Rhetorical algebra was last used by the Ancient Greeks, fer cryin' out loud. I can't help but come to the conclusion that from the sense of inertia about this issue that the Towers is mostly populated by arts graduates. Unfair, probably even untrue, but hardly an unexpected conclusion.

Three comments:

1. The original idea for h2g2 was that it would replicate the idea of the Hitchhiker's Guide - which we finally achieved this year with the launch of h2g2. The thing is, both tables and diagrams look lousy in that format and are not much good to anyone. If you can't get around the issue by the structure of your entry (in which you can simply describe the basics without having to do a thorough exam-level answer to the topic), you can always link to pre-existing diagrams on other websites.

2. We do already have one more 'technical' artist on the Community Artists group, but he's all but disappeared due to lack of demand (come back, Dr J - we miss you!). We'd welcome more if there were the demand for it.

3. You could have asked this question on Editorial Feedback and avoided the martyrdom. So long as the *text* of the entry reads so that the diagram is not referred to (ie, the diagram is an *extra*, not an essential), we'd be willing to look into this.

That was easy, wasn't it.

I think point 3 kind of misses the point though, Mr/Miss Support (). There are some ideas that cannot be effectively conveyed *without* diagrams, and it's entries on these subjects that aren't being written because of the limitations, therefore the Guide isn't being made as complete as it could be.

Depriving PC users of entries just because they look crappy on a mobile or a PDA is a weird bit of reverse logic- group A of users can't have something because group B can't see it?

Quite. Although I think it's great that we can open up the Guide to mobile devices, if we're not careful then we'll end up producing a lowest common demominator product. As an analogy, the Govermnent is turning off the analogue TV broadcasting signal at the end of this decade. If we used *that* argument then we'd still be watching everything in 405-line black-and-white.

Moreover, in my extended argument, there is no cogent case for not implementing equations either. They (a) don't require any editorial intervention or post-production (b) are supported by a wide range of plugins and (c) don't have any copyright issues.

Finally, I think it's worth reminding ourselves that before we dragged mobile devices into all of this, h2g2 was intended to be an Unconventional Guide to Life, the Universe and Everything. This includes, presumably, scientific and technical subjects, many of which simply can't be presented gogently and concisely without diagrams.

PS: I don't *want* to link to diagrams on other websites. I want *my* diagrams and *my* writing to come together into some sort of coherent whole when I write about a topic. The demand for technical illustrators is there, believe me.

Yes, I'll suppor this cause. I don't think, in the initial stages, it even needs that much extra, but the process as I understand it is that any diagrams are added afterwards by the editors/artists.

Now my entry was explaining how an engine works. Yes it can be done in text, but we surely want the guide to be accessible to as many people as possible. And some people will simply not respond as well to words. It is well known that people need things explained in different ways, and some people are simply more visual than others.

" you can always link to pre-existing diagrams on other websites."
The question then arises, that if I am linking to someone elses explanation of the same subject because it has pictures, why not just create a load of links with 'See Wikipedia' in them?

OK, that is extreme, but if we want people to value the guide, then providing a direct link to another website which has an entry on the same subject is surely not a good idea?

And as for pictures for the mobile guide, it'll come. The current restrictions on mobile devices become less so with each generation. So we can stick to the pretty much text only now, and when the mobile devices have caught up, H2G2 will be woefully outmoded and a lot of effort would have to be done to bring it up to date. Or we could start now and be a little ahead of the game.

"We'd welcome more if there were the demand for it."
I'm sure there is, but when I tried to sound out the idea of getting some piccies done, and I had a volunteer artist to do it, I came up against the rules, such that the piccies could not be done before hand.

SO the 'demand' is from the editors to the artists, based on the article, which neither may fully understand.

Gnomon's post to the afforementioned PR thread seems to answer some of my questions though.

Well, can I suggest that a way forward might be to formalise this process? One suggestion I'd like to make is that we have a FIGURE tag, along the lines of A Typical Linear B Script

You'd then get a diagram in the text with the bottom centred ('BC') caption 'Figure 1: A Typical Linear B Script'. Then, in the GuideML, you could refer to it by putting in an XREF tag, viz:
...we can see that the Linear B script (see <XREF="mylinearb"/&gt looked like...

Which would appear as
...we can see that the Linear B script (see Figure 1) looked like...

with 'Figure 1' hyperlinked to the drawing. The figure numbering could be automatically generated.

Sorry, that should have read: (see mylinearb</XREF&gt

The same approach could be used for equations.

Count me in - this is something that has bothered me for a long time. Wikipedia really do piss all over us in this respect (amongst others). They recently had a very successful funds drive - similar I guess to the sort of pledge drives that public radio and TV stations go through a couple of times a year here in the US. It's a pity that the BBC can't do the same sort of thing - I guess it would violate the terms of their charter in one way or another. And I gotta agree about that argument regarding the mobile platform - it's rather arse-up'ard don't you think? We should have had diagrams first then h2g2 mobile when the mobile system was capable of dealing with them, not the other way round.

I see some more of you are finally noticing what I complained about nearly 3 years ago. I joined to provide those better technical diagrams because I saw h2g2 was failing badly there. But the volunteer guidelines were misleading to the point of dishonesty.

The blurb and staff said EG art was done by CAs; yet it turned out that the technical stuff never came through the group at all but instead was passed to someone not in the group. The staff said (inside and outside the CA group) that no people were allowed to illustrate their own entries; while simultaneously allowing certain pets of theirs to do just that. The staff said they don't want people to see their art in advance - causing complaints about its inaccuracies once it was done (and that not being allowed to see and interfere wasn't true when it came to one particular staff member anyway, who whinged about the graphic everyone else had liked).

I haven't started this campaign up to provide a stick for others to yield out of chagrin or spite. If you have issues with the way you have been treated by the staff then take them to the staff. I don't want to hear about them. I have no axe to grid against the staff at all. All I want to see is an effective process for inclusion of technical diagrams. If you can make a constructive contributionto this debate then please do so. Don't try to hijack it for your own purpose.

It's the same issue. You are just pretending that it isn't.

No it isn't. I don't give a sick dog's dump about whether *my* artwork ends up on an entry, whether of mine or anybody else. All I care about is that I don't end wasting time writing reams of clumsy prose that sets out to relate a point that could have been dealt with by one diagram. The question of who produces it is immaterial to me.

You, on the other hand, never seem to tire of making out that someone in the Towers has got it in for you (I've been reading the postings, believe me). Whether they have or haven't I can't say, but if you think that they aren't listening to you then perhaps it's because you run out of meaningful and positive things to say, rather than selective deafness on their part. Like I said in my previous posting, this campaign isn't a banner of convenience for people with grudges to work out. Take your argument elsewhere.

As usual, you (and others) are misrepresenting the situation. Although some of you only do this because you were foolish and undiscriminating enough to believe the first people who deliberately misrepresented things, others or you are well aware of what they are doing when they do it.

Why is it at times like this I hear a nasal voice shouting out 'Infamy!, Infamy!...'?

Look, you go and fight your own battles. I'll go and fight mine. happy, now?