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

I go to work for the weekend, and what happens? You all go into a glutinous sloppy mess

Well, I [obviously have nothing constructive to...] say that you clear it all up!

Would you believe that this is the THIRD time I am trying to post this, and IE ate the previous two?

Hey ho.

We still need a lot more input from the community to get this scheme moved on from Ashley's cautious green light. We need you guys to read and comment on various things in various places, (links below), and to VOLUNTEER to be Founder Miners.

Here - in no particular order - are the areas which I see need firming up before this thing gets real.



Underguidelines

Deidzoeb has drafted some Underguidelines here:

Please read and comment. Even if your comment is no more than or it still shows that a member of the community thinks that we are going in the right direction. Your posts count!



The Underguide Editors' Account

Ashley says this should be held by no more than two or three people, but in order to make a quick and fairly clean decision Deidzoeb suggested it should be held by the folks who originally signed up as volunteers in the MSN conversations. These are Deidzoeb, friendlywithteeth, Ben, Spaceman Spiff, Wazungu, and GTB.

If you want to stop these particular lunatics taking over this particular ward in the asylum the please post here: http://groups.msn.com/theH2G2Underguide/uguideentries.msnw?action=get_message&ID_Message=125&ShowDelete=0&ID_CLast=134&CDir=-1



What do we call the Underguide Volunteers?

We seem to have settled on "Miners". I propose that this becomes their official name.

Waz has put together some pages based on the existing volunteer schemes. The draft for 'The Miners'Home Page' is here: A957404 and the draft for 'Why be a Miner?' is here A957431.

These are reasonably complete, but even so will you please cast your eye over them and drop the odd comment or smiley in the appropriate threads.



What do the Miners do?

Ah - now there's a question. This needs A LOT more discussion. Waz has again drafted up a page based on the existing volunteer pages, and it is here: A957323

The SINGLE MOST USEFUL thing you could do is read it, think about it, and comment on it. Please do that for us, eh?



Volunteering to be a Miner

Again there is a draft page based on the existing volunteer pages.

If you want to be a Founder-Miner then volunteer here: A969627

My hope is that the Editors will set up a Miners Email Group soon, which will mean you can really contribute to the shaping of the scheme. It will also mean that we can start voting on entries.



Miners' Code of Conduct

This has not been discussed in detail yet, and it needs to be. You can really make a difference here.

I thought there was a conversation about this, but I cannot find it.



APR

GTB has drafted a new APR page, and you can find it here: A953354

Again, please visit and comment, with smileys if that is all you want to say.



I think that is about it. Comments on the process are best left on this page: A957323


Your Underguide Needs YOU! Please do read and comment and JOIN IN!

Ben

OOps. Deidzoeb's draft UnderGuidelines are here: A968574



B

I volunteered to be a miner (After reading all of that for a half hour) and am quite hopeful...

Well done Jodan. Let's hope it gets to be more than just you and me in there!

Y'all might like to mosey on over to: F51226?thread=249015 for the latest convo with the Editors.

I am not around much for the rest of this week. Be gentle with them!

B

Hey Ben!
I was just working on your suggestion of an entry a day! Yes, 20 is an better target for the time being, or even ten, plus two added per week. As you've mentioned somewhere else I think.

So that's two and a half Elvises (what is the plural of Elvis?) and seven and a half currents to find .
back
What when an Elvis turns into a current?

back
Oh, by the way, Deidzob started a thread on Codes of Conduct here F110334?thread=244350.

Maybe we should give some priority to discussing that one since we already have volunteers.

Hello Jodan (We've been talking about licence plates but I can't remember if I actually said hello.)


Waz *muttering- all these threads, so much to keep track of*

Hello Waz, I don't believe I said hello either

how rude of

...and you

I very seldom use this but in this case it's called for;



Waz

to you too

and a stern NANANA BOO-BOO

How about ?

that too...

that smiley must be used quite often

one thing I don't quite understand is how miners will be able to communicate with other miners to tell them if an entry is open to voting. Will there be a forum?

My guess is that there will be a Yahoo group, or else an MSN group, where the voting takes place.



My guess is that anything which is in AWW is available for voting. If you find something outside of AWW then you can put it in AWW.

Miners will read and comment in AWW in the same way scouts read and comment in PR, but the actual voting will take place in the Yahoo group. I envision one conversation per entry in the Yahoo group, with 'yes' or'no' votes being recorded there.

I do like the idea of voting staying open and the actual weekly Pick comprising the entry with the greatest value of 'yes' votes that week.

I don't know enough about how Yahoo groups work to know if this is going to be practical - the main issue I see is that it will be difficult to tell easily which entries have been Picked and are therefore not eligible for more votes.

Presumably the group owner can move conversations from one section to another, or even delete them.

This system is more unweildy than the Scouting system, where there is no voting, each scout simply picks an entry. But I do think that voting is the simplest way of getting around the subjectiveness of the criteria for UG entries.



B

Ahh, contradiction of an earlier proposal. I remember someone saying we limit the number of possible votes per entry to three (I think it should be somewhere like 5) and this idea "of voting staying open and the actual weekly Pick comprising the entry with the greatest value of 'yes' votes that week" doesn't comply with that

I have another question, I've asked it before, but I haven't gotten any opinion yet, should we make the "quota" of a person mandatory, IE, does a miner HAVE to reach X number of votes a week?

Hi-Ho-Hi-Ho-Hi-Ho...

Off to work I go I go...

Hi there,
Hope you dont mind but i gate-crashed your msn group (well it did say it was open )
After being pretty ignorant about what was going on with the UG I have since been checking up and reading endless posts (following a recent conversation thread in askh2g2) and fully support the idea.
I left a message just to let you know that, although not available in any real sense until the end of March, I am happy to do any sub-edding type stuff. I am doing it for the EG, so I guess me spilling aint two baad
(although I appreciate things are a bit up in the air about structure of stuff etc etc)

Let me know if i can help in any way. I have no life so am I always around

Mort

makes two of us

I wish I could help you, I am a bit out of my league here, and all of my poetry is a bit contraversial to this site... so here's to approving things!

is desperately bored

I like the MSN group that we currently have!

I agree: the AWW is our base of operations, though we are allowed to recruit elsewhere...

That is already happening...if only people would reply

I suppose you just let it accumulate, like in the ACE forum... except that if one is being ignored, then the original poster should reply to their own message to bounce it up to the top...

I think that we need to get the second part of this scheme to something beyond theory: we need to have a list of candidate entries and perhaps what could be done to improve them? [i.e. a piccy would be nice, or some guide ml work?] We also need to get the categorisation sorted: guidelines are also important, but I think the more we do, to the more we will know about what is UG material.