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

Sunday. We've actually no parties today. Nobody is coming for dinner and we're not invited anywhere (yet).

My plan is to do some DIY. There's plenty to do.

My friend P had a fire in his kitchen last night. Luckily the fire brigade put it out but the kitchen is destroyed. They were already invited to our house for dinner tomorrow.

Ditto here. Son No 3 is leaving to go back to Turkey. Otherwise, today's plan is just to chill and get the house back into sorts for the new year.

I got a migraine on the 22nd and the effects of it only really wore off yesterday. I wasn't in great pain, but I couldn't look at anything in detail for too long. Luckily alcohol seemed to help.

It might be that the migraine contributed to my anger when the new Pliny was released. It comes complete with new "features" which cause hundreds if not thousands of entries to be displayed incorrectly.

As a curator, I've corrected thousands of entries in the past but there's no way I can tackle a problem of this scale. It was so disheartening and particularly just before Christmas. I can't be the only one who cares about the Edited Guide can I?

I resigned from my jobs as curator and sub-editor. It makes me very sad to do this but the scale of the problem and the apparent indifference of everyone to the Edited Guide is just too much for me.

blimey I haven't looked at any entries in Pliny yet. I'll take a peek.

You're right, Gnomon.

I've seen lots of problems with rendering Guide-ML, but that started with the original Pliny. I was rather hoping newer versions might tackle those, but it sounds like it's getting worse.

I'd contribute more if my job allowed me the time. I also suffer migraines from time to time. They often hit me when I try to relax, like at weekends, which is particularly annoying.

It's not getting worse, it's getting better. A *lot* better.

The problem is, the overall underlying structure that we inherited from the BBC was so badly mangled over the years that we've had to replace pretty much everything, and are still doing so.

The particular issue that Gnomon has continued to highlight is that there are random line breaks in entries. So here's an explanation of them...

When the APIs that Pliny uses pulls the information out of the database, it mangles it. Some type of carriage returns are converted into correct unicode, some are converted into break tags, and others, well others are converted into random symbols that don't actually mean anything. And there doesn't seem to be any coherent explanation as to what gets converted, or to what.

On top of this, when writing an entry you don't generally add line breaks half way through a sentence, well, some of the researchers here tend to in their postings, but you don't when you write entries. But you can when you're laying out code. You *shouldn't* but you can. The reason you shouldn't is because it adds an extra symbol that the browsers have to parse and convert, and it all add to load time for the user every time they load the page, simply so that the coder can see things a bit easier.
I agree with laying your code out well, new lines and indents, but adding carriage returns mid sentence of text is a no-no in modern coding ethics.
So there's balancing out the way that people should code, along with the way that some people still code, along with the way that people write.

Previously, getting an entry onto the site took effort, if you wanted to make sure it looked okay. You had to learn GuideML and some html, and in the early days of the site you could also use JavaScript. But back then, most people that used the internet were able and happy to learn these things, but that was back then. This is now almost 2014, not 1999. People use the internet in different ways than when they used it when I first came here, and people don't want to have to learn to code to be able to write. And why should they?

Very few good writers are also decent coders, and they shouldn't have to be. For someone to be able to write an entry for the Guide, they should be able to click a button, type the entry, and click save. *THAT'S ALL*

So, along with balancing good coding practice and old coding practice, we also have to think of the writers, which to be honest is why we're here. Without the writers we might as well switch off the lights.

So what have we done then?

Over the last year we've been completely rebuilding everything that handles how things are entered into the guide, and how they're pulled out, and how they're displayed. The problem is, this takes time, as well as having to handle all the legacy issues. What we have done though, is we've created a new system that handles it for future entries. We may have several thousand entries already in the Guide, and several hundreds of thousands of non-edited entries in the guide, but in the future we may well have millions. And it's those millions that we have to think about.

So, we've built a new system aimed at the future. It's not perfect yet, as any volunteer who's been testing and feeding back, and working with us will tell you. But as any volunteer who actually engages in conversation will also tell you, progress is definitely being made.

And what's the progress with this particular issue? Well, rather than assuming that something is broken and whinging about it, perhaps engaging in conversation about what's really happening would let you know. It should now be fixed.

This new Pliny is *so* much better, because with this last release we're able to move to continuous development. Since the new version has been released, we've also had three smaller releases to fix issues and add extra functionality.

Thanks Pastey for fixing this.

Since my post explaining why I've felt so bad over the last week, along with all the other ones, has been removed, there's no point in me staying in this Pastey-led dictatorship.

Goodbye all.

Just to clarify, the post in question was referred to the moderators by another user, and was hidden pending decision. As you can see, the post has now been reinstated.

The h2g2 moderators do not publicly criticize moderated researchers or expose confidential moderation details. Researchers should afford the moderators the same courtesy. Concerns about hidden or removed posts should be communicated to the moderators directly at [email protected].

Regards,

psychocandy, Moderation Team Leader, on behalf of the h2g2 moderators

Thanks for clarifying that, psychocandy. I have always tried to be nice to the moderators in the past.

Nevertheless, this has all been too much for me.

I may return.