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

I just wrote up that brief thing about chimps which you suggested that I remove off the peer review (which I just did).



Basically – I’m pretty new to this and was wondering if you could give me some tips on completing the entry better.



Considering this entry deals with the existence of the chimp blog – what would you suggest I write to make the entry publishable in the guide? This is not intended to be a comprehensive entry about chimps as such- more like info on the particular blog. That’s why I thought it might be acceptable in the form I submitted it.



How do you think I should tackle this ?



Looking forward to hearing from you,



Alex (please use the emaile below)


e - [email protected]

If you don't mind, Alex, I'd prefer to operate on-site - that way everything's public and above-board.

There are many facets to h2g2, and the Edited Guide (EG) is just one of them. The EG is a factual encyclopaedia, sort of like Wikipedia but better, because articles are written by individuals or small groups and have to go through a rigourous editorial process in order to become Edited - and once an entry's Edited, it can't be changed by just anyone. The start of the editorial process is the author's submission of the entry to PeerReview, as you did.

As you might expect, there's a set of Writing-Guidelines to which prospective Edited Entries must conform. As a Scout who's worked a lot with the EG, it was my opinion that your entry didn't meet the Guidelines because it's more of a publicisation statement than an informative article. It could be rewritten to become an informative article - it's really my fault that I didn't explain that more clearly in PR. You'd need to add a lot more details and expand it to be about both the field programme and the blog itself, discuss the history of the programme, what it involves today, how the blog is to help, etc. Also, it's not necessarily a good idea to write an EG entry about something that will become outdated very quickly - so maybe a brand-new service should be allowed to 'mature' a bit before being written about.

This is not to say that your entry's bad or shouldn't be on h2g2 - just that as it stands, it's not suitable for Peer Review. I see you've submitted it to the Writing Workshop, which is a great way to get feedback on making it suitable. On the other hand, if you'd prefer not to do that, you can get the announcement out to the community by posting to forums like <./>MiscChat</.> (h2g2's not just an encyclopaedia; it's also a community and a creative outlet). The folks at A4108330, the Science Explained forum, might also be interested.

In short, you've done the right thing by submitting the entry to the Writing Workshop if you'd like to improve it. Good luck, and I'll stop in at the new thread, time permitting.

cheers for the reply - really good suggestions! yeah , i see what you mean.