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

I was looking through the welcome pages for newbies, and I realised two things.

1. There's a lot of information there, in fact there's too much information, you can't always find what you want.

2. Some of the information is outdated.

3. Lets change it!

I'm going to go through the help pages, and see which links can be added and what information is out of date. Then point it out to the italics on Editorial Feedback.

So I need to ask your help...

Firstly I need to find all the Research Writen help pages. The ones that deal with Peer Review, the underguide, the post, registering, finding your way around, nettiquette. Etc.

The first step to knowing what needs changing is finding all the information that's already out there.



Z

I'm happy to help, but there really are lots of them out there (I used to look after h2g2 Support, which is subscribed to all of them). Do you think that you should decide on one small section and do those first?

Let me know what you want me to do, Z, but you'll have to be fairly specific or you'll get pages of irrelevant drivel.....

I guess what I'm trying to do is look at h2g2 through a newbies eyes and make sure that they've all got the essential information they need to understand the site, without an ACE.

I'm going to be concentrating on the first few pages help pages a newbie might come across.

So I'm looking at the Welcome page, the 'I'm new what do I do now' the 'Read/contribute/talk pages.

If the ACEs didn't have to give essential information, then they could concentrate on making the newbie free

Good ones to start with. Don't forget that there are no links to R/C/W in Brunel at all now (not from anywhere as far as I can see) - which is the default (and therefore newbie) skin, so any work done there could be wasted without knowing they are being linked to from somewhere.

That should have been R/C/T.

But once you register you are switched to alabaster.

And besides most newbies change skins fairly early on... and yes I'm planning on linking to them from others.

They still haven't fixed that? Sheesh... At least the links are there in that skin.

Nope.

What I'm planning on doing is a new welcome page, with links to updated 'read' 'write' and 'contribute' entries.

I'm also going to go through the other help pages and point out where they are incorrect. Hopefuly it will make a big change to the site without too much effort from the italics.

What got it started was that my flatmate, who has listened to me rave about h2g2 for about 18 months, got bored one day when I wasn't in, and registered with h2g2. He said 'I registered, but I couldn't find all the cool things that you're always going on about, I just didn't get the site...'

I'm going to prepare drafts and see what the community thinks about things... and also see what information the ACEs are currently giving out.

There are a few places where updates need to be made the help pages - it would be nice if all the italics have to do is paste over the top of the old ones, rather than have to deal with them themselves. I used to love that.

That's basically the plan!

Though I've got carried away and are thinking of making bigger changes.

You should ask for a job.

Hi Z - and Mina

Maybe you should also think newbe as *not* English/British - and/or having English as second or third language.

I've been here for more than three years and just recently I've found and understood different places like Alternative Writing Workshop. I didn't find the 'get started' pages very usefull. It is written like journalism - and it is difficult to decode other culture's journalism generally.

I cannot find the right word in my Danish-English dictionary so I'll try to explain in a roundabout way. The language seems concentrated, and as a reader/participant you have to have an insight, be in-the-know, about contemporary English, the humour, the slang, the history, the culture (music, films etc.) and the abbreviations. But not very many of us are, if we haven't watched you tv, read your papers, discussed on the campus and so on.

I'll try and have a look at the pages with fresh foreign eyes.

tartaronne