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

1. Where can I find a list of guide researchers?

2. Why can't we be from other planets if we want to be? (i.e., why the earth-centric view of things? I thought the whole point of the Guide was that it was an alien view of things which is what made it funny. Earth people would not describe the earth as mostly harmless.)

3. Where can I find a list of guide entries?

4. Can you put in a search function that searches all of the user pages and not just the Guide pages?

5. I am browsing these pages using Internet Explorer 4.0. The operation times out about one in three times that I try to access a new page. Is this my problem or yours? Will it be fixed or should I just live with it?

6. Where can I get a list of little beeble thingies (whatever they are called) that come up when you enter certain combinations of keys?

7. Wow, this is a lot of questions!

8. When I enter hard returns into my Guide entries, they don't seem to have any effect. Is there an HTML code that I should be using instead?

9. No matter what anyone else tells you, don't have a convenient menu-browsing system for Guide entries! It should be just the whole list in one area. This will make people wander around from link to link, which is obnoxious, but much more in spirit of the new guide. Besides, people will find more cool entries that way.

10. How do I link to other guide entries within my own guide entry? Can I link to anyone's entry, or just official ones?

Thanks for your patience,

Balsamic Dragon

Good questions, would the editors care to enlighten the humble researchers as to these and:
how to delete stuff
how to include images
Pleeeeeeeeeeeeease

How can I change my name from being Researcher 37738 to be some froody name. Just imagine Einstein having to be forever remember being something like Student Number 345970's General Theory of Relativity. I am sure he would have never published it.

I am not saying that I would write a master piece, by lets look at the facts.... Ah stuff it, I am sure I will forever get my entries rejected, of which I would be all to happy in replying with a slightly edited version of the same story, but I no longer wish to be called Researcher 37738.

If someone out there could help, I would find it in myself to share some of research notes with you.

Researcher 37738

Hehe.... Well what would you know, I found out how to do it myself. It's amazing what happens when you DON'T PANIC, and that you find a button on your page called personal details. You may now all go back to living your life as if I never existed

The Field Researcher Formally Knowns As Research 37738

1. At the moment, you can't, since it would be a ridiculously long list to download (we're just so popular) and anyway, why would you want it?
The search page lets you search for a user by name or email address.

2. While the alien viewpoint of Earth that featured in the original HHGTTG was one of the book's most striking and memorable features, it isn't what made it funny. It was made funny by skillful writing and a load of good jokes.
It's possible to write very funny articles without using the alien viewpoint - we've had quite a few already, and they're incredibly refreshing after having to read "X is very popular with the Terrans of the Planet Earth" for the 50th time that day.
Besides, we want H2G2 to be a site that's useful and fun for everyone, not just fans of the original.
(When we're sure we have a non-Earthling readership who'd appreciate an alien viewpoint, we'll probably rescind this rule)

3. At the moment, you can't, but we're going to be adding more ways of browsing through the site, so stay tuned.

4. You can already search through user pages (but it's not very clear, that's my fault): Simply hit the "search the guide..." button without typing anything in the text field, then click the link marked "switch to the Power Search".

5. Probably ours. Since the site's launch its popularity has overwhelmed us, and more importantly, overwhelmed the servers too. However, we have several software and hardware upgrades planned that should make the site much faster.

6. Hey! We've gotta have some fun secrets!

7. I'm glad you're so interested in the site that you came up with them all.

8. Wrap your paragraphs in tags... tags... like this. (remember the closing tag!)

9. What do you mean by menu-browsing system? We're looking at all sorts of ways to browse the Guide, and we can quite easily have more than one. (and a simple alphabetical list is right near the top of the suggestions)

10. Here's the official way of linking:
Link text goes here
Replace the [ID] in the example above with the ID of the H2G2 page you want to link to - it'll look like a letter followed by some digits, e.g. U47, which is my home page, or A61949, which goes to the entry titled "Marriage".
The H2G2 ID is usually part of the URL of the page you want to link to.

Hope this all helps!

-- Yoz

Whoops... I see my text on paragraph formatting got a little mangled. Let's try again.

What I was saying was that you should wrap your paragraphs in ... tags, for example:
here's a paragraph

-- Yoz

I have another question:

How do we change our e-mail address?

Mine is a university account and is going to be deactivated over the summer and may possibly change after the summer.



G.

Same here, I've just got a new address from imaginemail.com and clicked on the wrong email address link and it just registered me as a new researcher. I've spent a lot of time on my page and in discussion and I don't want to have to lose it and start again. Is there anyway you can fix this, perhaps a propper change address button. I don't want to be researcher 43517 over the hols, 31306 is a nicer number.

ReapeR

How do people include those little orange smiley faces??? - html tags maybe?

Also, how long on average does it take for our entries to be rejected or accepted?

As for the smiley faces. Do a standard :,-,) (with out the commas). For a winking one, use a ; instead of the :. You can also do a fish by doind >,<,> (aonce again with out the commas). There is a wide eyed one, but I am not sure, it maybe that you use an 8 for the eyes. Just let me try.

As for waiting for rejeection, I have one that has been waiting to be rejected for 5 weeks now. So just wait until they get around to you

Thanks, I'll be waiting a while then!

Just keep writing entries and submit them. They will get sick of you soon enough, and so they will have to start rejecting you, or heaven forbid that you get accepted.

However I am glad to see you are now versed in the world of h2g2 smiley faces

Where does it show your e-mail address anyway? The more I look around the more lost I feel. (sigh)

There's no reason you can't carry on using your old account and forget about the new one - is there?

-- Yoz

You guys sound all so cool and switched on with the site ... the stuff that I enter for my page at the moment won't even appear there for me!! Is it just me or doesn't H2Gs like me??? This may seriously affect my self-esteem

Couple of things to check:
There are two types of page that you can edit: your home page, which there's only one of, and your user entries, which you can have as many of as you like. The list of user entries you've created will appear on the bottom of your home page. (I'm telling you this so you can make sure you're editing the right thing)
Also, are you using any funny HTML tags? These can cause h2g2 to cough and splutter some.

-- Yoz

Thanks Yoz. It all actually turned up when I logged in again - so I was just impatient! Good of you to let me know some of the probs, though.
Bran

I have a speed problem.Occationally i get two different loadingspeeds from my modem pool only one are working well on this site and it's the lower speed and thats a pity .Can it have something to do with the cookie?