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

... and welcome to h2g2.

I'm one of the <./>ACEs</.> (Assistant Community Editors). We are a team of volunteers who try to help new researchers for the guide find their way around. You can click on the link I made with that acronym in order to find out more. To find out more about anyone, click on the link made by their nickname (eg at the top of any conversation postings) to go to their personal space. Lurking is quite acceptable on h2g2.

I share your interests in origami, celtic knotwork and recreational mathematics but probably not what you mean by amateur dramatics. A lot of external links to origami sites from books and web searches had turned out to be dead when I followed them. I'd mostly given up looking. h2g2 tries not to have dead links but does rely on researchers to point them out!

One thing h2g2 has a lot of, as well as researchers, is these <./>Smileys</.>. You can use them in your personal space and other articles, conversations and journal entries. You just type the shortcut text and they appear as if by magic on preview or posting. For example: < dragon > without the spaces becomes .

Here are a few more links you might like to try. A660340 is a list of "Clubs and Societies" on h2g2. Find your own 42-ism on A530560 "The Myth Of 42". A895205 is the h2g2 maths lab. <./>Askh2g2</.> is a good place to start or join a random conversation. You could try the infinite improbability drive on the "Front Page" if you don't know where you want to go or <./>search</.> if you do. See the guide entries too important to be merely a number at <./>NamedEntries</.>.

Above all, have fun and don't panic. If you do find yourself tempted to panic, click the "h2g2 Help" link on the left. It may help.

Now, if you'll excuse me, there are probably other things I should be doing, but I'll be back if you call for help (ie reply to this message or post on my space).

Thanks for contacting me

I've written my first article, and used GuideML for the first time. A little fiddly, and seems like hundreds of drafts until I reached a short essay I was happy with
Please see - well I would have done a link but I can't quite grasp the method yet - what was wrong with: Celtic Knotwork</LINK ?

I'd welcome your comments.

Not sure that I will really get into using emoticons.

Having looked at the article myself I realise what would set it off nicely would be a picture of a Celtic Knotwork Panel, but I was unable to find one in the pictures section. Did I miss one, or is there a route to getting one added that I should follow?

For a first time you seem to have done rather well with Guide-ML. I haven't read the article (A981911) all the way through though. If you want to get feedback on it from more people you should consider Writing-Workshop or PeerReview. NB I made those last 2 shortcut links in this conversation posting by using <. />text</ .> without the spaces and with the relevant named-page text. However U-numbers and A-numbers are even easier as the parser automatically recognises them in the text without special tags. You can check it will work using the Preview button before you actually post a message.

I don't recall seeing a celtic knotwork panel anywhere in the gallery. I use the TABLE tag to cheat some artwork onto a page but this may not always work in the future (changes to Guide-ML), is very clumsy (lots of typing) and is not usually permitted in a final Edited Guide entry. However, if your article was selected for the front page of h2g2 you might get some special artwork created for it. Only very occasionally do other articles get illustrations - when the text really requires it. It has apparently been quite a while since just anyone was allowed to upload a picture onto the site (BBC policy).

Thanks. Now getting useful feedback on writing forum to my article A981911 Hey it works!

How likely is getting an edited article on the front page? I don't think I'll hold my breath. Can I assume (from the A number) that there are (or were?) just over 980,000 articles on h2g2, and only about 5000 edited ones?

Yes, the system does actually work sometimes.

I don't have statistics for how many articles make it to the front page out of all those which might make edited status. I'll give you the numbers which I do know though:

5 new Edited articles a day are listed on the front page (not including weekends). 1 of these will be the main choice and get a set of graphics. So you might think that was 5 out of 25 per week. However, any other article which needs important illustrations may get some but not with the extra advertising circles etc. Even sticking to the normal articles, there are also collaborative topics and talking points which get sets of graphics. The editors choice for the weekend seems often/always to be one of these. So that makes 4 genuine people's articles getting graphics out of 24 per week.

The other side of things is the A-numbers. The last digit is a sort of checksum. So divide by 10 to get the approximate number of them. Some are defunct/deleted though. Then remember that includes personal space pages which are not eligible for the edited guide. Not all people have those so you can't just subtract the U-numbers. Besides which the U-numbers have a gap in them between staff, old staff and non-staff accounts.

So it's all rather complicated really with too many unknowns.