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

Which is a shame, 'Star, - because the wisdom you do share, you share wuth eloquence and wit.

B

Lots of the edited guide is well written and has got some zing. Some of it is completely zingless and some of it is quite specialised and so only of interest to a percentage of the site. The challenge is to write about something in a way that is of interest to the many and I think much of the EG does this.

I actually don't like the really early one para articles - like the one on blood oranges or igloos - it doesn't tell me anything, its not funny - I can't see the point.

I think on the whole the problem is not with the edited guide, its with the fact that some kinds of articles are really quite good but not right for the edited guide - we need a way of valourising these. At the moment they just end up in the underguide, swamped with the dross. If we enlarge the EG to take in these articles, we'll end up with something that's even lumpier, or that has no consistency - we will have fairly dry scientific stuff on the one hand and then opinion pieces on the other. It doesn't matter that much - the EG is already extremely varied, but still it would be nice for the EG to have a 'feel' to it.

A structured, searchable "alternative guide" would be ideal - something similar to the EG which would group opinion pieces, personal accounts creative writing, poetry. You could then put the best new additions to this on the front page. Maybe the AGG/CAC will evolve into this?

Sprout

Personally, I don't see much wrong with the edited guide - except that PR does occasionally suffer from a lack of 'exciting' entries. But, I do agree with someone's comment that it should not be considered the be all and end all of writing for H2G2... Maybe there should be a more formally organised 'Speakers Corner' with its own link from the front page (Debate of the week?). If we could take some of the 'exclusivity' away from the edited guide - i.e. give people alternative, but equally important and equally publicized, methods of showcasing their work, then it may well attract a whole new breed of writer - and us scouts might be slightly less unpopular when we descend on someone's pride-and-joy like a pack of avenging angels coz it 'doesn't fit into the writing guidelines'.

That's never stopped most scouts picking it in the past, 2 minutes before their deadline.

B

Wazungu, Post: 31
"I suspect however that there are good entries that are not being written because the emphasis on factuality and detail has increased."

I certainly agree with the latter part of the sentence.
Everything that's put into PR now has to measure up with what is there. While at the beginning (and before PR was introduced and pre-BBC) your average entry had to match the stuff of the old writing team and the couple of hundred entries there were (542 Edited Guide Entries on Dec 1999).
Over time the entries became better and more comprehensive. Nowadays you have to write a really good and comprehensive thing (compared to back then) to get it through PR. Nowadays you have to match the good (ie. better than back then) stuff that is in the guide.

Example: The entry on Deep Purple that's currently in PR was criticised by me because it didn't provide the names of the bands Blackmore'd played in in the correct order. That was a very, very nitpicky thing of the to do and on a point which does not really matter, too. (Sorry, Master B ). But some year(s) ago an entry which read something like "Deep Purple made some early hard rock music and published a bunch of albums ansd wrote 'Smoke on the Water'." (or somthing like that, you get the idea) might have gotten into the guide.

With so many people about any entry in PR has to encompass all the stuff these people know. The entry has also to shape up with the good stuff that is in the guide now. I think there's agrrement that some of the older entries would not make it today. But that's just a consequence of us writing some really good stuff.


Tube

This may just be a silly question, and please call me stupid if it is, but are there any stats for how many userpages or unedited entries there are in the greater guide?

I suppose the most recent researcher number would be a rough indication of the userpage count, but some never do anything with their PS at all.

The info page gives the stats for edited entries, but how about unedited?


Geggs

At least something here: A667488

Which means that the stats exist. So, the question is whether they could be made more easily available.

Running totals rather than occasional statements?


Geggs

One of my two Front Page entries today (vanity begins at home!) features the adjective "condomically", so H2G2 isn't so square is it?

Yes but it also contains the (slightly baffling) phrase 'therefrom, and thence' which more than makes up for 'condomically'

'A structured, searchable "alternative guide" would be ideal - something similar to the EG which would group opinion pieces, personal accounts creative writing, poetry.'

Some groups or pages on h2g2 achieve this effect by becoming unofficial hubs for certain topics. For example, if you want to see fiction, you can read a lot of pieces in h2g2 Fiction Central. And I like the idea of Speaker's Corner (did I read about that on this thread?), which invites people to write entries or debate topics without intending to submit them for the Edited Guide. If someone categorized the AGG/GAG archives, it would be searchable by topic. I've tried to make a sort of gaming hub with the AGG/GAG Games for a Rainy Day page, which is basically a list of any good unedited entries I can find relating to games.

Hmm.
Why isn't this thread in community soapbox, where it belongs...?

The main problem is that it's easy to make an entry more factual, more informative, more complete in Peer Review. But it's impossible to make an entry funnier in Peer Review, because you can't do humour by committee. So PR drives up the quality of entries in some senses, but does nothing for the humour quotient.

It would be good, though, if PR didn't actively make entries less funny. I would support removing the "Don't try too hard to be funny" bit of the writing guidelines, which might help. After all, jokes that don't work can be easily removed by a sub-ed. By contrast, it's much harder to add humour and lightness to a work that has none. So that would be a change that could genuinely make a difference, I think.

Another (related?) problem is some entries are just too long. I think we should have a recommended minimum and maximum size, and split up most or all of the entries that breach the maximum. This would make the guide more readable, I reckon.

Finally, there's what I'm struggling against at the moment, with "Seven Card Wxxkstain", which is that certain topics are inherently icky. As if that was somehow a good enough reason not to include them (*mutter* *mutter*).

Enough to be going on with?
-Martin

Interesting points Lucinda - but there is a danger with "After all, jokes that don't work can be easily removed by a sub-ed". That presupposes that the sub-ed has a good sense of humour.

A827381 isn't a barrel of laughs, but it does have a certain sarcastic tone. Ismarah did a good job subbing it, but I had to fight to retain and explain a couple of the more culturally-specific jokes.

B

Wonders if it is wise to enter into this discussion.

Ok with 64 solo entries and 68 collaborative I think I am in a pretty good position to comment on the question at hand especially as one of my entreis currently pending Rules to help you find the remote control does contain a certain amount of wit which peer review and the sub editor helped to maintain.

I have also covered a vast range of subjects as anyone will now. Some are extremly factual others are lighthearted looks at thing such as my series of sporting etiquette entries. The guide is and does in it's current form enable both kinds of entries to get through the system providing they meet the guidelines.

I also have a number of entries which were edited before the peer review system came into being. And a couple of rejections one of which I worked on extensively and got through in the early days of peer review. Some of these I agree with previous comment are an awful lot shorter that what I generally write now. But now with the need to impress you peers I tend to do a little more research before submitting knowing that I don't have 2 months before anyone even looks at it but about 2 minutes now if I'm lucky. The pressure which I know some writers thrive on is to get an article through peer review without being told to add or change anything. Which I have achieved on one occasion, and just recieved a lot of well dones nad back slaps.

DD you are a mini snowstorm in the blizzard . The guidelines don't restrict you. Neither do they restrict me. I still think they are too narrow.

Tube (post 46) no argument there, some of the early entries would not be up to today's PR standards. Peer review works very well at collecting facts and other viewpoints.

Subcom. (post 52), the key word there is unofficial. Equates to 'not officially what h2 is about'? It seems important to me that there is no official structure, support, value, whatever... I'm not sure why though, perhaps that's where I'm getting this wrong.

However, a quote from the Front Page, no less, "What is h2g2? The only unconventional guide to Life, The Universe and Everything which is written by thousands of people."

'only', that's the justification for h2's existence - h2 is different, otherwise what's the point?
'unconventional', that's how h2 is different.

The edited guide is tending towards encyclopaedic. What's unconventional about an encyclopaedia? All the rest of h2 is not a guide. It's full of u'spaces etc etc so where's the official showcase for the unconventional entries the front page boasts of?

So who ed the un and when did it happen?

I started a conversation re: changing the writing guidelines to reflect the go-getting, unconventional guide that some people here seem to desire under the <./>writing-guidelines</.> page here: F7190?thread=221203

Do wander over there...
-Martin

The more I read this, the less inclined I am to submit an entry. There seems ot be a lot of politics involved in getting your entry into the EG. What would happen if I simply wrote something, sent it off and then carried on with what I normally do. Would someone revise it if I forget that I posted it?

There are gurus and things who can answer this more accurately than I can - but no. Your writing is your writing. It may end up in the Flea Market, where it can be picked up and copied into a new entry by another researcher (with a credit to you). But that is about it.

Any Gurus got more accurate gen?

B

Just Bob, if you submit an entry to Peer Review, you have to be prepared to defend it against criticism for about a week until a scout picks it. People will suggest changes to it, suggest ways in which it could be improved. If you really like it the way it is, you don't have to change it, but you have to at least defend your position and point out the fact that you acknowledge their suggestion without doing anything about it. Eventually if a scout likes it and your defence seems reasonable, then it will be picked. I know at least one researcher that takes this approach but they produce very high quality stuff to start off.

Of course, you can take the suggestions on board and end up with an entry that you are happy with and everybody else is too. This is the course most people take.