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

Fluxboxer, what have you done with your Maltese Falcon article? We all got given an extra pick, and I went to pick it and found you'd deleted it - a great shame, because it was excellent and just the sort of thing we're looking for.

Did you do it on purpose? Please bring it back!

Cheers,
Number Six

Sorry. I left a couple of weeks ago (within 48 hours of joining) after deciding the site wasn't my cup of tea (nothing personal or to do with abuse of any kind). Then I get an email yesterday telling me some of my material ended up in a collaborative article and I got tempted again. I wont wander off again this time.

I'll repost if you like...although I have to get home so it'll be around 5pm.

And I forgot to say: *thanks*. Even if it's too late and doesn't make it this time.

Excuse me for butting in on your thread #6,

I'm curious why you decided h2g2 to leave h2g2, because I'm trying to become an ACE (much like yourself) and of course, am trying to keep the newbies onsite.

By the way, great entry. I didn't have anything to add, so I thought I'd add it here

Fire away, Jodan! I'm kind of interested too!

I first came to h2g2 in 2000, liked it, but was put off by the very long downloading time for the pages then - a partly down to my rubbish equipment... only had a 28k modem - and so I didn't do anything beyond stick something on my personal space. When I came back late in 2002, I had slightly better hardware, and the BBC takeover had made everything a lot quicker which let me explore enough to make me want to stay this time...

Am I trying to become an ACE? I haven't given it much thought....in fact I only truly discovered what an ACE *really* is after researching it when you mentioned it.

Why did I want to leave? Remember, I only hung around 48 hours (literally after discovering the site), and in that timeframe an awful lot seemed geared towards SF, or even just S[cience]. That's fair enough given the h2g2 background, but I was surprised that a guide to the Life, Universe and Everything appealed to so few book reviewers. And there is no shortage. Consider Amazon, Usenet and UK consumer sites (Ciao, DooYoo, etc.) for example.

I'm glad you liked the entry. Thanks.

I wouldn't take the Edited Guide as too much of a guide to what h2g2's actually like... it's only as good as the people that have chosen to submit to it the the past!

It's been in existence for four years, and the whole thing is inspired by a Sci-Fi book in the first place - one of the best and most realist examples of the genre, to the extent that I don't think of it as Sci-Fi, although maybe that's because I'm snobbish about sci-fi? - but the people that it has attracted over the four years is somewhat skewed towards that sort of thing, although I'd say more so in the early days rather than now.

I do despair a bit, with my Top 10 Books list, that JRR Tolkien and Terry Pratchett are so overwhelmingly popular - but on the other hand there are some cracking choices in what's been submitted so far, and I'd never have thought Umberto Eco was so popular, for example.

Spending a lot of time in Peer Review and working on a lot of new entries as a Scout and Sub-Editor, I reckon the variety of the stuff going into the EG now is pretty well-rounded.

But there are a lot of gaps, and someone like yourself to get stuck into getting some decent entries on literature into the Edited Guide would be most welcome!

Heh! Wow@the unconcluded self-analysis on Sci-fi! JRR was always gonna feature heavily in your Top Ten. He's already causing loads of flames over the The Big Read. The angle of attack this week being that most of his voters have only seen the films. Sorta funny to watch really.

And yep, I only just figured what you said about the Edited Guide. That's not the be all and end all of H2G2....impressive as it is and I was silly to think it was. I do have a *lot* of book reviews which just need jizzing up a little for H2G2, so we'll see what happens.