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

What's so bad about Texas? I have some family down that way (I'm in Pennsylvania)... I hear it's nice.

Anyway, the reason I'm here is to welcome you to h2g2! My name is Amy, and I'm one of this community's many ACEs (Assistant Community Editor. We go around welcoming newcomers, generally helping everyone out, and making this place as friendly as we can. Our work with newbies (new researchers) generally consists of giving out lots and lots of links... so here's a few that I've found most important during my 3 years here:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/Aces -- the Ace homepage, and one of the best places to ask for help should you need it.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/Gurus -- the Gurus are the techie geniuses of the site-- go to them with any site related feedback, or for help with GuideML, the markup language of the Guide. Speaking of...

http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/GuideML-Clinic -- the GuideML Clinic, run by the ever-wonderful Bruce. He has broken down just about everything there is to know about GuideML (which is just a version of XML) into bite sized pieces so those of us (ie, me) who aren't very tech-oriented can figure it out.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/classic/A632431 -- this is the page of site-specfic jargon. It may seem kind of strange, but this place really has developed its own vocabulary over the past few years. This is one of the best places to catch up quick-- and before you know it, sentences like "I yikesed the posting-- obviously a flame to me-- but the Mods left it up anyway. I'm going to take it up with the Italics." will make sense in no time.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/classic/Smiley -- because aren't enough... we've got tons upon tons of different smilies.

I hope some of that helps you as you begin your time here... please just let me know if you need anything at all-- either by responding to this message or by leaving me a note on my user page, U50994. Enjoy the site-- and I'll see you around.

~Amy (ACE, Keeper of Wolves, Muse of Procrastinating Novelists, High Priestess of Thing, Musician's Guild Member)

Thank you for the welcome. And Texas is a hole. Everything is bad about Texas, except maybe Ft Worth, and that is borderline...

How much of a nerd am I? That jargon made perfect sense to me... I have never been to the page that explains it, either.

I do have a question, though. Is there a size limit on entries? I joined so I could post an exhaustive guide entry on a certain band... it's growing pretty lengthy here on my computer, and I still don't have all of the info, and someone is going to send me even more... Is there a limit?

Um... so far as I'm aware, there is no size limit on guide entries themselves. I know that individual posts can be truncated by moderators, and I know that user names are limited to something like 230-odd characters, but those are the only limits I'm aware of. I can't imagine they'd put a limit on entries... I know I've contributed to some community-collaborative entries that are *huge*-- for that reason, I doubt there's any sort of a limit.

Hope that helps.

I am collaborating with a friend on this, and it is now going on 5000 words, and still growing. It is a *very* in-depth look at Joy Electric. Just slightly. A teense. ^_^

230 character nicknames? Holy cow, that's huge! Why would anyone want a nickname that big?

Some of us like to display our titles behind our names...

And 5000 words doesn't seem too bad... if you're really worried about it, hop over to the Guru's page and ask them.