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

I believe that you left the site one year ago, almost to the day. It did not die then. There is no guarantee that it will do so this time, either. Predictions are really hard for anyone to get right. I prefer to just go along assuming we're still alive until they throw me out.

Apparently, many of our guide entries are of good quality that people use them for writing papers. It's more than entertainment. We're useful. I could probably post my recipes at another site, but as long as this one holds up I prefer to post them here.

So, what can Id ay? Live long and prosper? Stay busy doing things you love to do? They say that a person has just three needs in this life: Something to do, someone to love, and something to look forward to. Well, besides air and water and food and a place to go to get in out of the cold...

You're right Paul. I did leave a year ago, for reasons which were very similar to the ones which have pissed me off this time. It was made quite clear by some people on the site that I wasn't wanted.

I'm not saying that the site is dying because I'm not around. I know that the site works just fine without my help. What it does need, though, is writers. At the moment, just about the only people writing are the Editors themselves. Of the 20 most recent entries in Peer Review, only four are by people who are not Editors or Senior Volunteers. That's the reason I think the site is dying. Without new material going into the Guide it becomes dated and people stop reading it.

I'm working on one, but just one. I actually managed to overcome my procrastination and flesh out another paragraph last week.

But yeah, there isn't the large pool of diverse writers that this site desperately needs.

More of a worry is that this has never been acknowledged by people who manage the community. I don't know if this is because they feel they don't need new writers, or whether they know they need new writers, but haven't engaged the community on their plans to recruit them, or whether they don't have any plans.

My two cents, for what it's worth [not much, probably], is that someone somewhere must have a big picture about what the Guide's totality ought to look like. Do we have enough coverage of this subject, or not enough of that? I admit that I have not read all the guide articles, nor even scanned a list of them .

Of the subjects I know much about, I sometimes wonder why relatively obscure composers have entries, while Haydn doesn't. Granted, my unedited one on Haydn is there, and it might even be possible that people have found it using Google and enjoyed it. And, why would some topics that we are not world-renowned experts on be represented anyway? For expertise on Haydn, you might want to go to H. C. Robbins Landon or whoever is currently the leading expert.

We're also in competition with sites that have real money behind them. A lot of our articles cover geographical areas that are also covered by professional travel guides -- or are they?

These are just random musings on my part. The Internet is vast and complicated, far more so than it was in 1999.

Part of the problem there is self-confidence. I'm happy to write an entry on Istanbul, a place I have only a passing acquaintance with, but not about Dublin, where I've lived all my life. Partly this is because I feel there is so much to say about Dublin that I don't know where to start. I've written entries about some parts of Dublin, but not about the city as a whole.

You probably feel, Paul, that there is so much to say about Haydn that yours couldn't be the definitive entry. But it's a good entry. Why don't you put it into Peer Review?

I had the feeling that Douglas Adams favoured the idea of people writing about their own locality or speciality. Maybe I should write about Donnybrook.

I specifically came to the site because I read an interview in a German magazine where he said something like: how great would it be if you were in a strange city and wanted a coffee and you could go to this website (and I think even then he was thinking about mobile internet) and search for the street you were on and someone had written a review of a café there.

Which means that over the years I have sometimes got a bit cross and grumpy about people being so precious about what, exactly, the entries should be about.

Way back when, of course, they weren't peer reviewed and the worse for it. But then Wikipedia came along and suddenly nobody needed an h2g2 really.

and then there were endless discussions about H2G2 or h2g2 and so on.

All in all I love to read the entries, and use the IID and so on. But even for me it's not the first place I go to look for information. Which is a shame.

But the rest of the internet has taken up DNA's idea and now you can find comments on any Café or restaurant on Google, Tripadvisor, etc. Mind you, for every positive critique, you'll find a negative one.

I've given up!

Yes, the whole net is now The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Earth Edition.

I still feel we have a place, not as a source of information but as a source of knowledge. Our purpose is to explain things, not to record facts.

Or to give people some new way of looking at something they thought they knew everything about.

The other day, after seeing "The Imitation Game," I decided to see what was on the Internet about the Enigma Code. Wikipedia's article was scarily complete, but also almost impossible to grasp. Could there be a different way of writing about it that would make it easier to understand?

Yes we need more writers, I haven't tried as hard as I should lately, but I keep intending to.

Recumbentman, I would love to read an Entry about Donnybrook. Around here it is usually used as slang for a fight, or a general brawl. http://www.thefreedictionary.com/donnybrook I bet you can tell us a bit about the history of your city and bring it alive for us. I suspect that just the name would draw many readers.

My New Year's wish is that we can inspire our volunteers to contribute more, and attract many more new Researchers to h2g2.



F S

That's a good wish for any time of year .

Another of entries on the Front Page today. That's my 202nd. I was upset by Freeway Rider I was only out to score points so I asked for my 200 entry badge to be removed. I think when I reach 250 solo entries I might go back to having a badge again.

That's the trouble with posting from a phone. Words get left out.