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

hi all of you.

I don't think I have it clear in my mind either Gnomon, which is why I brought it up. It's a bit foggy. (like my mind in general) But we're not quite one thing or another at the moment. Are we writing a Guide, with the emphasis on *quality* writing, or quality writing with a focus on producing a Guide? I think we should be the first, but we're not terribly clear anywhere about our raison d'être.

And I really like the idea of a brains trust of alumni, Icy.

This makes me feel rather guilty because I do have loads of half-finished ideas. Living in Germany, and speaking the lingo (like Sho) I am familiar with loads of stuff that is totally new to many UK readers.

There are many entries (on food, drink, customs, traditions, places) that I could dash off, and many more (historical, geographical, cultural, biographical) that I would love to do the research for and put into a proper, meaty entry. At the moment, all my spare time goes into practising the piano and organ, but I could do a couple of the easier ones in my lunch break at work.

I always save them on a flash drive and carry them around with me in my handbag until they're ready to upload.

forgive me for just being a consumer, when I have so much to give at my fingertips.

If anyone has any ideas (apart from a properly working editor )that would help people write entries, do let me know

One we're looking at is the ability to save edits privately as revision histories, before then publishing them.

All ideas are welcome

Free coffee and bacon sandwichs? I tend to use dropbox now, and notepad, editing in text, then soemtimes upload when partly done, adn finish off and edit on h2g2, but always ready to copy and paste the text out of the entry and back into a document on dropbox, if it looks like it won't go 'live' onto h2g2, (say like useually when I always seem to be uploading a new entry, just about the time the servers are all reset, in the middle of the night ) the free coffee and bacon sandwichs would really* help though... I'm sure...

Well... Two things...

I seem to remember in the beeb's day that we used to have the occasional 'Challenge h2'. Wouldn't it be possible for individual subjects to be suggested and up on the front page, or 'Create' on a (say) weekly basis as a challenge?

Or, a central page / forum where researchers can put up for grabs all those subjects that they have in the past thought might make good entries, but haven't got the time, research or inclination to start / finish, and know in their heart of hearts that they're never going to do it. Some other researcher might think 'That's a good idea' or 'I know about that' and pick it up and run with it.

Just say in'
Deke

I started an insane project, err, last year sometime. I got a list of all the edited guide entrys, chronologically. and I started goign though them; an aweful lot of the older ones need updating, or just plain being written (some were very brief), and as I went I was noting 'gaps' in entrys that didn't appear to exist on particular subjects, err, can't recall how far I got, but I was putting it all on a spreadsheet with notes I seem to recall ...

The challange h2g2 page still exists, I guess?

Is create still going? I hadn't seen anything about it pop up for ages, I was sure I was subscribed to the create jouranl/page, and was getting updates, but they seemed to disapear

Challenge h2 still exists? That may well be so, but personally I haven't seen anything about that for a long time. The last one I took part in was to do 'Surrey' for the English counties challenge, and that 'was' a long time ago!

2Legs, how many of the 10K plus entries did you review? How did you ascertain that there was a potential entry that could be done? I seem to remember someone else also doing that or updating EG entries a couple of years ago but I don't know how far that got either. What I'm trying to say is that perhaps there will be more entries put to PR if a subject is suggested, prominently, on FP/Create/Post so that maybe it'll click with someone and they'll pick it up.

I believe Create is still going strong. It's just that efforts for that aren't always looking for EG suitable submissions.

Unfortunately none of this really addresses the main point of ‘fresh’ writing talent.

Deke

I only assume challange still exists, like create I've not really seen in ages...

I got not very far... I think I got a bit of a concern over if I was being too harsh on some of the older entrys which were, afterall I guess, written when the PR and edited guide entry guidelines etc were all differnt, and also on a lot, wehre I just didn't really know anything about the subject area, I coudln't have a clue if they were actually 'right', only if they just looked too 'brief', to be an edited guide entry, or too patiently out of date etc...

In terms of 'spotting gap's, as it were, just when I noticed certain 'words in entrys, that didn't link, to soemthing I thought oughta* be an entry on, I'd search for that entry, and if not finding it, write it down (which I just tend to do when pottering about reading the guide anyhow; or, indeed, when I've searched for soemthign I think is* or might be in the guide, and then returned no entry (Now all I need to do, is find all* the differnt files, in differnt locations where I might have jotted this down, and I might have a substantial list... which, as it got compiled over years, probably then needs to be checked to see if the entrys were written already, subsequently...)

*waves to Lanzababy*

Create has inspired me to write a Guide Entry or two, and I have also contributed some non-Guide material, which is a bit of an expansion of my repertoire...

I think a list of topics that need Entries might be helpful to people - I know when I first found h2g2, and discovered there were already Edited Entries on my specialist subject (Queen), I was at a loss to think of what else I could possibly write about...

Eventually, I reworked an essay I had written and got such a good welcome in Peer Review I was keen to do more It took me a good few months to find another topic, but then I started getting the measure of how to research and write Entries, and now I have plenty of inspiration and a list of Entries that just need writing

Challenge h2g2 still exists as a page, but unless it's promoted on the front page, no one will know it's there.

I looked at every single one of the 10,000 edited entries last year, but I was just looking for a particular. If they displayed, I went on to the next one. I didn't read them.

There's a lot of stuff that exists in h2g2 that unless you know it's there, you're unlikely to find it. And there's only so much space on the front page that we can use to promote things.

We have had an idea on one solution to that, that's progressing nicely at the moment, but as with other things, we are still open to trying things and would love to hear ideas.

Pastey, people often promote pages they've written by putting the A number in their tagline. At the moment, clicking on their name, which includes the tagline, brings you to their personal space.

Would it be possible to have the A numbers in a tagline bring you to the page mentioned, rather than the personal space?

For example, if I change my name to:

Gnomon - read about Istanbul at A446230

then people should be able to get to the Entry by clicking on the A446230 in my name.

Possible?

In theory it's possible certainly. It'd be a case of using the same code for turning A#s in posts into links.

That's a very good idea, I'll have a play

But it's still useful in many situations to link to the poster's personal space. How might you design it to cover both?

Well, technically we still have the name and tag setup, we just don't use it because it didn't work properly across Ripley and Pliny. So, it's possible to have the name link to the PS, and then check the tag for links to articles.

I'm another consumer rather than contributor (sorry - just too busy)
but how about when someone starts a convo in ask, such as the recent one about coins - is there some way to promote that and hopefully publish it pretty quickly as a collaborative entry?

How about something not entirely dissimilar to a call for papers asking what people would like to read an entry about? Then hopefully someone who knows about that kind of thing could write something?

(I will try very hard to write something during my summer break - but nobody should hold their breath)

That's a pretty good idea Sho! Having an easy way to get together the information in an Ask, or other thread, and putting it into a quick entry. Perhaps then moving the thread out of Ask onto the Entry when it's published?

well, as far as I can see threads are only remaining in Ask as long as they are still questions?

Do we still have the Writing Workshop? Maybe we could have a corner of that for collaborative entries, move the threads there and anyone who wants to tackle bringing it all together can do that and put it in PR? (properly credited)

Challenge h2g2 is at A1293365.

The Writing Workshop, now known as the Edited Guide Writing Workshop, is at:

Ripley link:

Writing-Workshop

Pliny:

Click on Peer Review at the top of the page, then select Edited Guide WRiting Workshop from list.

Do we have, something like a 'writing central' page, with links on to PR, writing workshop, challange, (maybe create too), and a simular one, for community/places to talk.... a kind o central page for each, linking off to sub-pages ; might be easier to then link to those two* pages, say from FP, without having to put on ten million links to all the sub-pages, within each, as it were...