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Posted May 14, 2005 by laconian
Entry: Cadair Idris, Wales, UK - A3976950
Author: laconian - U1477064
This entry is intended for the unexperienced walker (with a certain degree of common sense). I included the two main routes and all the basic stuff but also did a little section on the geography of the area (educational, see  ), and the surrounding towns.
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Posted May 14, 2005 by Mikey the Humming Mouse - A3938628 Learn More About the Edited Guide!
Hi there! I think this is a really good start, but here are some hints for improving it a tad --
1) I think it would be better if the title made clear that you were talking about a mountain.
2) The picture at the top will need to go at some point -- when entries go into the Edited Guide, they are either without pictures altogether, or they have a new picture made just for them.
3) Another thing you'll want to work on is the bits that are in first person (using I/we/me/my/etc). The Writing-Guidelines talk about why we don't generally use first person in the EG. If there's a short bit of first person experience that you feel the entry really needs, we usually set it off in italics and blockquotes from the rest of the entry.
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Posted May 14, 2005 by BigAl - Keeper of the Glowing Pickle and Blue Banana, Patron Saint of Left Handers
Well, to people in Britain - not just Wales - it's obvious that Cadr Idris is a mountain.  PS Note the spelling! (To be honest, the Cadr Idris is so famous that I had no idea that it is onlt the 19th highest peak in Wales
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Posted May 14, 2005 by BigAl - Keeper of the Glowing Pickle and Blue Banana, Patron Saint of Left Handers
onlt!? I meant 'only'  Had a couple of glasses of Australian Chardonnay this evening. 
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Posted May 14, 2005 by Mikey the Humming Mouse - A3938628 Learn More About the Edited Guide!
Yes, but it's definitely not obvious to all the rest of us, so I really think the title should make it clear.
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Posted May 14, 2005 by BigAl - Keeper of the Glowing Pickle and Blue Banana, Patron Saint of Left Handers
PS What about a reference to the great Welsh anthem,Men of Harlech:
Tongues of fire on Idris flaring,
news of foe-men near declaring,
to heroic deeds of daring,
call you Harlech men
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Posted May 14, 2005 by Matt
Leave the title. That school of thought says this needs to be done:
The Nile - A river, Egypt.
Loch Ness - A lake, Scotland, UK.
I could go on. But I won't.
The piece informs the reader that Cadair Idris is a mountain in the introducing paragraph. Let there be some mystery to the Welsh language
Other than that, great You might need to footnote some terms, particularly 'corrie' and have a general read through for some grammar and stuff (I noticed an "it's" when it should be an "its" and a few things like that).
Nice work though.
HF
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Posted May 14, 2005 by Mikey the Humming Mouse - A3938628 Learn More About the Edited Guide!
Some things are known internationally, such as the Nile. Other things simply aren't, and this is one of them.
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Posted May 14, 2005 by Matt
Yes indeed some tings are known internationally, perhaps my examples were too obvious to illustrate the point I was making.
The philospohy you refer to in changing the title of this entry implies that every Entry with an 'unusual' or 'unfamiliar' word in its title needs explanation. This is particualrly ridiculous in place names.
Geelong, Victoria, Australia. Not internationally known as far as I'm aware, so I could go to that Entry thinking it's about a lake, or a river, or a rock, or a small dog that happened to live in Victoria, Australia. But on reading the first paragraph, oh marvel of marvels, it's a smallish city on the coast! Wow, I learnt something by being intrigued by a strange 'unfamilair' name.
Let's encourage this Entry please not load it down with unnecessary Editorial problems.
HF
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Posted May 14, 2005 by No, four Goshos. Goshos for forks
No, I don't believe the title needs to changed - it states in the very first paragraph that this is an entry about a mountain and the title tells us that it's in Wales. What exactly did you have in mind for the title Mikey?
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Posted May 14, 2005 by BigAl - Keeper of the Glowing Pickle and Blue Banana, Patron Saint of Left Handers
... or what about 'Visiting the Grand Canyon - a hole in the ground, Arizona A1025083 
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Posted May 14, 2005 by Mikey the Humming Mouse - A3938628 Learn More About the Edited Guide!
Editorial policy in the past has always been to make it clear to a general audience what the entry is about from the title -- so that people can look at the title and decide whether to click through and read the entry. The topic of the entry is supposed to be clear from the title alone, *without* having read the entry itself.
This is why titles of EG entries about places generally have three components -- the name of the place, what it is, and where it is. When there is no 'what it is', it is generally because it is a city/state/country. So entries about museums generally make it clear in the title that it is a museum, and entries about rivers generally make it clear that it is a river.
If we did have an entry on the Nile, actually, it wouldn't be called just "The Nile". It would rather more likely be called "The Nile River" or "The Nile River, Egypt".
In this case, the simplest would be something like "Cadair Idris - a Mountain in Wales, UK"
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Posted May 14, 2005 by BigAl - Keeper of the Glowing Pickle and Blue Banana, Patron Saint of Left Handers
 so which particular Grand Canyon does the above mentioned Entry refer?
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Posted May 14, 2005 by Mikey the Humming Mouse - A3938628 Learn More About the Edited Guide!
the one in Arizona, as the title states.
For any editorial policy we have, there are entries out there that have slipped into the EG without following them, because the issue wasn't picked up in PR, or by the sub, or by the italics.
But we *have* been told previously as subs to change titles to conform on this -- I bring it up in Peer Review, because I think most authors would rather change the title themselves rather than have a sub think of one for them.
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Posted May 14, 2005 by Mikey the Humming Mouse - A3938628 Learn More About the Edited Guide!
Sorry, I thought you were saying that the whole phrase in quotes you cited was the title. But regardless, the point above still holds.
Just because there are entries in the EG with spelling and grammar errors doesn't mean that we should throw that policy out the window and ignore it altogether.
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Posted May 14, 2005 by No, four Goshos. Goshos for forks
Well, I statrted to look at this entry and comment on it. Here's as far as I got:
++++++++++++
Content:
"Formed by the enormous power of the glaciers that ground their way through the uplands of Europe during the last ice age"
Uplands *and* lowlands - in fact more so lowlands than uplands in some instances since glacial features are so often associated with lowland topography - valleys and moraines for instance.
"its classic profile is geographer's dream"
I know from the rest of the paragraph (and A level geography) that you're talking about the topography of the region, but the way that sentence is worded could make it appear to a less knowledgeable reader that the mountain itself was formed by glaciation.
"formed when a huge movement of material in the valley's side caused a great deal of it to slump downwards, forming a dam, behind which the water collects in a long, shapely snake"
Let's stick with either past or present tense.
"The first section of the walk is perhaps the hardest: up the hanging valley"
Should that be 'up *to* the hanging valley'? It's been 30 years and change since I sat my A levels, but I do recall (and you go on to describe) that a hanging valley is something perched halfway up the side of a larger valley.
House style:
nineteenth - 19th
The link to the Dolgellau entry will have to be removed since edited entries can only link to other edited entries (explanation will be forthcoming if you're not sure why that should be).
Typos/grammaticals
tendancy - tendency
At it's bottom - its
Formatting:
In the 'Be sure to take' section, "There's a list of basic stuff you should always have when you climb a mountain like Cader. Here it is:" needs to be enclosed in a paragraph tag.
++++++++++++++
Then I reached the section about the walk, and I thought that it read a lot like like a guide book, so I Googled a few sentences and found that the Minffordd and Pony Walk sections of this entry are slightly rewritten versions of these two pages - http://www.walkingbritain.co.uk/walks/walks3/w204.shtml and http://www.walkingbritain.co.uk/walks/walks2/w172.shtml
Now, that's not exactly what we call 'original writing' here at h2g2, and if the rewording is close enough and if the Walking Britain people feel so inclined, they could invoke their copyright, stated clearly at the bottom of pages, against the BBC.
There have been plenty of others in this conversation so far, what's the concensus?
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Posted May 14, 2005 by No, four Goshos. Goshos for forks
Let me rephrase that last sentence:
There have been other PR regulars in this thread already - what's the concensus?
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Posted May 14, 2005 by laconian
Regarding the walks, yes, it's true, I'm lazy . Methinks they need a rewrite (although there are only so many ways you can give instructions on the same walk!). I'll go through the grammatical/spelling errors when I get a chance.
Thanks for all the comments and suggestions anyway.
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