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

Entry: Geek Code - A781265
Author: aes - U197983

A description of the famous Geek Code, simplified from www.geekcode.com.

The autorh of the geek code has stated (on the site you link to) that if you wish to write an article about the geek code you should contact him. he then gives his email address.

have you contacted him?

Thanks - I didn't remember that bit of the page, and I've sent him an e-mail just now. Hopefully he'll respond soon.

(A slight problem being that his email system is bouncing stuff)

It might be a good idea to remove this entry from h2g2, until you can trace the author, and obtain permission. We don't allow copyright material on h2g2 without permission.

If A706754 - 'The Language of the Cube Farm' can survive then this entry can certainly survive. It doesn't appear to be copied verbatim from anywhere, and while there are a few quotes (the bits in BLOCKQUOTEd ITALICs) they're well under 'fair use', and (like the stuff the Cube Farm article stole from) they're reproduced in loads of different pages scattered around the web.

Pay no attention to Mina
-Martin

Lucinda that's very unfair of you!

I've just popped over to lurk round the Writing Workshop to see what goes on, after a complaint in Peer Review that something I wrote was too wordy. I withdrew the Entry but it needs a good home and I though this might be it.

I certainly didn't expect to find a long standing member of the community telling a newbie to ignore the staff!


aes, if you are still subscribed to this, Mina is one of the Community Editors here and her advice is sound.

I have some links that might help you. When you joined you agreed to the <./>HouseRules</.> and they include helpful information about what you can or can't post with regard to lots of things, including copywrite.

Of course this is a site for writing, and its good to see you want to contribute. Here's a page that can help you. Writing-Beginners

If you have any other questions, look here, <./>DontPanic-FAQ</.> If all that fails, ask an Ace or one of the sites Community Editors whose name appears in italics on the list because h2g2 is their real job. These include Mina, who is a very good person to ask since she was originally a researcher and writer here.

You could even ask me!

Coelacanth - We took a look at this entry, and the original geek code document, and the only points of similarity we found were a couple of lines in block italics. Then we took random phrases and googled them and got no exact matches. so, this entry isn't copyrighted material, so Mina's advice isn't relevant, and aes can safely ignore it.

Why saying this to a newbie should be a bad thing, I'm not entirely clear. But I'm sure you'll enlighten me.

-Xanthia (wondering if random chastisement is part of making the site 'sticky' now)

Random chastisement? Not at all. I read a lot all over the place, but I rarely post. It takes something special to make me emerge from my cave.

I just didn't like to see you advising a newbie to pay no attention to someone whose job it is to help people contribute. If you had been posting to any long standing community member I'd have probably ignored the comment.

But you weren't.

It seems that aes has "left the bulding" and if their piece was genuine and original the site may have lost a potential contributor.

However, thank you for clarifying your point. The advice to ignore Mina applied to this thread only and not to any other part of the site. A newbie might not have understood. I certainly didn't.

I'll go back to lurking now.

Aes 'left the building' over three weeks ago: at least two weeks before I ever posted to this thread. If you're looking for someone to blame, look elsewhere. If you're not looking for someone to blame, I misunderstood you. It happens.

-Xanthia

I'd like to see an entry in The Guide about the Geekcode. If Robert Hayden is uncontactable at the address he gives specifically for the purpose of getting his permission, can we say that he has abandoned it, the way that a researcher here has abandoned an entry if they haven't posted at h2g2 for a set time?

Many other codes have sprung up in the meantime, like the Gothcode f'rinstance, which would be good to list, although they seem to come and go so quickly that it would be almost impossible to avoid broken links. I saw a comprehensive list of these codes a while back but I'm buggered if I can remember where.

The most comprehensive one I can find is at:

http://www.qrd.org/qrd/electronic/sig-codes/

A particularly sad friend of mine, once wrote a De-Geek code, and linked with a database compiler, so he could search his friends by their geek tendencies. Unfortunately, he only had two friends so this didn't work very well....

B