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

Well, if the authors follow the Editorial Process closely, then they should do. I've been guilty of Towers-bashing for this, but it's actually rare that they manage to ruin a Subbed-to-the-author's-approval entry.

B

referring back to the first post of this thread, in mention to dumbing down and lack of intelligence, sicen when has this ever been a bad thing? take F76412?thread=263011 . no intelligence, just nonsense, but some extremely exciting and ground-breaking discussion and posting non-the-less!

spook

Wow, what made you want to ressurect this?

ended up in the community soapbox, clicked on the most recent conversation, which took me to a post linking to here, came here, read first post, went to end, didn't conatin much relevant so replied regarding the first post, posted my reply, then realised it's been at least a week since someone last posted here. i also was hoping my nonsense would hopefully gain interest in the nonsense thread i posted here, which needs imput to make the 10,000 target.

spook

A comprehensive answer.

I've only read the most recent 25 posts, so...

Xanatic wrote: "I have to say I felt things had really reached a low, when somebody started on a thread dedicated to putting the word "knob" into lovesongs."

Mea culpa. It seemed to fit the prevailing mood, is all I can offer in mitigation. And it WAS popular...

Master B wrote: " it's actually rare that they manage to ruin a Subbed-to-the-author's-approval entry."

Not rare enough, in my experience. I've had good experience with sub editors in the past, but over the course of quite a few edited entries I've seen egregious errors of grammar and fact introduced by the Editors for no better reason than they felt like it. And not just once or twice, either.

A857793 (random, purposeless changing of a perfectly good sentence leading to an ungrammatical mess that made no sense)
A742655 (ditto)
A593273 (addition of irrelevant and incorrect example)
A650675 (destruction of punchline due to overzealous application of house style banning first person).

I *do* (or rather, did) follow the editing process closely. A combination of lots of things led me to stop bothering writing entries for the edited guide. The lack of the Editors ability to Edit was certainly one of them. They are, after all, journalists in the pay of the BBC. Shouldn't they be able, as a minimum, to recognise and to construct a correct English sentence? Isn't that a pretty basic qualification for the job? (hey, come on, shoot me down if I'm wrong here.)

H.

"The editors, clearly disenchanted with the stodgy old methods of written expression, have taken it upon themselves to sprinkle about the glaring grammatical errors contained in this piece. Please forward all comments/complaints to the proper authorities." - F32234?thread=38290

This comment came after I'd posted corrections to the sub and they had been noted by the Editors... and yet the Editors actually made it worse. The resulting article was so bad that even DNA took issue with it.

On the subject of editing. My history of the digital watch is being subbed by the h2g2 editors and they have removed a very important opening quate. In fact the opening paragraph of the first novel by DNA. Without it the article makes no snese in places.

I have read all the posts and consequently forgotten them probably but in some post it is the sub-eds and some the editors that are not looked upon favourably.

I once commented in another thread that if i had submitted an entry to peer review and so to be edited, that any changes other than spelling errors and grammatical changes etc would be run past me as the author first. I was quickly assured this was not what happens in the EG process and was quite astounded about this being the general consensus of opinion.

I can only speak for myself, and as a new sub-ed i am no expert, but all authors of any entries i sub aswell as being posted to let them know i am actually subbing their entry, are given the final copy to approve before it is returned to the editors and if they object strongly to something (which hasn't happened yet) then i will either explain that it has to be that way due to the guidelines or come to a compromise.
I know that alot of others do this too.

I am simply a second pair of eyes that in some cases may need to change things due to style etc but always recognise the piece as the authors, not mine. What happens when it hits the editors is different and they then may decide to change things for whatever reason, and i wont begin to second guess them.

We are all human and by the time a piece hits the front page it must have been read about 10 times by at least 3 different people plus those in peer review so, yes these things should be picked up on, and yes, those of us that have written for external publications should know better, but we do our best, which is actually very good on the whole. If you spot an error in an entry then you could always post to <./>feedback-editorial</.> with the Anumber and mistake and it can be corrected .

Just my with 4 entries to sub queueing up!!



Mort

for those of you that dont have the tree up, that was a reply to 3 posts ago!

I'll just repeat:

Subeditors are:

1. in my experience, good.
2. volunteers, doing it out of the goodness of their hearts.

The Editors are:

1. in my experience, not as good as a basic minimum standard one should expect.
2. getting paid actual licence fee payers' MONEY to do the job.

Sorry to go on, but I do think the subs (or at least the ones I've had anything to do with over the course of more than a few entries through the process) do a good job and I don't want to give the impression I don't.

H.

Hoovooloo, and Hi cos i don't think we have met before.

That was a reply i would've posted ages ago but the thread died so i didn't. It wasnt a specific response to your post just stimulated by it.

Having never put an entry through the system yet, then i don't know how it does feel to have something worked upon changed etc but i can imagine. In fact, i think my answer to the 'that isn't what happens' gamg was that i would remove my entry from the system. (screaming it's mine it's mine, and get your hands off probably )

I dont begin even begin to understand what makes a good guide entry and what doesn't, as i seem to often find myself with opposite views to the scouts, so i know i wouldn't make a good one. This means I can't second guess why things get changed at the final edit. (i even get upset if i have subbed something and it gets changed again and its not even my entry!)

But thanks for clarifying what you meant.



Mort (- living in her own paranoid world)

Well, if you want to get *paranoid*...

"In fact, i think my answer to the 'that isn't what happens' game was that i would remove my entry from the system."

Theoretically at least - you can't. When you submit a Guide entry (even if you don't put it in Peer Review), or a journal entry, or even a conversation posting, you give the BBC a non-exclusive RIGHT to that content. It's part of the terms and conditions of the site. You still retain the right publish it elsewhere - it's not the sole property of the BBC. But once you put it on here, you've GIVEN the BBC the right to that writing, and you cannot simply take that right away.

Now, as far as I know, in the interests of a quiet life and good PR the Editors have never made an issue of it, although certain users have... F64497?thread=185719 . But at the end of the day, the BBC runs this site and charges you nothing to use it - so they must be getting *something* out of it, right? Right. And one of the things they get out of it is rights over your writing. ALL your writing - the posting I'm replying to included.

Paranoid yet?

"I dont begin even begin to understand what makes a good guide entry and what doesn't"

Who does? The question is, is there at least one entry on the Front Page each day which makes you glad you read it? That's my criterion for if the site's going OK, and it seems to be going OK. Theodore Sturgeon, the sf writer, famously said "90% of science fiction is crud. That's because 90% of *everything* is crud". That's now known as "Sturgeon's Law", so if you're getting one good guide entry per day, h2g2 is doing well, I think. What do you think?

H.

Thanks for that, so long is there is no restriction on anything outside the BBc with what i post then they can do what they like with it, subject to <./>houserules</.> of course

Mort (- living in the bad world she thought she was all along!)

My 2 cents - for what it's worth.

I've been around on and off since H2G2 started. I am probably the oldest lurker around.

When I started, I found very little intelligent life out here. I was 'gone' during the 'age of intelligence', even though, I was kept informed of many of the threads surrounding the LekZ issue. From what I know of that time, it appears that the bickering and pettiness was done with slightly longer words. As for intelligence, if the people involved were as intelligent as they thought they were, the issues would not have reached the escalation levels they attained. I haven’t been here long enough this time around to make a decision as to the intelligence level.

If you don't like it here, leave. Go start your own site. If you haven’t annoyed the powers that be, you can always come back. You probably will, even if it is only to see whether things have changed. Some of us AI’s will still be here. The names and the faces may change but the world is made up of seekers. As long as there is a need to interact, places like this will exist. We all have a need to make the world a better place.

If you are afraid of being criticized or attached, don't post. Not everyone will agree with your ideas or comments. Life would be pretty boring if they did. What makes a legend a legend and a heavyweight a heavyweight is their willingness to put themselves in the line of fire. They are not afraid to become involved.

Ask yourself why are you writing out here? I, personally, am writing for myself. My guide articles are written about things that interest me. They are keeping certain areas of my life in perspective for me. If you have a similar interest, you may get something out of them. If not, don’t bother reading them. You certainly don’t need me to try and expand your mind.

My conversation threads are important to me at the time. They might not be important next week, but for now they serve a purpose. Some of them are on a serious note and others are completely banal. Just like in real life. Variety.

Just remember, not everything is what it appears to be in cyberspace. Relax. Enjoy. Or go play somewhere else!

As the person who ended up taking over the intelligence page, and is currently trying to complete the intelligence project at the university (see A584525 ), I can clarify some of the "petty bickering".

it was progressing very well and looking like a great article until one of the italics favourites (they don't play favourites as often as they used to now) who wrote the article decided to put some total rubbish in the entry about genius, and then when it got too contentious (with professionals correcting him) said "well, you've frightened me off now" (deliberately, as he owned up to later in a differnet thread).

at that point, it had just the effect that you would expect and the whole thing went sour.

this is part of a larger problem which is still unsolved as to what happens when non-experts talk rubbish, professionals who are experts call them on it, and the editors don't really have a clue on the subject.

the issues reached the level they did, because although he admited he didn't know much about the subject, he refused to believe that he knew less than people whose professions required a detailed knowledge on the subject, and the editors in the end backed him up.

this is by no means the only instance of this, and we have lost a number of prolific researchers to this problem over the years.

My hope is that the editors are gradually learning how not to make such a momentous mess of handling it as they did in that case, and they are improving gradually, but they have not got it right yet.

as to leaving, when it has proved the case that the tyrany of the majority overrules the question of accuracy, a fair number of researchers have left.

quite a few researchers also have their own sites in addition to writing for h2g2. see http://www.xyroth-enterprises.co.uk/htg2pals.htm for a quite large list of users and their sites.

I am sorry to say that I am skipping a lot of the backlog - but there you go.

There are a variety of different things happening simultaniously here.

Firstly we cannot discuss the war, and as has been mentioned already, that seems to be inhibiting other serious and semi-related discussions on the site.

The war has also scared or depressed a lot of people and I for one, and I suspect others too, simply do not feel up to serious discussions.

I get the impression that there are more people on-line most of the time these days, and I suspect that there is some wierd dynamic which has some optimal number of researchers on-line to sustain a good turnover in a number of conversations which is large enough to keep you interested and small enough to follow

There is a spread of games questions in AskH2G2, the Movie Game, the Bad Pun Day, the Everlasting Sentences Game, and so on. There are a lot of other games on other pages H2G2, and in my opinion, the games dilute a debating forum. I know that splitting Ask H2G2 has been discussed elsewhere, and the split that I would vote for is to create a specific 'games forum'.

It is observable that the demographic of h2g2 changes in a very specific way over a year. In July the universities break up for the Summer in the UK (and Europe and the US?) and there is a student diaspora, and a significant demographic sub-set of researchers disappear, and a lot of them never come back. In September new students appear, and the numbers rise steadily until July, when they go Inter-railing, or work in Tescos, or do whatever it is that students do in the holidays. The background level of non-student researchers remains more or less constant, but it is noticable that we are about 3 months off the peak. Now I have to say that, with some honoured and honourable exceptions, that there is a noticable difference in style between the students who join for a few months and disappear, and the longer-term users of the site.

Someone recently observed to me, (was it you, Blues?) that many people seem to come here and burn out after a couple of years. I think there is some validity to this remark. There is certainly a great feeling of deja vu over some thread titles. There are threads I just can't be bothered to join because I have had the conversation here already, albeit a couple of years ago, and I have been trying to think of new questions to ask in AskH2G2 and, to be honest, I can't.

So in conclusion I think we have a combination of inhibition and depression because of the war, some wierd thing to do with the dynamics of the number of researchers, the specific point in the annual tidal flow of short-term student members, and the fact that the number of games in askh2g2 has hit such a high proportion.

I have no suggestions about what to do about it, other than to lift the ban on discussing the war, (which I concede has damaged the site) and hang on in there till June, when the current batch of students disappear into the real world. And just possibly lobby the editors to create a 'Word Games and Mind Games' page and shift the game threads from askh2g2 to it.

Ben
*who cannot be bothered to engage in more conversations for a variety of reasons, only some of which are to do with the site*