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

That's great Malabarista

Maybe we could have grammar and spelling support for English first speakers too.

The stools are:

A reference site on the one hand - wikipedia, for example - somewhere you go to look something up.

On the other, a site where you look at something at random because it's witty and interesting - the writing is good, non technical, and of interest to a majority. The Onion, for example (in a different style)

Hootoo is neither complete and up to date enough to rival with wikipedia, nor consistently amusing and useful enough to exist as an added value guide that one can browse through or look at the front page every day. Some of it is very good, but by no means all - and the recent stuff is if anything a little less quirky/different/interesting than 2-4 years ago.

I think it's doomed in the medium term because I don't think the BBC gets anything out of the EG - I think hootoo itself is a useful testing place for them, but once it outlives that use, and in the current budget climate...

sprout

So you think there needs to be serious thought about some sort of beeb-less backup plan?

Writing "quirky/different/interesting" is a lot more difficult than writing dry, factual entries. I've tried and I can't do the quirky although I like to think I manage interesting some of the time. I'm not sure we should be emphasizing quirky so much. 1 persons quirky is another persons irritating.

I wish there was such a back up plan - evidence from the first version of the site would seem to indicate it didn't make much money...

Re writing in an interesting way - I agree that it's difficult, and can be irritating if done badly.

It's just if you come to hootoo looking for information on an African country, for example, and see we have nothing - will you come back again to look for information on Ohio? (of which we have plenty) - in otherwords is there any point in being partially comprehensive, if we're not clearly specialised?

So if we're not somewhere that you can confidently look things up on, then what are we? And then what is the value of the very dry entries?

sprout

That's where it could be useful to have the site visit stats - who comes here, for how long, do they return etc.

I don't think that everyone should have to try and write quirky entries. Finding other unique hootoo voices and style would be good, but again pressure to write in a certain way is counterproductive.

Another problem (for me) is the copyright issue - perhaps not for entries, but I've avoided submitting things to The Post simply because I don't want them re-used elsewhere on the BBC without my permission...

From the terms and conditions -

<>

You grant the BBC the right to use your material but the copyright remains yours.

Exactly - and that's my problem, the right to use it elsewhere. The BBC is big - and I was talking about material I might consider publishing.

Falling between two stools? Sounds messy, but I agree wholeheartedly. It's not until you start going through a newly born piece looking for links that you realise how massive the gaps in the Guide are.

I would plump for humour, without being disparaging at all to the serious work. I look upon it as the "Witty Wiki".

Mumble mumble weird mellified wiki...

I think the community itself can be seen as a valuable service provided by the beeb. Remember the Slow computer ZZZ thread? That was at least fifty quids worth of computer engineering. Plus the diversity of styles within the EG...

I wouldn't trust a wiki entry much further than I could drop kick my tower. Which is very big and heavy and glows in the dark.

Three new Entries on the Front Page today.

TRiG.

I don't think Binary Digits is new, is it? But definitely two new entries.

Two, surely?

Two fits better with binary, anyway

I've dug out one that I started working on when I first came here, I like the subject and the content, but not the style. Polishing it up now

Brilliant - what's it on?

Benjamin Banneker, the "Sable Astronomer"

He kind of inspired me to keep taking Maths and Physics in school even though they're "not subjects for girls", as the teacher told me All around good guy. Now if only my entry didn't sound like a school essay. I think I need to write it all again

I've just added you to my friends list Mala, hope that's ok.