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

Hello all

I am trying to get my head around the best ways for Researchers to make suggestions about h2g2 to the volunteer teams and NPL, and for people working on projects to ask Researchers for comments and advice.

We appear to have rather a lot of feedback pages.

Ask h2g2 - A148907
Community Soapbox - A452125
New h2g2 Feedback - A87706669

Feedback - A5734
Editorial Feedback - A388334
Technical Feedback - A388325
Barlesque - A78067353
Design Feedback - A388343
Project Feedback - A459506
The GuideML Clinic - A187229
Feature Suggestions - A388352
h2g2 Feature Ideas page - A1064963

This seems to me to be too many. Which ones should we retire? Which ones should we re-name? Which ones should we keep?

Einstein said make everything as simple as possible, but no simpler.

How simple can we make this?

Ben

Just my :

Askh2g2 isn't a feedback page
GuideML Clinic is a Help Page
(that's two down, anyway )

Community - keep
Editorial - keep
Technical - keep

The rest can be split into one of those three catagories. I see no problem with there being a temporary page set up for certain things - e.g. the New Feedback page for when we launched recently - but this needs to be tidied up and retired when its main purpose has finished.

>> Askh2g2 isn't a feedback page
>> GuideML Clinic is a Help Page

Agreed, but they are mentioned on the Feedback pages.

Some people have forms on their Personal Spaces which you can fill in and technomagically post a new thread or add to an existing thread on their PSs.

Z suggested a single page with three forms on it, one for Editorial, one for Technichal and one for Everything Else. I think that would only work if it fed three pages, and then my head starts exploding again.

My thinking for having one for Everything Else rather than Community is that stuff crosses so many boundaries - is Create Community, Guide, Strategy, Outreach or what? One bucket seems simpler. For now, anway.

Ben

I think one feedback page. But possible side pages for bug reports (technical) and typo reports (editorial).

But people will put stuff in Ask anyway, no matter how nicely you ask - it's the nature of the site...

sprout

For sure. And it's probably a good thing they do. I've done it myself ("We'll always have Stockholm.....")

My thought on that is that any threads in Ask that are feedback threads or threads about the future of h2g2 should run there for 8 or 15 days (over one or two full weeks) and then be moved to the appropriate feedback forum. Anyone who's subscribed will remain subscribed, and everyone's hopefully got a chance to see it whatever their pattern of using the site, and they can decide whether they want to follow it or not. But Ask remains more Asky.

I've seen several comments recently that people are offput or even upset by endless talks about h2g2 and how it's run, and I think it's important not to force involvement on people. Why should they have to care?

Ben

I know things change, but a lot of those pages sprung up in response the Community. Why do you need to get rid of any of them?

Simplicity.

Unless there are volunteers to support the volunteers? A small number of folks who explicitly track the many threads and pass along comments to the limited present troupes, directed as seem most appropriate.

I can see the tiers and layers becoming really cumbersome

Who is it complicated for? Are people posting in the wrong place (other than newbies or people who should know better), are volunteers not knowing where to look? Other complications I haven't thought of?

These are real questions, not arsey comments.

Does anybody have access to h2g2 Support? (U295)

Potentially all of the above.

The following is interesting - here are the pages in the order of the number of conversations on them. It would be interseting to take it a bit further and work out how many posts per month each one has garnered.


Editorial Feedback - A388334
5475 Conversations
Latest Post: 2 hours ago
Oldest Conversation ends: July 14 2000

h2g2 Feedback - A5734
1316 Conversations
Latest Post: 15 hours ago
Oldest Conversation ends: April 29 1999

Feature Suggestions - A388352
587 Conversations
Latest Post: July 2 2010
Oldest Conversation ends: July 14 2000

Technical Feedback - A388325
541 Conversations
Latest Post: August 8 2011
Oldest Conversation ends: July 20 2000

Design Feedback - A388343
407 Conversations
Latest Post: 4 days ago
Oldest Conversation ends: July 11 2000

Soapbox - A452125
339 Conversations
Latest Post: Just Now
Oldest Conversation ends: Oct 14 2000

Barlesque Feedback - A78067353
152 Conversations
Latest Post: 2 weeks ago
Oldest Conversation ends: Jan 23 2011

New h2g2 Feedback - A87706669
100 Conversations
Latest Post: 2 hours ago
Oldest Conversation ends: 3 weeks ago

Project Feedback - A459506
52 Conversations
Latest Post: Last Week
Oldest Conversation ends: Nov 9 2000

Feature Ideas - A1064963 - (Not a Feedback Page)
19 Conversations
Latest Post: August 21 2010
Oldest Conversation Ends: June 24 2004

The decision has been made to retire the old Italics' accounts Mina. Z has used one a couple of times by mistake, but other than that no-one's used them, so far as I know.

PLease don't kill me if I say 'when I worked for h2g2...' yet again.

But we had a very simple way of dealing with the feedback pages, which I'll share if you like. It wasn't a secret.

Please to tell.

I'm not saying we'll do it, mind, because having 20-30 volunteers spread across time-zones and co-ordinating over Skype is different from half a dozen people in an office. But I'm certainly listening.

Ben

I'd log into h2g2 support and go through the conversations. Answer the ones I could (smiley suggestions, moderation complaints, feature suggestions etc) and list the other threads into an email to the 'appropriate' person, mostly the bug reports and anything techie, but sometimes to the Guide Team as well. As soon as they were dealt with, or the appropriate person at least answered so I know they were subscribed I'd unsubscribe the account (although that would be impossible now to keep that account clear, you'd need a new one) so anyone who wanted to check it out would only get the 'new' conversations and wouldn't have to check them all to see if there was another volunteer already dealing.

It didn't matter if a forum was posted to once in a blue or not, it would all be picked up. People would only get the threads they wanted and not have to go picking through themselves when they were busy. If I got it wrong, I'd be sent the link back with who it should have gone to, and I'd forward it again, done that way so I'd learn (hopefully!). I used to really like doing that, and *if* anything like that needed to be done in the future (ie emailing people/volunteer groups with a list of threads they should see) I'd be happy to do that. I liked that bit of the job.

Of course there are other ways of doing things, such as maybe having one feedback page, or maybe just a few, and or people might want to subscribe their own account. It was just a thought.

Oh, and for a while, certain bits of the teams worked in different buildings, although yes usually in the same time zone.

That's really interesting, Mina. I've not yet got to the Guru processes because I've been concentrating on the Mods' processes and on taking some time off.

I hadn't been thinking of it from that end; or to the extent I had been thinking of it from that end I had assumed there would be several Gurus subscribed to the pages and doing what you've just described.



What I have been thinking about was from the Researchers' end.

I use Wordpress a lot and if I want to know how to do something (like publish blog entries with the oldest on the top of the page, not the newest on the top of the page) then I go and have a furtle around the help forums. What I did on that occasion was type in a search term, restrict the search to the help forums, and read the conversations I found. And sure enough, I got my answer. (You can't do it, and WP are so far up themselves they are proud of the fact).

Now we won't get anything that slick here until we've got the ability to tag conversations and restrict searches to specific foums. Which is a shame.

So that's one scenario. Another of course is just turning up at a help forum and digging around to see what people have posted. Is that easier or harder with 10 of them? I genuinely don't know the answer to that.

The final scenario that I can think of is turning up and actually asking a question. But where.....? There are so many to choose from.



I'm going to have more of a dig around the feedback forums to see how they've actually been used.



Does anyone else have any thoughts? I am really curious to know what other people think.

The ACEs were always really good at guiding people, or posting to guide volunteers. Who's running the ACE scheme now, so I can have another go at getting my badge back?

It's the same volunteer page as before, not a lot has changed at the moment.

Oh I looked there and the last request seemed pending. Maybe it's changed since then.