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

Just as I was thinking of saying hello and wondering what I should say, the telly showed some footage of an Australian crocodile opening its mouth in order to cool off its brain.

So. Perhaps my need to communicate can be likened to my need to cool my own overheated brain. I think it is plausible.

Hello! How have you been?

Lil

Hey Lil!

I suspect it is plausible - although much less likely of you than of some other, Australian, animals that I could think of!

*reads this sentence with alarm, noting that he has just, effectively, called Lil an "animal", and resolves to try and express this another way...*

Hmm, hmm! What I actually meant to say was, it's unlikely that you, more than the animals of Australia with whom I associate, would be likely to need to cool off your brain. THAT's a bit better, although still not good...!

I've been well, for all that 'though. How 'bout yourself? Life has been on the improve, as it usually is, but the fact that it's still so far to go, as usual, is what tends to get me down when I'm down! I'm just coming to the end of a job at the moment, and looking forward to a bit of 'net-based research - even in spite of the phone bills that is likely to cause.

I'm wanting to set up an h2g2 travel resource (tour companies, booking agents, airlines, railways, bus lines, etc.), and thinking of enlisting Mark Moxon and the team to help me out. I think there's an awful lot of travel that the members of the community want to do, but haven't anywhere convenient, yet, to figure out how to do it.

How's the Book Nook? What's been going on over there? I keep meaning to look in, but I haven't been able to make the time to read through the incredibly long fora which tend to generate there.

How's your work situation going, too? Have you finalised the deal with the magazine that was about to publish your picture of Billy, yet? What else is happening? I've seen you over at Adobe, but I haven't been keeping detailed track of what's been happening there - the interface is too cumbersome. I have enjoyed your pictorial contributions, but I'm still not in a position to make any of my own, yet, which has been a little annoying.

Unlike some of my bible belt neighbours, I am not uncomfortable with the idea of myself as animal. I can even countenance the probability of there being a crocodile way way back in my genetic inheritance. But it amuses me to imagine such a direct way of cooling one's brain. Does it think, "hm, my brain is uncomfortable, best open the mouth"?

The booknook is well; people are planning our booknook contribution for next week, this week's having been belayed due to beeblefish's impossibly busy life, moving and all. Can you believe this -- he has applied for a job at a place IRL called the Aroma Cafe!

True West magazine was sold to my contact in fall 1999; then, a month later it moved from a city in Oklahoma to a 3-cactus town in Arizona and changed all its staff execpt for the sr editor. Then it upgraded its paper stock. Then it went over to using color and discovered the joys of registration problems. All my contacts in New Mexico and Texas are asking each other, I wonder what's become of the Bobs (new owner and new exec ed)? My Billy is on editor Bob's desk, and I'm remaining patiet. An All-Billy issue is planned, but not until they get themselves turned around....


So you're quitting the librarian business. The travel co-op sounds interesting; would this be a congeries of guestroom contacts or what?

Lil

Yeah, it is a direct way, but unlike people, crocs can't talk, so their brains WOULD actually cool. We, on the other hand, having mouths open would feel compelled to use them, and unless you're staring mindlessly theres going to be quite a lot of movement involved.

I like the sound of Beeblefish's foray into the crossing of the virtual and the real. I'll keep an eye on that - I might have to make a similar thing happen here!

I hope True West do get their acts together - I went and read your article on BTK's life after you posted your last message: very interesting. I like your referencing style, too: distillation of the best rather than prolonged dwelling on the most interesting or scandalous: good work!

No, I'm not quitting the librarian business, just going to be out of work until I can find some more. I was just thinking of writing a travel resources page, to be posted here. Setting up a travel "co-op" is a good idea, though - I wonder if there's any money in it...?

H.

Y'know, I really think you should pop over to ffMike's home page at http://www.h2g2.com/U93445 and follow the link to join the h2g2 list, especially if the lengthening forums are starting to cramp your style. Listers now include me, ffMike, beeble, Looneytunes, Bluebottle, Freedom, Sheena the Pagan Sex Goddess (can you resist that?), Stragbasher, Mike A, Marv the Grate, Luna, Fennie, and a few others whose handles escape me. Several topics underway and you can always introduce your own. Australia is currently under-represented.

Also, you'll get feedback about your business proposal. The list doesn't replace h2g2 -- notice I still come here every day -- but it fills the need for conversation which tends to get stifled by these impossible threads.

Thanks for your compliments about my boy Billy. Hope the editors like it!

Lil

Right, I'm in.

I think I'm going to need some help navigating this thing for a while, though...!

Two blokes joined yesterday; Stragbasher spoke welcomes on behalf of the first and said he was a subeditor and I thought it might be you. But then the second one joined and maybe that's you instead

Anyhow, just post an email and I'll spot you as long as you also mention your h2g2 ID. Notice how I manage not to spill beans up here.

Lil

Yeah, I think I was the second one...!

I'll zoom over later today. What's good to look at?

There's been a lot of light traffic today, but it got interesting when Bluebottle mentioned his latest rejection. A lot of us went over and looked at the article, http://www.h2g2.com/A203716 , and have been talking about it. The thread I started in Ask h2g2 about the Hunter S Thompson article is reverberating, but you'd have to go back to Digest 63, I think, to get a handle on that. Easier maybe to go look at the thread up here then weigh in with your own thoughts.

And then Looneytunes and I have been posting current events about dangerous animals...

Did you sign up to receive email as digests? Today's will be big!
Lil

Oh! Er, Bluebottle's latest rejection...

*crawls dejected on floor...*

I don't get the digests, I just go and check the mail on site.

It was taken in very good spirit, and, when we read it we all basically agreed with the sub-ed. It was a little too complicated for a layperson, but with a new shell and a slightly different trajectory, it might re-submit just fine. Whoever the sub-ed was, his markup was quite reasonable....

I think just about everybody on the list has had a rejection and 98% of the rejectees have agreed with the assessment. Have you looked at the thread entitled "Hunter S. Thompson Article"? in the h2g2 feedback forum? Another subed also asked a question under the heading "It's Only a Button, Jim".

Anyway, come on down whenever you're ready

Lil

I'd been following the "Thompson article" thread since you recommended it to me - I must admit that for mine, GVI puts the editors' case very well. I'd love to be able to talk more about what I edit, but time, my own lack of specialist knowledge in a lot of the areas about which people write and the queues just make it impractical. Copy editing is all we really do unless the article we're looking at has some special resonance or significance for us, and from that point of view it sounds as though the Thompson article was a bit of a Christmas shocker. A lot of it also just comes down to what we feel is right for the 'Guide - and our feelings are determined by exactly the same things as everyone else's, in terms of what's available to inspire them on the site here.

I'm afraid to say that Thompson himself doesn't inspire much of a reaction in me - consequences of that style of writing can include incredible self-centredness and strict contextuality, and that style of historical or current interpretation is not something I aspire to. I'm told he's a very good writer, but that sort of representation doesn't inspire me to read his books, or his articles. From that point of view, I probably wouldn't have recommended the article for acceptance, and certainly not without investigating in some more detail first: I'd heard the name, but the article doesn't tell me an awful lot... I think that's one of my biggest problems with h2g2 as it stands: I just want it to be COMPREHENSIVE, and I'm learning a lot about just how much that requires you to compromise when editing stuff that people want to have heard.

Sorry if all this sounds a bit negative. I'll be on the fora over the weekend - I might have time to get it together then.

Oh, but that is terribly interesting. You ARE correct in intuiting that a lot of what HST wrote was terribly self-absorbed, and some of it was terrible ... and I was "talking" to Gargleblaster earlier who admitted exactly the same thing about Mark Twain.

That article had copy problems -- who knows what the subed actually fixed? -- that probably would have disposed you to reject it ... but
as for the substance, who would fix that? As stragbasher says, my rebuttals &c. might have languished indefinitely on some thread.

Looneytunes is really on to something, though, about channelling volunteer efforts into categories. As you'll have noticed, this discussion is pretty active over on the list, too.

Lil

Yeah, Loony's idea is a nice one - in principle!

The sub-eds have already (some months ago, now) been asked to nominate their subject areas of special interest, and the areas represented cover some surprising things. For all that, though, the areas represented are still fairly limited, and as the subject categories, when they're released, will make clear, they need to cover EVERYTHING - this is meant to be a universal reference work, after all...

This leads to the two main problems with Loony's idea:-

1. No matter how many editors you have, you're still never going to be able to cover every subject - or even general subject area - that the 'Guide might be expected to cover. Even having enough sub-eds to cover the main categories in a universal 'Guide is an administrative nightmare. That's why the selection criteria for sub-eds aren't too concerned with special abilities - it's more your general (or "jack-of-all-[intellectual/communicative]trades") abilities, and whether your heart's in the right place. We're still making up the rules as we go along - much as the real Hitchhilker's Guide to the Galaxy in DNA's books.

2. The art of using volunteers includes keeping them happy. Recruiting volunteers on the basis of specialised ability, and rewarding them only with exercise and the kudos of having an editor's badge on their home pages, is not really going to work. Even using the specialised abilities which are already available because of the sub-eds who are already there is fraught with difficulty (who, for example, would we make out "computer" editor, or our "music" editor, or our "movies" editor...?). Added to that, you have the problem of what to do with all the millions (all right, slight exaggeration - but probably hundreds, anyway) of people who volunteer, who have good skills and useful abilities, just not in the particular areas you happen to need this week. The more specialist the areas you need knowledge in, the fewer people can do the job, and the more people you're going to have to reject. This puts a big dampener on people's enthusiasm for the site.

These problems feed off each other, obviously, and I suspect that this is something fairly similar to what Peta [it's usually Peta who gets saddled with this sort of stuff] will say in response to the suggestion.

It's a good idea, just diffcult to implement...

The ideas you put down in fora only languish "indefinitely", not "permanently" - the first approved 'Guide entry to which I ever contributed anything (Mamite) came about completely by accident as the result of a forum post: so it does happen, but it is sometimes more a matter of luck than design (for all the slowness in getting articles to press, 1000 or so so far is still a lot to keep track of in this way...). It also helps if the subs themselves are notified about how you characterise the deficiencies in their work - if you do it nicely, you'll definitely get a co-authorship, and you will probably contribute a good deal to the education of the sub (and, what's more, they'll probably remember the education and be able to use it for the benefit of later work)!

Anyway, I've ranted long enough. Will Stragbasher get his prize...?

You describe the problem beautifully. The woman from whom I have learned editing is pretty intelligent but even so I am sometimes
staggered when she lets drop that she's got "another ms on molecular biology" or a tedious thing from IEEE on statics. She gets the full range of categories thrown her way and she works through each ms the same way: watching for intelligibility, consistency, and basis of fact. All facts have to be checked, and so she works at the library; being of a somewhat senior age, she is only just discovering the Net, but I don't think even the Net measures up to a decent university library.

Here's what keeps happening, just as was observed today on the list: we rattle the bars and a few more tidbits fall out about how the system works....

And yknow, I really do love this place. I think it's the grandest experiment yet, and I have made the most, er, peculiar friends ever.

Strag actually doesn't win, not today. I happened to fall over an article about God's greatest Mistakes when I visited Wowbagger's home page, and somebody from Sidney named Stuart (he's from Australia, you must know him <G&gt has been inveighing against mullets. You can pick up the thread on my home page (starts with ?God?).

Lil