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

Greetings - and thanks to both Gavroche and Joanna for welcoming me in - 2 weeks ago. I have tried to participate in a couple of the foums (fora ??), but being in a +8hour timezone, it's proved rather difficult. People are friendly, but what with them being asleep when I'm awake, and the lag on the servers, it's very hard to maintain a conversation.

Do you have any suggestions? Are there any "house rules" to cover this?

Regards,

Kes

Greetings, Kes!
I'd say one of the greatest things about h2g2 is that you can have conversations and continue them even if others aren't online at the same time - in fact I myself very seldom have any real-time chat around here... So I'd just advice you to go and find an interesting or lively forum to start with - the Donut Stall might be a good one, for example - and not get frustrated if no one replies right away - they eventually will!

Watch it, though, apparently there's a monster there atm...

Yeah, once you get the hang of it Kes, the whole notion of extended conversations is quite a lot of fun. You can find yourself at several places at the same time, with one conversation proceeding fairly quickly and others taking weeks to develop.

Just jump in and have fun.
The Quick Reference Guide has a list of some interesting forums http://www.h2g2.com/A344756 without descriptions, and there's a link at the bottom of that page to the Overwhelmingly Huge Guide to h2g2 clubs, which has a list of some with descriptions. As far as 'House Rules' goes, there is a 'threadiquette' called continuity which is followed for the most part. See http://www.h2g2.com/A351866

I have some forums which move fast as we're all brits on line at the same time. Some which move sporadicaly as I'm talking to Americans. These can move on fast when I'm sleeping. And some that have two posts a day as I'm talking to Austrailia. Anyway just feel free to say what you have to when you are able to say anything no contribution is ever looked down upon and you could add a new twist before the conversation kicks off again the next morning where the other members are.

I don't know if this'll ever happen, but I think it would be great if there was an "I am in this timezone" option for ppl's homepages. As the guide grows, Kes, there'll be more ppl from everywhere & you'll be able to have the same range of conversation speeds as me & dd...
But 8 hours ahead: what times in your day do you come online, Kes? Surely you have quite an overlap w/ america...

Of course, if you're online 16 hours a day like some people then you end up being on at the same time with just about everyone!

Yeah and who was that comment aimed at.

Who's online 16 hours a day?!? I want to have money for that too!!

Alien, it costs me the same if I'm on 2 minutes a day or 24 hours a day (as long as you're not referring to the cost in terms of the neglect of my RL commitments )

Joanna isn't really here, so I couldn't be talking about her. D.D., certainly I wasn't talking about you! (Good to see you, DD, it's been ages.... Mr. '121 posts and #1 in the Top Ten most prolific forum posters in the past 24 hours' ) I must have been talking about myself.

You too Redbeard. It's just I'm no longer on-line at work.

But this isn't the official set of rules for behaviour in forums. It is something that you have done with the best intentions. They are a bit strict though. From my understanding the only real rules as endorsed by the editors consists of one and that is 'no spitting'.

I don't think it is fair that you should legislate against the rest of us when we haven't asked you to.

+8 is Pacific Standard Time on the West Coast of the US. You'll find remote corners of the site active during your peak times. I've never noticed any areas that are particulary busy during those times, but that's because there aren't any particular areas where US researchers band together... it's so easy to blend into the crowd that there's no real reason to. Just keep an eye on the "who's online" popup, and you'll find plenty of people to talk to in real time.

Colonel Sellers, California researcher extraordinaire.

I thought +8 was Singapore and -8 was California.

Depends on who you're talking to. In the military, everything is referenced to Zulu time, so the figure necessary to figure out Zulu time is used. Take Pacific time +8 and you get Zulu.

In the civillian world, figuring out local time is more important, so they take Zulu time, -8, and get Pacific Standard.

So the result is that in your Microsoft clock in the lower right corner of your screen, -8 is Pacific time, and your maps and things will call Pacific +8.

Whats Zulu time?

(I can only cope with GMT or at a pinch BST...)

Zulu (short for "Zulu time") is used in the military and in navigation generally as a term for Universal Coordinated Time (UCT),
sometimes called Universal Time Coordinated (UTC) or Coordinated Universal Time (but abbreviated UTC), and formerly called
Greenwich Mean Time. In military shorthand, the letter Z follows a time expressed in Greenwich Time. Greenwich Time, now called
Universal Coordinated Time, is the time at longitude 0 degrees 0 minutes - the prime meridian or longitudinal line that separates East
from West in the world geographical coordinate system. This line of longitude is based on the location of the British Naval
Observatory in Greenwich, England, near London. "Zulu" is the radio transmission articulation for the letter Z.

(lifted from Whatis.com)

So, in other words, GMT, UTC, and ZULU are all the same time.

As Michael Caine:

Not a lot of people now that.

Ah I see it all becomes clear. I like this kind of time...