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

- In the forward-thinking spirit of Douglas Adams, how can we move h2g2 forward, make it technologically pioneering again?

You can't. It's too late. The site has had no noticeable evolution in the six years I've been a regular contributor. In computer terms, this is like continuing to manufacture the Model T ford until the late 1990s, then looking around at the market and going "How can we get ahead of these guys?".

- In your ideal wishlist, what would you like to see on h2g2?

Interesting question. To my eyes, h2g2 is what it is. If I want something else, there's already somewhere else that supplies it, better, slicker and faster than h2g2 is ever likely to be capable of on it meagre staff. So my wishlist would consist only of things that would make h2g2 AS IT IS NOW actually work properly. Like, a working search function, for entries and conversations. Like, a bulk unsubscribe tool for clearing out the detritus from your conversation history. Like, a link to Peer Review on the sidebar in Brunel when you're logged in. Obvious stuff, stuff you expect to be there, stuff that baffles users by their absence. I mean - you've got a guide where the frickin' search engine is broken and you have to ask what's on the wishlist? Duh.

- What would you like to do with your Personal Space that you can't do now?

Block a specific user from posting messages to it.

- Do you think a name change would affect the site?

Of course. Duh.

- What would you change the name to?

I wouldn't change it. What an odd leading question.

- What do you think about h2g2 becoming, in conjunction with the Edited Guide, a more obvious place where kindly internet geeks interact with kindly BBC geeks to swap ideas, software, coding etc?

Wow. This place is already, apparently, dying from the impression it's a "herd of autistic geeks", to quote the Register (not exactly a geek-free zone themselves, ironically). So you want to go further down the geek road and alienate even more of the mainstream audience than you already do by identifying with a minor work of sf comedy? Sheesh.

- Would you like much more say in how your page looked? Or the way the front page/the whole site looked?

No. I'm not a professional graphic designer. Creativity, particularly geek creativity, thrives on limitation. Remove limitations, give carte blanche, all you get is a mess. Take a look at "pimped" Myspace pages for the evidence.

- Collaboration is key to h2g2: would you be interested in collaborating on musical projects, film etc? Stuff you create at home but then swap and develop here?

Not really. What creative audiovisual stuff I'm capable of I already have outlets for, such as Youtube. Again, h2g2 is so far behind the technological cutting edge it's probably too late to even begin trying to catch up.

- Do you use social networking sites, such as Facebook or myspace?

I've used both. I'm hampered somewhat by (a) being 38 and (b) having an actual life. I've stopped using both. Myspace was basically too juvenile, and as I said above, too flexible. I simply couldn't be bothered going to the effort of pimping my space, and wasn't attracted by the uses I could put it to. If I was twenty years younger I'd probably think it was the d's b's. Facebook is good, but a more pointless waste of time than h2 (at least that's how it felt). Of course, h2 is still a waste of time. It's just that given a choice between (a) a game of scrabble or texas hold'em or (b) writing 200 words ridiculing a religious person's inability to think straight or calculating how many smarties would fill a bus, I think (b) is a better use of my time.

"Do you think we can learn from them?"

You can learn from Myspace that power over appearance of personal spaces leads to aesthetic horrors beyond words.

You can learn from Facebook... I dunno. I don't think I used it long enough, or delved deep enough.

I don't mean to sound negative, but I reiterate - h2g2 is what it is. Change it much, and it won't be h2g2 any more. And frankly, its time is past. It set out to be something, years ago, and the thing it set out to be now exists. It's just that it's called Wikipedia.

h2g2 necessarily exists as the "not-Wikipedia" guide to stuff, and with its current model can never hope to match their volume. It just takes too long, the search is broken, Google doesn't come here, etc.

The only way to move forward is to embrace a position different from Wikipedia - something more personal, something with opinions, something that makes no attempt to be an encyclopedia or a textbook of any sort. The writing guidelines need to be loosened, or indeed changed altogether, to get rid of stuff like reviews of decades-old novels and descriptions of constellation and start getting stuff in that people actually want to read. Something about the world today.

Douglas Adams envisaged a time when you could be walking down a street and consult some sort of wireless gadget for the nearest decent cafe. That time is now. He also envisaged looking it up to see if there was a review of it, and if there wasn't one, writing one, right there in the cafe. THAT is what the guide could be.

But to get there, it must painfully drop the pretensions it clings to of being a guide to life, the universe and everything. Someone else is already doing that, and doing it better, so move on, and do something different... or die.

SoRB

Doh.

"Like, a link to Peer Review on the sidebar in Brunel when you're NOT logged in." I should have said.

Ability to edit posts perhaps?

Definitely not, actually. One of the GOOD things about this place is that when you've posted something, it's there, warts and all, forever. You can't go back and bowdlerise what you wrote.

This is *critical* to the success of the site, to me. People generate reputations here. Here, to a large extent, you ARE your reputation.

And an observer can CHECK whether that reputation is deserved, because you can go back and see what they said, hours, days or months later. Give the ability to edit posts after the fact, and the reliability of your reputation disappears. Someone could claim never to have said something, and there'd be no way to go back and say no, just a moment, you DID say it, look, here's a link. Give dishonest people the ability to rewrite the past, and bang goes any ability to rely on people - and relying on people is critical here.

SoRB

I'm really glad you said that, because nobody else on this topic has!

"Here, to a large extent, you ARE your reputation."

I wish someone had told me that earlier.

B

"I'm really glad you said that, because nobody else on this topic has!"

Odd.

I'd have thought that was one of the unique selling points of this site.

On Wikipedia, I wrote the very first iteration of the entry on my original home town. The current version bears no resemblance to it, nor should it, because the current entry is BETTER, for what it's supposed to be, which is an encyclopedia. It doesn't engender loyalty to Wikipedia, because my contribution is diluted to the point of not being there - like homeopathy...

On here, about the same time, I wrote an entry on how to ride a ski lift on a snowboard. Years later, it's still there, and you can still see exactly what I said about it. This gives the site a bit of stickiness, for me - I keep coming back because stuff I wrote is still here, in entries and conversations. Make it editable and I could come in one day in a fit of pique and erase my entire history. Bad boda.

SoRB

Would that be a double or single decker ?

"But to get there, it must painfully drop the pretensions it clings to of being a guide to life, the universe and everything. Someone else is already doing that, and doing it better, so move on, and do something different... or die."

There is a distinction between a guide and encyclopaedia.

Double: F19585?thread=4821786.

Thanks TRiG.

"There is a distinction between a guide and encyclopaedia."

Yes, there is. And h2g2 is neither. Also, my point was that the site mission statement - an unconventional guide to life, the universe and everything - is a not a business plan, and isn't being followed in any case. Entries on the Front Page recently have been anything but unconventional.

I wasn't suggesting, necessarily, that the site needs to drop the "Guide" part. I was suggesting it needs to drop the "Life, the Universe and Everything" part, mainly because that part is a thirty year old JOKE that almost certainly alienates people who aren't sf geeks.

Also, this consultation of the users is all very well, but I hope not too much notice is taken of what we want. Ultimately, what anyone who likes this site wants is for it not to disappear. We can suggest ways to make it sustainable, but we're not experts. Most especially, we don't know what the BBC wants. We can guess, but the people who know are the ones who should be making the decisions.

I'd be interested to know what the typical stickiness of this site is. I'm a statistical outlier, certainly. I've written quite a lot for the Edited Guide, and done so over a long period. My first and latest Front Page entries are separated by over six years, something I think probably fewer than a dozen other people could say. Most of the people I regularly talked to when I first started using this site no longer post here. This is to be expected. But given that people leave, there has to be a sustainable, forward-looking method of bringing people in.

Like it or not, the site's original draw was Douglas Adams and the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Yes, we're not a fan site, but fans are the ones whose imaginations were fired by the concept. But there's a problem. The site has had several events in its history which would tend to create an influx of new users. These include:

- its creation
- the death of Douglas Adams
- the publication of Salmon of Doubt
- the new radio shows
- the release of the movie

It's a harsh fact that there simply aren't going to be any more such events. There are no new books coming out. There will not be another movie. There will not be another TV or radio show. Thus, in order to generate influxes of users, the site needs a different focus. It needs to relate to something else, as clearly and logically as it did to Adams's work. And the BBC, if it wants the place to work, has to push it. Web 2.0 by definition only works with a critical mass of users, and users come and go.

h2g2 has to accept and embrace the wastage by making positive efforts at replacement. THAT is why Peer Review is withering, that is why user numbers are down. My two penn'orth.

SoRB

True enough. I must admit your first post sounded very negative and I began to wonder what you were doing here at all if you thought things were that bad. But I think h2g2 is important. You say other places do the various things we do better, but h2g2 is still unique. I have yet to come across a community like the one we have here, nor a system like PR, which is damn good despite its flaws. But we do need to attract new writers.

Why do we need to attract new writers?

Or to flip the question around:

What makes writers leave?

Isn't it obvious? We don't get paid, and we get bored and move onto other hobbies. Why haven't I been windsurfing for four years? It's not windsurfing's fault, I've just got other things I prefer to do, and there's nothing windsurfing can do about it.

Therefore, if some imaginary windsurfing community wants to stay afloat (ho ho), it needs to attract new people in. Obviously.

SoRB

No it's not obvious. That may be the obvious answer to you, but that's not why I left the site. I wasn't bored and I didn't amble off. I have found more interesting things, but I was pushed into them by things I didn't like about h2g2 not pulled into them by their own inherent loveliness.

To take your analogy though, there are cohorts which retain their coherence as cohorts even though the content of what they do changes. Friends from University are a good example. Women who have babies at the same time are another. What makes those groups sticky?

If you SoRB personally found a group who's thang was "adrenelin sports" would you stick with it, moving from wind surfing to paragliding to base jumping as part of the group?

To ask my question again - why do people leave h2g2?

my m8 is laughing at this now- I dont get it though
xxxGOLDSAILORxxx

There's not really much to 'get'...

I haven't been around here for some time myself. I started lurking around here in 2003, and to be honest never really felt involved in the site. That is probably my own fault, but I suspect that a lot of people will feel the same way. The idea of the guide is fab, but the reality is less so.

I like reading the entries on here, I love the connection to DNA, I love the fact that it is so quirky (I suppose you could say geeky too, but hell, I married one of them, so that must be up my street!!). But I hate the darned search function, I still find it hard to work out how I actually write articles, I am not sure if I can actually use the site to blog, or whether it is just for the researched articles. The information is probably on here somewhere, but it is tough to find it!

The reasons I dropped off from here? I got a job that actually kept me busy full time (!!), because I did not feel capable enough of writing entries to the guide, because the internet has HUGE numbers of sites which provide new and interesting experiences, because I have to clean the house at some point or drown in the mess - basically life.

I don't think there is one reason why people leave h2g2. I think it is a confluence of situations, and possibly better choices which make people go.

Blog, Crickett? That's what your journal is, no?

TRiG.