Don't Panic

The Don't Panic is the official newsletter of the Mostly Harmless Alliance. It is published each month by the Don't Panic Crew. It has two version each month, the internal and the external. The Internal Version is the one published within the more private sectors of the alliance forums, and contain more confidencial information pertaining to the Mostly Harmless Alliance's Workings. On the other hand, the External version is the one published across foreign alliance's forums and posted on the OWF as a public update of the alliance.

Common Sections
In the most recent editions a uniform standard has formed where the main section are: Headlines, Elections, Within the alliance, around the CN world, Interviews, and Just for Fun. However, in previous editions the structuring of the newsletter was much less defined and much less standardized. One thing that remains the same throughout all previous editions is the reporting of elections, another common section that has been in nearly every edition is an interview of someone.

First Editions
The first editions were mainly focused on the reporting of current wars, recent elections, and a fun interview. They also were big campaign ads for the Aqua Team Senate Candidate that the Mostly Harmless Alliance was supporting. Overtime, a new, more frequent newsletter, that of the Weekly Towel began to form, taking the role of reporting of wars and treaties with it. As Team Senate elections began to be more automatic and more advertised in more subtle ways, this function of the Don't Panic also began to dissipate.

Second section of Editions
The second line of editions began to focus more heavily on elections, interviews, and vogon poetry. While these editions still campaigned the Mostly Harmless Alliance team senate candidate, they were definitely a new twist to the newsletter. Because of the decrease in information, the frequency of publications of these editions increased to weekly. At this point, the editions were mostly handled by the Minister of Bad Poetry (Communications), since it fell under their Ministry and it became a main way of informing the alliance of the current events like the infamous moving of the Mostly Harmless Alliance forums. It was near the end of the second grouping of editions that the newsletter began to be split into two versions, those of internal and external.

The Modern Editions
Scytale helped to create the first modern edition of the Don't Panic by using the current headings system, by opening up the writing and editing of the paper to a less exclusive group, and by increasing the volume of the edition, as well as length of time between publications. The systems, traditions, and precedents that are inuse today were set by these first few articles in the modern line of editions which began with Edition 22 of the Don't Panic.

Amount of Readers
At the start of the Don't Panic, there were only a few readers for most of the information, besides some for entertainment were already easily available to the public. However, since the start of the modern editions where the newsletter developed staff, staff that were willing to go out of their way to bring information, promotions, and fun, the amount of readers has vastly increased. During the second line of editions roughly only 30-50 people would read an edition, today closer to 75-100 people and beyond might read an edition. Much of this can be contributed to the increase in the amount of content and the publication of the newsletter in more public places like the OWF.

Type of Readers
There are all sorts of readers, both those who call the Mostly Harmless Alliance home or Friend and those who call it foreign. As such it is very hard to give a good demographic of the readers of the Don't Panic.

Internal
The internal version of the Don't Panic is larger, and more complete. It consists of every article in an edition and is published only to the members of the Mostly Harmless Alliance. It generally holds information which is more internally oriented, more confidential, and more useful to actual members as opposed to foreigners. The Internal Edition is also usually available to the Mostly Harmless Alliance's Härmlin brothers, the Grämlins.

External
The external version of the Don't Panic is smaller, and more focused on things that should and can be seen by anyone. It consists of many of the articles in the internal version and is even posted on the OWF. This edition is also posted in a few the Mostly Harmless Alliance's embassies across the cyberverse. This version generally holds information pertaining to the Mostly Harmless Alliance's government, foreign affairs, and general information, while it generally includes all fun articles like hoaxes and vogon poetry.

Lost Editions
Due to the massive amount of movement and trauma that came with the shift of the Mostly Harmless Alliance forums, editions 1-8 have been lost, though some veterans of the alliance may still be able to tell you their content.

List of Editions
Note: All of these are External Editions


 * Edition 23
 * Edition 24
 * Edition 25
 * Edition 26
 * [|Edition 27

(Note: These are not yet linked)