Welcome to Magrathea's Workshop

21^st June 2011 - We interrupt your browsing with some welcome news:

The BBC have confirmed the success of the three-way bid by Robbie Stamp, the Community Consortium and Noesis.

When you read what's on the Magrathea pages and the conversations here, please remember that they were written while the bid was being worked on, so some things have changed.

We now return you to your original programming

Think of this place as the Peer Review forum for the documents about how we, the h2g2 Community, want h2g2 to work once the BBC have pulled out.

This is the central place where h2g2 Community Consortium (h2g2c2) co-ordinates and documents the Community's thinking on running h2g2 day to day. This is about creating and publishing the Guide and moderating the conversations. It's about the stuff that the Italics and the Volunteers do day in and day out.

In approaching this, we should be very willing to think outside of the box, because the box is inefficient and it's collapsing. If we're designing a whole new system, we don't need piecemeal changes, we need to build a whole new planet.

We've got perhaps the best opportunity we'll ever have to do things right!

So what do we do?

At Magrathea's Workshop we are creating the documents and diagrams that define how h2g2 could be run after the BBC pull out. So what is listed below is the destination, not the journey. However, it IS a journey, and we start where we are now. There are a lot of pages on the site about how things work, and there's a lot we know that's not been written down.

Then we need to think about how we want something to be. A lot of this has been discussed already, so that's cool, but we need to get this written down in a more formal way. With diagrams.

Yeah, ok, but what does that mean in practice?

We need to define who does what, when and how. It'll be fun. Sure, it will. Trust us. We build planets to order.

These are the documents we need to put together:

A list of statuses for guide entries: at the moment these look a bit like this: draft / posted / not for review / in a forum / picked / being subbed / queued / published. But the world is our mullusc of choice, so let's see what might work for us better.

Categories and tagging an outline only of the main categories, and the top couple of layers of each of them.

Process flows which show who does what and in what order. This will include diagram showing how an entry passes through the editorial process. In fact, there will be lots of diagrams.

A list of Roles and Responsibilities: this is where we re-define the Volunteer Groups tasks. This diagram is the starting point for our To-Be thinking on Roles and Responsibilities.

A detailed list of decisions that need making day-to-day (what goes on the front page / should we ban this researcher) and which groups of people are Accountable and/or Responsible for making them, and who should be Consulted or Informed (RACI). This diagram is the starting place for our To-Be thinking about this.

A list of user rights which can be used to describe the different Permissions assigned to each user Role (subs can edit other people's entries, the server admin dude can run install code, etc).

Editorial guidelines for the Unified Guide.

Unified Guide Theory - takes as its starting point the idea that any kind of writing can go in the Guide; the criteria is excellence not genre. You know what you are reading based on what category it is in and how it is tagged.

Editorial processes and Volunteer Schemes: This is how we implement Unified Guide Theory. It's radical, but it's also inspiring.

Site Structure this takes a look at how the site will be / should be organised

Pestel Analysis for Noohootoo which takes a structured look at the Political, Econonomic, Social, Technological and Legal challenges on NooHooToo and how we can rise to them.

There will be more, but this is a good starting point.

Fine, but how do we do this in practice?

We'll use this account to make several pages. We'll start with one about the Guide - the Guidelines and perhaps one about User IDs or one about Permissions. Later on we'll create one about the rest of the Processes, and another about the Volunteer groups, but we need to keep it manageable for the community as a whole and for the volunteers who look after each page, so we'll keep it simple to start with.

These pages will:

1. Describe the topic and what needs to be done
2. Link to existing Help Pages and any other information about the As-Is situation
3. Link to Pages and Conversations where the To-Be designs have been discussed
4. List the topics that need to be covered in the To-Be designs and describe the format of the final document(s)
5. Link to word documents off site; if there are no on-site pages about the topic then there will be two documents, one for As-Is and the other for To-Be. If there are pages on site about the topic, there'll just be one for the To-Be design.
6. Host three conversation threads - one about the As-Is situation, one about the To-Be design and one about creating the documents

	Don't Panic!

It sounds complicated, but it's fairly straight-forward really. The key is to do it in stages, so we won't put all the pages up at once.

People have been talking about this Guide Entry. Here are the most recent Conversations:

For 'noohootoo' ... perhaps a dedicated zone (Last Posting: Jun 12, 2011)
Good idea! (Last Posting: Apr 18, 2011)
AGM - how and where (Last Posting: Apr 13, 2011)
Status update (Last Posting: Apr 11, 2011)
h2g2 post BBC, longevity (Last Posting: Mar 27, 2011)
User Requirements (Last Posting: Mar 21, 2011)
Glossary (Last Posting: Mar 15, 2011)
Moderation in moderation (Last Posting: Mar 14, 2011)
Categories and Tags Entry (Last Posting: Mar 10, 2011)
Pestel, but no mortar (Last Posting: Mar 7, 2011)

Click here to see more Conversations

	Journal Entries		Most Recent Conversations
	Welcome to this Researcher's Journal. If you'd like to comment on anything they have written here, just click the relevant 'Discuss this Entry' button. Magrathea's Journal - FAQs (Jun 6, 2011) Dear Researchers, I've started a document called Magrathea's Workship - FAQs A85408095 If you have any questions, please ask. Click here to discuss this (2 replies, Latest reply: Jun 9, 2011) Magrathea's workshop - Voting Systems (Apr 10, 2011) One of the (many) topics we need guidance from the Community on is the mechanics of a voting system. What would we be voting for? We'd be voting for people to do the tasks the Italics do now - in other words, for the people who would work on the Editorial and Community Team and the Business Team. See this diagram here: http://h2g2c2.co.uk/furniture/BodiesAndGroups.jpg The mechanics of who would vote for the Business Team are fairly straight-forward because people could only be members of the Legal Entity using their real life names and addresses. (Not our rule - it's to do with anti-money-laundering legislation). So the electorate for that is known, and the mechanics are simple and the details depend on which format of Legal Entity. Where it gets tricky - where we need everyone to pitch in with their now - where everyone will have Capital O Opinions come the time of the elections - is on the mechanics of voting for the Editorial and Community Team. There's more about the teams and the electorate here: A81133670 So the discussion points include: 1) How would you manage an election to ensure one person one vote? 2) Who should be allowed to vote? What do we mean by 'a member of the site'? 3) How often should the Editorial and Community team stand for re-election ? All of them once a year? A third of them every year? Anyone who's been a member for more than 2 years? 4) How would you, how could you rig the election? So, ladies and gentlefroods, please flex your imaginations, make suggestions, tell us how other communities manage this, work out how you would stuff the ballot so other people in the thread can work out how to stop you.... Ben / Mrs Zen Click here to discuss this (212 replies, Latest reply: Jun 9, 2011) Magrathea Alert 3 (Mar 19, 2011) If you want to see the basic outline of the various group we see running h2g2 in the future, pop over to A82699375. Click here to discuss this (No replies) Magrathea Alert 2 (Mar 17, 2011) I thought I could stop typing for the night, but then I realised that something else needed to be done! This is based on Pinniped's vision of the Processes, found here: A82271775 and written up here: A82661051 It has been formalised in this Googledoc: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1n9FDEW8AWmLCFAIDmdx-AOlu4uL-E2KY_lmUUUEFZco/edit?hl=en&authkey=CMvIipgJ Thanks again, Vip Click here to discuss this (1 reply, Latest reply: Mar 17, 2011) Magrethea Alert (Mar 17, 2011) A new topic is up for review over at A82658703. This is getting tight - the deadline for comments is tomorrow evening so I have even the smallest chance of getting it up and running by Saturday morning. If you could keep comments on that thread rather than this it would help me greatly. Many thanks, Vip Currently the Chief Of Typing Up Stuff She Heard Other People Say Click here to discuss this (No replies) Click here to see more Journal Entries		From h2g2 Thursday 20 October 2011: Bug Fixing Update: you have your names back. (No Posting) (Latest post: Dec 21, 2011) From h2g2 Announcements (No Posting) (Latest post: Dec 11, 2011) From h2g2 Friday 30 September, 2011: H2G2 Moves to its New Home (No Posting) (Latest post: Oct 21, 2011) From h2g2 Announcements from the new h2g2! editors. Small bug with the yikes button. (No Posting) (Latest post: Oct 20, 2011) From h2g2 Wednesday 07 September, 2011: Jane Belson has Passed Away (No Posting) (Latest post: Sep 16, 2011) From h2g2 Wednesday 31 August, 2011: H2G2 Leaving The BBC - Contract Has Been Signed! (No Posting) (Latest post: Sep 12, 2011) From h2g2 Wednesday 31 August, 2011: H2G2 Leaving The BBC - Contract Has Been Signed! (No Posting) (Latest post: Sep 12, 2011) From h2g2 Tuesday 21 June, 2011: The future of H2G2 - the Successful Bid (No Posting) (Latest post: Sep 4, 2011) From h2g2 Tuesday 30 August, 2011: H2G2 Leaving The BBC Soon! (No Posting) (Latest post: Aug 30, 2011) From h2g2 Corporate White-lists (No Posting) (Latest post: Aug 12, 2011) Click here to see more Conversations

	Most Recent Guide Entries		Most Recent Edited Entries
	These are all the Guide Entries this Researcher has created. If you'd like to read them, click on the link, and if you want to talk about them, use the 'Discuss this Entry' button when you get there. From h2g2: A85408095  Magrathea's Workshop - FAQs (Jun 6, 2011) From h2g2: A82699375  Magrathea's Workshop - Roles and Responsibilities (Mar 19, 2011) From h2g2: A82687549  Magrathea's Workshop - Site Structure (Mar 18, 2011) From h2g2: A82661051  Magrathea's Workshop - Volunteers (Mar 17, 2011) From h2g2: A82658703  Magrethea's Workshop - Engaging the Community (Mar 17, 2011) From h2g2: A82589377  Magrathea's Workshop - Engaging The Rest Of The Internet (Mar 16, 2011) From h2g2: A82191945  Magrathea's Workshop - Pestel Analysis for Noohootoo (Mar 6, 2011) From h2g2: A81968890  Magrathea's Workshop - Categories and Tags (Mar 1, 2011) From h2g2: A81966171  Magrathea's Workshop - Unified Guide Theory (Mar 1, 2011) From h2g2: A81616494  Magrathea's Workshop - Permissions and User Roles (Feb 20, 2011) Click here to see more Guide Entries		This Researcher hasn't had any Guide Entries picked for editing, yet... but we're sure they soon will.

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