On Wed 02 Jul 2008, Dominic Hargreaves dom@earth.li wrote:

Given your above comments, would it be better to remove the link from the project home page?

No, that's fine; I'm happy for it to stay. We've never had any particular problems with inappropriate contributions. I think my basic worry is that I don't want RGL to become mediocre - and if I appear hardline on some fronts, then this is why.

I am also concerned about the possible confusion resulting from offering people two London guides, without explaining how they differ.

I think before we can explain how they differ, we need to know what Ivor plans to do with OGL. Will it be a free-for-all? Will there be any moderation? Will it continue to aim at tourists as well as natives? Will it aim to cover absolutely everything about London, including historical subjects?

RGL entries are edited for style as well as clarity and factual correctness. We assume a certain level of knowledge of London, its customs, its transport systems, etc.

We're OK with entries including a small amount of historical information if it helps to understand the current-day situation, but we prefer long essays about the history of e.g. a particular area to be placed elsewhere (such as Wikipedia) and linked to from RGL.

We don't want entries about famous residents, or about transient things like art exhibitions. We're also wary of introducing entirely new categories unless we're fairly sure we can maintain a decent level of coverage.

We prefer that opinions are clearly linked to the people who opined them, the date on which the establishment was last visited, and the level of experience on which the opinion was based. We want our contributors to aim to become experts - whether this expertise is in the sociogeography of a particular borough, a deep understanding of Japanese food, the most reliable places to get your bike fixed, the ability to discern between badly-kept and well-kept beer, or the best way to navigate Green Park Station.

We have a fairly tight-knit community which does most of its public communication via the RGL Blog, which is hosted on LiveJournal. There are lots of backchannels as well; we're friends, and we chat on IRC, on email, and in person. Many of us meet up and go out for dinner and/or beers together, which helps us understand each other's tastes and strengths and weaknesses, which in turn (I think) helps us write better articles.

Having said that, it's not a closed community, and I'm fairly sure I have RGL to blame for at least one new friendship.

I think my gut feeling about how the two guides would interact is: if you feel you would fit in contributing to RGL, then great. If you don't, then you may be happier contributing to OGL. If you're happy contributing to both, that's cool too. Contributing to one doesn't stop you consuming the other.

I also think the web 2.0 "market" in London is very different from that in other parts of the UK - it's hugely, hugely saturated. There are several tens of sites, if not more, competing for user opinions. I spend a fair bit of my time searching the web for reviews of particular restaurants, pubs, etc, and I keep coming across more and more of these sites. In this context, the existence of two London guides running on the same software is almost irrelevant.

(As a contrasting example, there is pretty much nobody that I've found who's writing convincingly and articulately about eating out in Cambridge [the UK one], and believe me, I've looked.)

I think it would be useful, to avoid confusion, to explain a bit more about this. Maybe a page on RGL itself (apologies if this is already there and I missed it).

There's some information on the About RGL page, which is linked from the light green bar at the top. I might add a cut-down version of the above at some point.

Er. I seem to have gone on a bit - sorry about that. I just really, really love RGL, and it's hard to get me to stop talking about it...

Kake