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

Why is it that a monument to a boll weevil should get into the Edited Guide...
A283808

...whereas one to a prawn should not?
A53975

I think, possibly because the prawn piece was never submitted to PR?

Plus Boll Weevils are neater.

Ah, but...

The Prawn is now in the UnderGuide, and this means that BY DEFINITION he was unsuitable for the Edited Guide.

Gotcha!

(and who says boll weevils are neater? Some of my best friends are crustaceans)

Where's the monument to Trilobites? This is blatent ageism.

Sorry about this, Waz, but I didn't get too far into the 8000+ Google images.
This is the nearest thing to a trilobite monument I found. Not very grand, really.
http://www.wileywiggins.com/brudniak/images/97.07.jpg

There was a nice kite, too. And a vacuum cleaner. Which, given the little beggars' modus operandi, is kind of appropriate.

Sweeter than any weevil, anyhow.

At the time, had it been submitted to the Edited Guide I suspect it would have been accepted (they did, after all accept my entry on Picadilly Circus, which wasn't much more detailed than this). Now that Edited Entries tend to be a little more in-depth thought, it's probably better housed in the UnderGuide.

All about timing, in other words

Hi Jimster
I'm sure you're right. Let's have another
A friend went to Plymouth a few weeks ago, incidentally, and failed to find the Prawn. I don't think she was ever really up to the task, though. She was deeply sceptical in spite of all my boundless enthusiasm about it, and she only promised to look for it under a certain amount of duress.
I sometimes think I need to work on my people-skills. Now I come to think about it, a lot of people look at me like that...

It's often tricky for us to comment on what our predecessors decided. There were entries that, two years ago, I saw accepted as part of the Guide that I'd never accept now (a look at a certain martial art springs to mind) just as there have been some examinations of literature that took on a critical analysis approach that were once dismissed as being 'opinion' that I'd be happy to accept. We always discuss those kinds of entries, and sometimes they get in unanimously and sometimes because one person defends them so well that the otehrs agree to see what happens. It's all interpretive at the end of the day, which is why we have guidelines rather than hard rules for the Edited Guide.

agcBen's entry on Swear words evolved over time to the point where fought to include it in the guide and worked hard to make it work within Editorial Guidelines. Conversely, there are some entries that would fail the remits for both the EG and the UG on grounds of safety, decency or plain common sense. But as we've said to the UG team, keep trying. Sometimes things will fall one side of the fence, sometimes the other, but it's always worth trying.

(Especially on days when I'm not being a grumpy ole so-and-so )