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

I read that and was happy to see it. I hope it'll become a good outlet for PR news and opinion.

Focus on the AWW is a good idea. If you get too busy (which is bound to happen one of these days), you can also always ask some miners to help. Just a thought.

If a person singularly devoted to the creative side of h2g2 were to become an editor, I think we would have a very hard time working with the italics. We've been very lucky getting a good balance of editors. The current team is absolutely fantastic.

I wish I knew how to better comment on poetry...

It's a real bother. How can you say comment without either

a) imposing your own writing style
b) trying to change the meaning
c) revealing you think it's rubbish
d) saying things like 'I like the bit where it rhymes'



The pieces I love and miss are things like...well there was one a while back about deckchairs. It talked about them in a joke EG way...a history, locations etc etc and I loved it! I really enjoy those sorts of thing and now I see them so rarely, it's all poetry now...in fact why IS there so much poetry going on in AWW?

I'll have a think about doing a Focus on AWW and see if I can do both. I imagine once I get into the swing of it it might be easier and take less time.

I WAS going to write about the UG in general for The Post, only I started writing and it got too long and rambling Oh on that note! I venture the opinion that the UG home pages could do with update writing. They're quite bitter and rambling currently and more than one person has said they have been put off volunteering because of the general feeling. One of them was admittedly Mikey, but she does often have a point

I don't know why there's so much poetry. Might be GW closing. They had a pretty vibrant poetry scene.

My favorite UG entries have been the short, witty ones. Sometimes I feel like telling the authors that a minor-league thing like the UG doesn't deserve those. Some poetry is great. My friend Hypatia U200042 has written some very good stuff.

I never did a Post Column. Don't really deserve my Post Reporter Badge. So I certainly wouldn't feel disappointed if you felt too busy.

The UG pages do need an update. They have for a while. I did a few minor updates a few weeks back, replacing the grossly inaccurate ones. Most of those pages were written within a 2 week period just as the UG were beginning, based on entries written almost a year before that, so they're not as well written as they could be.

I don't know what you mean by 'the general feeling'.

I did make an effort with Mikey (F26035?thread=615461), by the way. Naturally, I couldn't stop Mikey from volunteering if she wanted to, but recruitment is one of the things I've always been in charge of

Mikey's just got a bit of a thing going on about you generally really. All her points are good points...just...something I wouldn't worry too much about it. You two are never likely to get on and that's that really. It's funny getting all the different things she thinks about people on h2 and what she says people think of me (not so funny). Staying with people can have its advantages. She wouldn't volunteer for the UG a lot because of the pat on the head thing. Which I can understand.
A lot of her issues with you stem from things that are often issues about me for her as well. Bossiness, trying to get everyone to do things your way without asking, explaining etc, that kind of thing. Also the fact that in PR you very often don't take kindly to suggestions. She says that people don't bother to give me long lists of things in PR because it's not worth arguing with me...but other people say they don't give long lists because there aren't enough things that need changing...so it's all open to opinion.

The general feeling that the UG resents the italics, the EG..something like that I think. Also it's not very clear to read. I'll take another look some time, but I remember when I was first looking at it all I swiftly gave up because it was too convoluted and boring

"trying to get everyone to do things your way without asking"
Well, that's just because I'm always right

"Also the fact that in PR you very often don't take kindly to suggestions."
As I said, there are certain things about an entry that are just mine. I almost never have a header without three paragraphs under it or subheaders, I like unordered lists with bold words in front, I also like short entries to have no structure... I could go on and on. It's a sickness, really.

The UG doesn't resent the italics. I get along very well with Jimster almost all the time. We got along very well with Ashley, who advised us before Jimster, too. Hmm. I don't like that. We shall have to remedy that.

If you can get some help from the other miners, I'd be happy to take onboard all of your suggestions and alter the pages. They've been overdue for an update for a while. I never meant them to last this long, really.

"She wouldn't volunteer for the UG a lot because of the pat on the head thing."

Well, with mice more than men, I'm more of a Lennie than a George when it comes to patting on the head

Hey Kat
If you feel better anytime soon and if you want to tackle the tutorial page, I guess I could let you have that one But only if you feel better and have the time and energy. I don't want to be shovelling work on an ill, busy person!

I'm sorry if I was rude in requesting the tutorial page.
I had an idea about how I might have done it, that, if it worked, would have been great. But it didn't, so it wasn't and I deleted it

No problem. I'll get on to it this week. B asked me if I wanted to do something organising the polishers, checking that they're doing the right thing, ghosting newbies etc but not being involved in the actual recruitment or anything like that. What do you think about that?

I'll get on to the tutorial. What I'm thinking is a sort of run-down on the things that you need to look for (spelling, adding the UG pic, links etc but not changing the entry too much blah) and then perhaps a selection of entries to have a go with that can then be sent to me to go over with them, the way the sub-editors have to sub an old entry. That way, if they miss anything consistently I can go over it with them.

What was wrong with the one you started?

The UG eds are in discussion about giving duties to our polishers and miners I hope to have something solid for you to look at soon. I'll reserve my comment to that for now if you don't mind too terribly much

I was trying to create a few sample entries (with a story and characters and spelling errors and stuff like that) with actual author accounts that would have shown the strengths and weaknesses of the polishers-to-be. It didn't work out.

I'm not so good at the fiction writing.
I figured that if I can put errors in entries, I'm more likely to be able to test *all* of the bits of the polishers need to know. Were you thinking of using existing entries or something more like mine? If you're thinking of using existing entries, I might have some suggestions. The entries I used during the original polisher tests.

I think you'd probably be better at administering the polisher tests than I would be. I left the sub-editors when I realized how terrible I was at it and I haven't polished an entry in a while for similar reasons (the last ones I've done were the rush jobs just so we could have an entry for Friday - that was before we had enthusiastic polishers like yourself and Broe )