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

"As much as I would like to think - and I am sure that in most cases it is so - that the edited entries contain true and valid information, who is to vouch for this? The subeds don't actually correct the content, the editors probably don't have the time. Other researchers may comment when the entry is in PR, but when two opposing opinions are presented - which one is right?"

Mmmm. Back when I was a Scout, I made damn sure I didn't pick anything that I didn't know enough about to be able to tell if it was a load of old cobblers or not. Before that, when I was a Sub-ed, I tried to make sure of the accuracy of the thing I was subbing and did check and even correct it in a few cases - although that wasn't possible with some of the more mathematical or scientific entries due to a total lack of knowledge on my part. But in most of those few cases, I sent the entries back unedited and allocated to another Sub because I didn't know enough about the subject area to know if I'd done a good job on it or not. As a Writer and as a Sub, it was a matter of pride to do a decent job and not have my name attached to anything that was a load of rubbish. And I don't think I'm that unusual.

Of course, if you were to get a Scout and a Sub that don't particularly care about such things and the Italics are looking the other way, inaccuracies could slip through the net.

But I'll bet dollars to donuts that it doesn't happen very often.

"Of course, if you were to get a Scout and a Sub that don't particularly care about such things and the Italics are looking the other way, inaccuracies could slip through the net.

But I'll bet dollars to donuts that it doesn't happen very often."

I've only ever had cause to complain about one Scout.

I can't remember ever having cause to complain about a sub-ed.

WARNING: "stuff that happened years ago" alert!

By the Italics, I've had grammatically correct English turned into incorrect English, the punchline of an entire entry ruined by dogged adherence to house style, spurious and incorrect information added to an originally factual, scientific entry, and a number of other difficulties.

All of these were a long time ago, however. Given the cuts to the staff, I don't think the current editorial team has the time to check edited entries any more. Which, based on my experience, is GOOD!

How accurate is ANY online source of information? We may not react as quickly as Wikipedia, say, but we do have a mechanism in place for correcting errors - all the ones I mentioned above were corrected within an hour. Not all info sites can say they're that good.

H.

'WARNING: "stuff that happened years ago" alert!

By the Italics, I've had grammatically correct English turned into incorrect English, the punchline of an entire entry ruined'

Happened to me quite recently, although not specifically by the italics

Jules (first EVER response by me to Hoo in a thread, I believe - hello! )

At the risk of sounding like some sort of Pollyanna.

I've never had a problem with the editorial process. One of the things I really like is how an entry grows when you put it into Peer Review.

For instance yesterday I finished my entry on syphilis (Well as you asked and not because I'm blatently plugging it, it's here, A2890235 any comments to F48874?thread=603937), and I entered it into Peer Review.

I thought it was pretty much as good as I could get it, but Al came up with some quotes which really improve it, and DrMatt reminded me that syphilis used to be know as The Great Pretender, and lots of people gave me information on the Old World V New World debate, and well now it's just lovely, I'm delighted with it.

All my entries have improved immeasurably during the Peer Review process, which is one of the best experiences on h2g2.

Hi Jules!



H.

I make that two bookmarks in 49 minutes.

I think what puts new people off posting in h2g2 is the incredibly long convo's particularly when added to the sort of unwritten/unspoken rule of read the backlog first or you will get your head ripped off.

It can be very intimidating too when people talk down to you and you have just made your first post...

Some folk DO forget that this is just an internet site and really doesn't need to be that serious.Some of us are really serious about our 'fun' it seems to me.

Some controvesies have passed me by.I frankly don't care if folk arrive at this site through TV internet or not.

I think we could do with less of the aggression as well.It is only a place in the cyberworld to hang around hopefully with not only other like minded individuals but with opposite type folk.This should be what makes a community.Agreed that conflict can make for intersting discussion provided the discussion does keep moving on.However when it just goes round and around the same point it can lead to an atmosphere that puts people off.

Just a few thoughts.

<>

Absolutely!

Lots to comment on... is that off-putting?

When I got here, it was mostly fields. Like Witty Moniker, I was referred here by the Starship Titanic boards, where I'd been having a lovely time. Back then, the editorial team had written a bunch of articles which were pretty much in the style of the H2G2 books, which is to say, they were satires. So we figured this was a place to write satire, and I dove right in. All the stuff by the editorial team has been deleted, but I still have the stuff I wrote. Here's a pretty good example of the style at the time: A136847 It was a silly, freewheeling place.

A few months later it was decided that we were to become an encyclopedia of real information, instead of imitating the inimitable DNA. Changes followed, mostly in the form of organizing the community to improve articles, and suddenly we were an intellectual community first and foremost, though silliness still had its place.

Then came the Beeb and moderation. More changes, and lots of community/Towers clashes, where before the relationship had been relatively peaceful. The whole dynamic of the community changed once again. Interestingly, a great deal of the intellectuals the place was trying to develop were the ones disillusioned, while the "fluffy" researchers were hardly bothered.

The dynamic of the community has, I believe, faced another upheaval since then, with the departure of Powers in the Towers we all knew and interacted with: Mark, Peta, Abi, and even Mina, and replaced by invisible, unknown, impersonal people who are clearly perceived to be *outside* the community. Each time the dynamic has changed, people have dropped off the site. I miss some people I used to talk to when we were a satire site, and some more when we were building a grand Guide, and some others I knew when the community was fighting for intellectual integrity with the Beeb. Changing cultures in rather significant and abrupt upheavals is, I think, rather off-putting.

Other things that can be off-putting are the examples of groupthink and the capacity for overreaction. For an example of groupthink, I refer to the aforementioned warning 2Bit gives American newbies. Case in point, the "What's Wrong With Americans" thread is 4.5 years old, almost 8000 posts strong, has been a fixture in the "Busiest Conversations" list, and has been responded to as recently as last week. That's just one example.

Another example of groupthink is something which was labelled "synchronized jumping sessions." You don't invent a term for something that's an isolated incident. I like to think that, with the distance the Towers now maintain, this is something that happens less often. But I do have to admit that, sometimes, this can be a very useful tool to keep the peace. Sometimes, angry mobs do lynch the right person.

I left for a year, and why I left is known to some here, misunderstood by others, and not known at all by still others. I'm not going to revisit it. As for why I came back... I'd love to be able to post some poignant or significant reason, but I was just having a slow time at work, and was very, very bored.

Trillian's child: "As much as I would like to think - and I am sure that in most cases it is so - that the edited entries contain true and valid information, who is to vouch for this? The subeds don't actually correct the content, the editors probably don't have the time."

As someone who has repeatedly seen factually incorrect additions/changes made to articles *during* the editorial process, I can say that your reservations are well-founded.

And on the same topic, Hoo: I still have a satirical article which was mushed into something vaguely factual and communicates something entirely different from what I intended in the Edited Guide. Change isn't necessarily very fast.

Mina: I concur with your position that the community behaviors on hootoo are not unique. I'd seen the same sort of things on some IRC channels (as both insider and outsider) and the Starship Titanic boards before I ever came to hootoo, and I've seen it elsewhere since.

az: You made reference to an FFFF incident that I vaguely recall, but I went to your space to find the thread and couldn't locate it. You're too popular by half, and too many threads have vague names. Could you link me to it? I have a sneaking suspicion that I was the snarky jerk that nearly chased you off the site, though I may have been involved as a peacemaker instead. Too many years, too many incidents, and too many memory cells lost to alcohol.

Re - Della: Ben, I'd love to be able to follow your example and ignore her, but I limit my activity to a few dank corners of this site, and she's in all of them. I tried the ignore thing for a very long time, and finally exploded on her. Making fun of or insulting her doesn't do me much credit or make me look good in the eyes of others, and carries the risk of lumping me in with some others who deliberately follow her around to harass her, but it's against my nature to allow crass stupidity stand unchallenged. For my personality, the only choices are to lash back, or leave the site. She's not worth the latter.

For evidence of the lack of jumping sessions in the current community dynamic, I submit that, while Della has certainly acquired more than her share of enemies, she has not had forty people shouting on her homepage on the same day, and over a sustained period. And the death-threat episode was worse than some other controversies that prompted jumping sessions in the past.

<> Diddums... Poor Colonel. You'd like to ignore me, hey? Well, why don't you, rather than keeping sniping and moaning on this? http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/brunel/F27390?thread=602552&post=6686291#p6686291

My reasons for not ignoring you are contained in the information you just quoted me on. If you could read, you would understand.

As for why I'm bothering you on that other thread, I leave it to the rational members of this thread to read for themselves and decide, since it's obvious to anyone with a passing familiarity with reason who is sniping and moaning, and who is not.

Perhaps you'd like to explain what you thought the benefit would be of making this particular argument public, rather than allowing this thread to remain on topic and keeping the argument where it already was? Do you think it helps your case in any way to steer this thread into a conversation about you, opening up another opportunity for the many people in this thread who don't like you to trash you?

, I was bored, you attacked me, I responded, so sue me!

To everyone else, I apologise, as you were...

Getting back to the first posting...

I lurked hootoo for some months before I signed up; while I was just reading things I came to know roughly how the place worked. I also started to lurk the conversation threads... Because of that, I came to know something about the more, shall we say, 'exuberant and forceful' personalities here before I came face-to-face with them. Some of these people *do* put me off posting, from time to time. Not often, though.

Things that do put me off posting... well, there's a few of them.

* Backlog. It can be daunting, finding something to say in response to post 22, and then finding another 150 posts on top of that when I get a chance to reply.

*The eloquence of others. If what I'd say has already been said - and in much better words - by someone else, I can't see the point in just saying 'I agree with X', especially if there's backlog in the way.

* Time differences. Living down here in GMT + 10, there is *always* backlog when I get online in the morning; Europe's had an entire day of frantic posting while I've slept. By the time I catch up, everyone's moved on, leaving me responding to something that's buried under hundreds of posts on other matters...

*Sheer rudeness. Yes, it does happen sometimes. Usually, I must say, it's longstanding researchers who should know better by now how to interact with relative newbies. No, I won't be naming names. And as I said, it is a rare thing, but it does make me stop and think, and sometimes back away.

*Cliques. Yes, they do exist. Some are more open and welcoming than others; some I'm still trying to fathom, and I'm in my second year here.

*Topic drift. It's fun most of the time, but when it derails promising threads I find it easier just to move on elsewere.

I'm sure there was something else I was going to add to that list. It'll come to me sooner or later.

Against all that, I should add that hootoo is by far the most welcoming place I've found online. The community is a very real thing. That keeps me here. I signed on with the intention of writing for the Guide, and one of these days I might even finish a solo entry, but the community is the reason I'm still here.

Ivan.

"Of course, if you were to get a Scout and a Sub that don't particularly care about such things"

I think that's really harsh - I was a subed for a while, and you can't really expect people to take on only those entries that they know something about - I'd have never got anything edited!

Peer Review is the place that I've seen corrections made, and I think that's the right place. If I start fiddling around with an entry on my own as a subed because I think it's wrong, then who's to say that *I'm* not the person who's wrong (as seems to have happened).

It's not that I didn't care if an entry was wrong or right, but I like to trust that people know their stuff, and if they don't PR will pick it up. If not, well, they can make corrections to EG entries quick as a flash when it's pointed out later.

I subbed two projects when the Uni was open, and I did make sure I picked subjects that I knew something about.

what puts people off posting on h2g2? Backlog for one. And there's more to life than websites.

Look!



PS. Hi all, its Jen, long time h2g2er, occasional poster.

<>

That is true, regardless of all else I have said. There are some wonderful people I have met here, and that's very valuable...

Woo-hoo