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

I specifically joined to extend and improve the quality of the guide. Many of my specialist subjects weren't covered (or contained errors) and it was obvious that technical illustrations were a problem (badly done or missing altogether). It only became apparent later that I was being inadvertently or deliberately prevented from contributing this way.

One of the things I despise most is the lack of honesty (not just on h2g2). The only people who aren't already disillusioned or aware that the policy looks bad must be those who haven't been paying attention. Although I realise, as per Hoovooloo's previous statement, that this is the norm.

Having initially been fairly keen on the ideal of h2g2, I can't in all honesty now recommend the place to other people because of the despicable way in which I've been treated by certain Researchers and staff. I don't necessarily think the place is beyond all hope but it does require a major attitude change to fulfill its alleged primary objective of being a guide to life, the universe and everything.

However, I'm not opposed to the simultaneous existence of the community aspect. I'm not convinced that one necessarily has to preclude the other.

Let's get some definitions straight. The way i see the official idea is:

h2g2 - the edited guide
community - the users of the guide
site - h2g2+community+forums and the rest of it

The term "place" should be avoided, because this is the internet, and not a place in space.

Both the EG and the community can be part of the site at the same time, certainly, but if we don't get more emphasise on the EG, then we will become another E2. But then we don't want to go so far as to become another Wikipedia. (I've spent enough time on Wikipedia to know how things work there [they work well, but not anything like h2g2], on the other hand, i left E2 quite soon once i saw how bad it was)

Tango

Master B wrote: "the EG has been shunted off to one side somewhat. I would estimate that some 90% of our current Researchers have not written an EG entry, nor visited PR."

I can't comment on the figure of 90%, but I did make a concrete suggestion here: F19585?thread=270267&skip=42

... which would go some way to addressing that specific point.

Some italic comment might be nice at this juncture otherwise I get the feeling we're all just whistling in the wind.

H.

I'd like you to know I'm doing just that, HVL

Just became an ACE

It's interesting, on the info page, the most frequent posters seem to be community researchers (With the exception of moi, I'm both), but the longest postings people are EG researchers.

And another interesting thing, community people are still researchers!

we have been discussing a newbie friendly page about the EG side of h2g2 that can be inco-orporated into welcome messages on the ACEforum.

I'd say 90% is being generous.

We have 131882 researchers.
Taking into account people with multiple accounts for whatever reason, say that's 130000 people signed up.

There are 5334 EG entries.
A lot of those are written by people with more than one entry to their name. I'll be generous in the name of easy maths and that there are 5000 people that have written edited guide entries. (remember some people have contributed in part to an entry, so 5000 is probably about right)

130000-5000=125000
125000/130000*100=96.15%

So i guess 90% was a fair estimate.

Tango

Well to separate community people from 'researchers' we could have a 'researcher' badge. Different from a Field Researcher, but the idea would be that having a 'researcher' badge would give you a different standing in the community, and so it would be something that every newbie would want, so more people will write (some may add: more rubbish, but lets assume we have the infinite monkeys here, something good must be produced at somepoint).

spelugx

In fact, 5000 EG authors is probably being very generous...

I wonder if the italics are allowed to release that kind of statistic?

Tango

You get this "researcher badge" when you get your first article on the front page? Good idea. How would you work with collabarative entries? I guess we should be generous with the badge. Maybe a "Senior Researcher" badge when you get 5 EG entries, with less than 5 researchers?

Tango

The italics wouldn't like another badge, would they?

Hmm, this certainly would encourage writership. Sort of like a club... the people with five entries club... I'm going on 9 I think, so I like this idea

I'm an ancient researcher, but perhaps not one that you want to hear from. Elitism troubles me deeply.

I have mentioned this thread at the atelier, and hope that y'all perceive this as a good deed, to bring more researchers, or even just community peons, into the discussion.

Asteroid Lil
Community Artist

It's actually still just a thin diguise for the experience levels (not points) used on sites like perlmonks, advogato and everything. In the past there has been some resistance for separating researchers on how much they contribute. Maybe it's time to reevaluate that.

I don't think the italics would directly release that statistic, but wasn't there a project somewhere to count the people who had produced the most entries or something? Would that have the required info?

spelugx

Demon Drawer kept a list, but it's somewhat unupdated

Tango, way back when Mark Moxon did spend an afternoon trying to work out who had done what with the EG. Apparently it is not as easy as to do as one might at first think. He certainly got shouted at by some folk for getting his numbers wrong.

Since the Demon Drawer has been keeping tabs on the number of authors v number of entries. His figures by hi own admission aren't up to date and do have some serious omissions. From his figures, the thirty most prolific authors on site have written 997 solo guide entries as at the end of January this year. So it is probably quite a few more now that we are in May.

Ottox comes to mind as the one that ran that, i think it is still going on. Mark did release those stats some time ago. Probably pre-rupert, however.

I see no problem with "elitism", if someone is better at something than someone else, what's wrong with that person getting the credit for their skills?

And just to make it clear, i'm not arguing this because i want another badge. I currently have 2 Edited articles, and one in the pipeline, so i wouldn't be a member of the "club".

Tango

A701768

Demon Drawer's Data Pages:

A712982 - Top 30
A701768 - everybody-ish (note it takes a while to load)

I think keeping score would be a bad idea, and would lead to more arguments.

Do you get a badge for contributing to an entry? I've written a 1000 word entry and gladly shared credit with someone who supplied me with a particularly elegant three word phrase. Do they deserve the same "score" as me? Scoring would lead to more problems, because people would naturally start to try to improve their score and complain when their contribution is not mentioned.

I mean, we've been BBC for two years and there's still not even a system in place whereby the ACTUAL author of an entry is given higher credit than contributors in the PR thread. How much more controversial would it be if your "score" or badge level depended on how much you contributed.

Writing *should* be its own reward. Writers of quality entries will be self-selecting - they'll be writing because they WANT to. We should also not have a system whereby someone who is passionate about one thing, and keen to write about it, should feel in any way inferior to someone who has more diverse interests and writes more stuff. They should be feeling good about their one entry, even if they never write another.

People should be encouraged to write entries for the EG, for the sake of it. Is a "badge" really that much of an incentive? (says the man who did a Uni project mainly for the badge... but I'm not a typical case.)

Although to be honest, I still think that the EG is less important, and that the staff view it mainly as the hook to hang the threads off.

H.