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

This has been bugging me for a little while, so I thought I should bring it up here.

Point one of the guidelines says "no fiction". Plus, I believe any articles not applicable to Earth aren't allowed either - after all, this is the Earth Edition. I'm sure that any articles breaking one or both of these rules are rejected on principle.

Why, therefore, does DNA's article on the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy constitute an approved Guide Entry? Make no mistake, I love Douglas's work - but it just occurs to me that this breaches the regulations.........

It would've been fine if the article was about Douglas's best-selling novels, or the phenomenon following them, or even the principle behind them - but not the fictional "Book".

Other people have brought this to light in other forums - or at least different examples of this - but I think I speak for all of us when I say; how many different sets of rules are there? It's not like I want the entry removed - it's great, it can stay - but it's something that puzzles me. Can the h2g2 team shed any light on this?

M@x

ok. no more rules,

Maybe 'cos the "book" is fact, i.e. it is there, although it may be a "work" of fiction? Also, didn't you learn at school - rules are made to be broken!!

I am a new recruit to the agency, and so am just browsing through this guide and finding out what it is all about. I have to say that I am deeply disturbed after having read your letter M@x.

As far as rules go ... well, I am not going to comment until I have read further and am familiar with the h2g2 guide. But to talk about 'The Book' as fiction quite frankly is sacrilege. Mayhap you should seriously consider your new role as an agent for the h2g2 guide if you think of it in this way.....

I could go on but then I would get very dull and repetitive and you wouldn't bother reading it.

It may be that you had suffered a particularly bad day at the office and you felt the need to vent your spleen - but think carefully next time please. Remember we are doing this for not only Earth - but the entire Universe out there.

Ummmm

Anyway. I've said my bit:o)

^Happy_Cat^

Any rule can and should be bent to the fullest extent possible. Nothing that's very extreme should be kept, and there will always be a way around it. (This doesn't necessarily relate to the topics listed under the original subject, but I had to say something about the subject line.)

Okay, I'll try to bend the rules as much as I can Mind you, I'm not a sub-editor or scout (not yet anyway), so it's not up to me sadly which articles are passed as okay.........

I apologise for saying that "the book" was fiction (referring to the one published in Ursa Minor). But h2g2.com is being filled with approved articles of, for example, a list of the pubs selling ale/beer in Nottingham, UK.

There's also a section on moo cows, and a section on cheese. This is all quite deliberate, as the guidelines for writing entries will prove. Sorry to have a pointless whinge over a (mostly) harmless article which we all love dearly, but it was purely something I was curious to know.

My office never has good or bad days. They're all just frustratingly average..........

M.

Rules are there to be. Yoda of Borg are we. Futile is resistance. You assimilated soon will be. Our rules we have.