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

Entry: Karen Carpenter - singer/musician - A603172
Author: Archangel Galaxy Babe ACE - U128652

My tribute to the lovely Karen, I hope I've done her justice.

i liked it, my only comment would be about the eating disorders -

"Today such illnesses have no stigma and help is available."

I would say that there is still stigma, although very much reduced, but there is some still there.

I would definitely think that the depiction of "before Karen Carpenter" anorexia was like this, and "after" it was like this is a little overly simplistic. To say that there's no stigma is a gross exaggeration -- things have definitely improved since the 60s and 70s, but stigma still remains. And even saying "treatment is available" is a simplistic statement, as that's completely dependent on what country you live in what kind of insurance you have.

Personally, I think this would be a stronger entry if you tried to avoid generalizations about anorexia, and instead focused more on just Karen Carpenter. I agree that her struggle with anorexia the way in which it was brought into the "spotlight" is an important part of her story -- but I think you can tell that story without trying to turn it into an entry about anorexia in general.

My
Mikey

Thank you for reading my entry.

I have removed the sentence "Today such illnesses have no stigma and help is available."

However I have to disgree that the part about anorexia is essential to Karen's story, she died prematurely due to it, after all.

I am surprised there is no entry on this in the Edited Guide, and I don't have time to start another entry at the moment.

What do other people think?

I think this entry is fine the way it is, I wouldn't change a thing

I like it as it is...

The only thing that "disturbed" me was the related BBC link about controlling weight. I don't know how the BBC links thing works, but I think that one (which I haven't checked, btw, because I don't have time) may be a tad insensitive.

Well done, GB, have a

Thanks Sir Kitt and Sho,
I did read it {the controlling weight entry} through before linking to it, it's a collaborate entry and very informative. It contains some good information, so I though it relevant. I can see that it looks insensitive, but I assume the sub-ed will add all relevant BBC links anyway. {if my entry gets picked....}

Thanks for the

I like it as it is too GB! Well done that woman...T'was a most enjoyable read!

Good point about the how to lose weight link Sho although like yourself I haven't checked it out.

OK consider it gone, thanks Gwennie

Good entry

I have a bit of a quibble, though - fantastic though your links are, and you must have put in a lot of work on them, some of them do worry me a bit - the ones that don't just go to the front page of the sites in question.

Incredibly useful though they are right now, as soon as those websites have an update or a redesign, the pages named will cease to exist and therefore the link will cease to function. As we don't have much in the way of facilities to update broken links, perhaps it might be better to leave them out - I'd hate someone reading your Entry in a year's time to think "Half the links don't work - this is rubbish" because it most certainly isn't! What do you think?

I recently had a similar situation while sub-editing Anhaga's entry on Edmonton (A997833) - I asked the Towers for guidance, and they advised linking to the front pages of sites rather than specific pages.

So what I had to do was reduce all the links that I could to end in a forward-slash rather than a specific .htm page, and take out all the others, most of which in that case were on the City of Edmonton website. What we did to get around that was to add a final extra final paragraph pointing people towards the City of Edmonton site... you could do a similar thing signposting the imdb and msn entertainment sites - what do you think?

Cheers,
Number Six

Hi,

Would like your permission to post this excellent entry to my study list (1200 members) here:

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/narcissisticabuse/

I have written about the interplay between personality and easting disorders here:

http://samvak.tripod.com/faq65.html

And the story of Karen is a painful illustration of these realities.

Sam

[email protected]

Thank you samvak, yes, as far as I am concerned you can use this story at your website.
However, I think you will need permission from the editors, as one an entry has been written, it becomes the property of the BBC as well.

Number Six, I'm not sure what you are suggesting I do, change all the links to the front pages of the imdb and msn? If that's the case, what's the point of the links? I know that sites get updated and links change, are there any passing eds who could answer this question? I did spend a lot of time on this entry - I'd rather leave the links in, the sub-ed will make a new page anyway if it gets picked for the edited guide.

Nice One Babe

do you think a discography would be an enhancement ?

"substituting gym classes for band class"

She probably did that the other way around. . .I think. Now I'm reading it again and it sounds ok. But still, hmm. . .I know it's just a grammar quibble, but there it could be worded more clearly. Otherwise wonderful article.

There *is* a discography???

Yes, there is.

Nice entry, AGB!

AGB - what I mean is that, if I were given this to sub-edit, I'd follow the guidance I got from Anna on the Edmonton entry: remove all the links to specific pages (mainly the imdb and msn entertainment ones) and then offer you the option of a final paragraph containing a single link to each site summarising what information can be found there.

From a sub-ed's point of view, I'm saying it would be nice (rather than essential) if this could happen before your entry reaches the sub-editing stage - as I'm sure it will, because it's very good!

Cheers,
Number Six

Whoops I read right past it, Sorry AGB.

I think for websites like MSN, internal links are unstable enough that this is a problem. It's a news site, and they have a tendency to "phase out" outdated material.

For a site like IMDB, on the other hand, their internal links are always the same, and have always been the same, and are rather unlikely to ever change, as long as you are linking to the front page of an actor/actress page and not one of their subpages -- this is because the links are essentially database queries, so even if they change the format of the site, the queries themselves will still work, and the links will still find the correct information. In my subediting, I would have absolutely no qualms whatsover about having internal links to IMDB -- in fact, I would have added them in if they weren't there.

Mikey

Good call, Mikey.