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

My 198th solo entry was published in November. I've five more in the pipeline, that is, they have been picked are in the process of being sub-edited etc. Unfortunately, with the slowdown in publication of new entries, it doesn't look as if any more of them will be published before the end of the year. I was hoping that:

1. I'd reach 200 Solo Edited Entries before the year was out - not for any particular reason. It just would be nice for me. Wouldn't make any difference to traffic on the site.

2. That my Gandalf and Tolkien's Dwarves entries would both be published before the final part of The Hobbit hit the cinema screens. I suspected that there would be a lot of people searching for information on Gandalf and the Dwarves, and that's why I wrote those entries. So we've probably missed out on attracting all that traffic. Pity.

It appears, though, that since there are so few new entries going into the system (Bluebottle is just about the only person left writing), the Editors are slow to publish them. I can see that if they published all the entries which are waiting today, they might have nothing to publish for weeks and then the Readers would get bored with seeing the same entries on the Front Page every time they visit the site. So they have to be eked out.

When I joined h2g2 (before the BBC) they used to publish 25 new entries every week, but most of them were pretty rubbishy. Then things settled down to about 3 quality entries a week, of which one had a picture. Now we produce less entries than that, but more of them (almost all of them) have a picture.

I'm sorry to hear about the slowdown in new entries.

When the new Hobbit movie comes out on DVD, will that cause a spike in interest for your new entry?

I hope so.

Yup. Annoying to submit and not be published. I have a tiny entry on the word 'planxty' with a subeditor, raring to go ...

there are some great old entries that may get overlooked - do they get cycled? I don't have time to check the FP every day

I should look at my recipe files. I have about fifty recipes that could be retooled for inclusion in the Guide.

Woohoo! The Eds took pity on me and hurried through three entries that were ready to be published. This means I now have 201 solo edited entries to my name, so I get "200 Entries" badge.

I've two more in the pipeline (picked) and one in Peer Review, so I'm not showing any sign of giving up writing just yet. I wonder is there a badge for 300?

This has been a good year for my writing. Since I gave up sub-editing and curating (for reasons which I won't discuss here), I had more time to think about writing entries. So I wrote quite a lot and got 15 of them published.

These include:

Mozart's Clarinet Concerto, which not only has snatches of musical scores but also actual music MIDI files which play when you click on the scores. I think that's a first for the site.

Irish High Crosses, which took me two years of happy touring around Ireland visiting various sites.

Why The Far Side of the Moon Looks Different - in which I summarised and explained a scientific only a few weeks after it had first been published.

and

Forbidden Planet - a nostalgic look at a classic movie.

I've enjoyed researching and writing all these - very few of them were entirely made up of stuff I knew already. I had to learn a lot in order to write them, and that is the joy of writing.

When you say 'hurried through', they haven't put them on the front page (as far as I can see).

I'm not a fan of this 'making them edited but publishing them later' malarkey.

I'm sure they'll get their day on the Front Page eventually. Being Edited means they'll show up in searches by the Readers.

Not so happy now. There was a stupid mistake on the picture on one of the entries. I asked for it to be corrected and the artist has stormed out, insulting me in the process.

Hopefully the eds can get the picture sorted. If not, they can publish the entry without a picture, or publish it without my name on it, or better still delete it and I can forget all about it.

There seems to be a wave of ill will washing over parts of h2g2 lately. I admit it has washed over me as well. Civility is in short supply.

"Go Away!" And "I'm Leaving" are phrases spoken too often around here. And here is too small a place as it is.

It feels as if we are spread too thin, nerves laid bare.



Or maybe it's just me.



Either way, I hope things change for the better soon.

Ooo - sorry Gnomon but post 10 made me wince... I'm not a very good artist myself, but I see how the image is put together from an everyday calendar and the focus is on the humorous addition, so I wouldn't call it a mistake, it's just the limitations of the available material...

Can you do better with the tools at your disposal? I only have old software that came free with my camera, so I can do some nifty things with digital exposure times, but other things are very difficult...

I have a few Entries on the go even though I'm busy inmore ways than one (I reached my 25 Entry badge recently so now I'm aiming for more) - I hope to put at least one in Peer Review during the holiday time There's certainly a 250 badge, but 300 is an excellent number to aim for - I enjoy reading the topics you research

Recipes are good too - I have a couple of those to my name and would be interested to read more from you, paulh

Enjoy your festivities and new badge

I've no doubt that the person concerned is a much better artist than me. But an illustration, while it may be humorous, must not mislead the reader. There was a genuine mistake in the picture, in that it would lead the reader to think that the 1st of march was the next day of the week to the 28th feb, which it might have been but wasn't.

"Recipes are good too - I have a couple of those to my name and would be interested to read more from you, paulh" [SashaQ]

I made my favorite 8-bean soup recipe tonight. I should check to see if h2G2 already has one.

Tango soup is the closest thing to a bean soup recipe I can find. The thing is, this is the right season for a good bean soup, especially one that can accommodate just about any mix of types of beans.

Well the Eds removed my 200 Edited Entries badge at my request. No one is going to accuse me of point scoring. They haven't removed my name from the entry. At this stage I don't care. I think the illustration is misleading, despite its obvious humour. But others don't. So leave it as it is.

I accept that my request was blunt, and I've apologised to FWR for any offense. What I haven't accepted was the names I was called as a result of this. I have requested literally hundreds of corrections to entries in the past and I was always thanked for my diligence, not called an ill-mannered lout.

So I am not in the mood for writing anything more for this Guide, and I certainly won't be offering any more suggestions in Editorial Feedback in the near future.

I've been called worse things than that, Gnomon. Some of them were even printable. This may have been the sort of random blip that the universe throws out for all anyone knows. I've heard of stressed-out tech firm executives parting ways with such vitriol that lookers-on were left speechless. There was the much-hated Disney executive that caused widespread celebrating when he finally left or was eased out. Little Brown [the publisher] had a chief executive who believed performance was enhanced when he made his subordinates treat each other badly. A new owner took over Little Brown, and this executive expected to be backed up in his policy. Instead, he himself was fired. Again, cheering.

There are times and places when people take a dislike to each other, and trying to find a pattern in it tends to be very hard.

The world has pockets of nastiness, some of them indecipherable until it is too late to avoid them. Go. Relax and recharge. There may be other ways of doing entries -- in collaboration with other researchers, for instance.

I don't know any of the artists very well. I hope someone is working to help them feel more appreciated. It's not a one-man job in my view, but I could be wrong.

If the volunteers' code of conduct doesn't cover the comments I've seen on Facebook on this subject, then maybe it should.

Have people been discussing this on Facebook?