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

I'm cold. *wraps a large blanket around her and snuggles into the sofa while Matina brings her piping hot hot beverages*

It's not really May-warm outside, I'll agree to that!

"And no one any longer remember what the sun was like
when you disregard the few
who stubbornly claim
that the sun, it was blue"
(very freely translated from Danish rock poet CV Jørgensen)

> It is the first bloom of the season on my Chrysler Imperial.
Phew. For a second I thought you were growing roses on your car

>On the can it says 'Cheese Food' so I've decided that it's what farmers feed the cheese.

Hello still here. What a weird May so far, cold, wet, sunny, windy, not a sign of global warming or even WA warming. The office was freezing yesterday as the heating gets turned off on 1st May. I'll be in Portugal in two weeks time.

Wonders if we should organise a protest march to support Ben. Maybe we could burn a mod or two to extract an apology. Well slightly singe one or maybe a Chinese burn.

*raises her glass of brekkie to absent Salonistas*

I often wonder how they all are too, Lil.

Funny, that chat about Glasgow v Edinburgh, K is flying up to the former on business for the day on Thursday.

When K was veggie, I used to cook with paneer quite a bit, it has a much nicer texture and feel to it then tofu.

Morning everyone. At least the sun is shining this mornging. Tiger was a dirty stop-out again last night, and I dreamed my father had wandered off at the end of his life so as to not be a nuicance instead of dying neatly and tidily at the nursinghome where we knew what had happened to him.

Don't worry about me. I'm going to stay here, and I had a very peaceful evening unsubscribing from my h2g2 history. I did find myself wondering "am I going to regret this?" and being suprised that the answer was "no - it feels really good". I'm not sure how helpful it is for us to have our follies and foolishness of the past six years accessable in that way.

This has been a *long* time coming. Since early 2003 in fact. I had a one month hiatus when I went to Australia and can remember lying in bed in an outback pub listening to the sound of railway engines copulating at mid-night composing a letter to Natalie saying she ought to spend more time on the site. I only really came back in 2003 because GTBacchus and I were planning our roadtrip.

I'm just no longer interested in trying to understand illogical and unprofessional decisions. It's so arbitary that in a personal relationship it would be abusive, and I have a very very strong personal rule about not sticking around in abusive relationships.

The irony is that I like the italics, and have a reasonable amount of respect for them and a *lot* of sympathy for them. They've been put in a completely unteneble position so it is hardly any surprise that they've lost their grip. But sympathy or no, I don't have to stick around for the mindflicks.

Anyway, enough about all of that.

... Matina .... a cinamon bun please, and a lovely strong hot cup of .

[p]
To absent friends

Ben, your unsubbing from your history is really quite annoying cross> How do think I come across all the best conversations?

Ben,



I've noticed quite a few strange things going on at the BBC lately and it's reminiscent of consultants and poorly thought through process re-engineering and blue skies thinking. Burtisms.

I am awaiting a reply from the Editorial Complaints Unit that is now over 1 month later than they promised. Look at the debacle over putting Chris Evans into the Radio 2 Drivetime slot and the massive hoohaa over the last Masterchef series. And these are only in the bits of the Beeb that I watch or listen to.

Yesterdays blue skyism was merging Radios 1 and 2 and privatising them. Pie in the sky.

If you delve around in the BBC site you get the impression that the organisation is really in tune with its owners, me and you, and that the management systems are in place to be responsive and to constantly improve.

However when you test those processes in RL you quickly realise that either the resources are not available to deliver the promises or they do not have the training and experience to be able to deliver.

With a new senior management structure replacing the Governors I think Michael Grade needs to get to grips with his organisation. We see he can talk the talk but can he walk the walk. He isn't at the moment.

Maybe that's what the Italics are up against.

[ltp] DITTO, re BBC, not the force it was but still thinks it is, still awaiting several replies, and wondering why some messeges still not delivered via "ican/and its predecessor" and puzzling over response to 360 question.

As for un-subscribing was always a lurker long before started posting, but notice the circluler motions of several threads

Kelli - on the other hand, I've been so far out of the sitegeist for so long that I'm hardly a good route into the cool convos.

WA, I think you are exactly right.

The BBC is an organisation teetering on the brink of some really interesting crises, most of which are to do with the nature of digital media and their remit.

Remit-wise, "public service broadcasting" seems to have no clear definition in an increasingly segmentised and narrowcast world. The BBC are not allowed to do things where they have an "advantage" over commercial providers, (viz the Telegraph's campaign to force constraints onto BBCi), and they are not allowed to do anything *too* minority, because then they are being elitist or not serving the majority of licence payers. And they aren't allowed to be populist, because the commercial organisations can do it better. So it's hard to see what they are allowed to do.

Then if you look at digital media, again the Beeb are being swiped at for producing multi-stream services, (eg radio, tv and web news), but they're no longer doing anything particularly interesting in terms of communities or communal publishing. The publishing model here on the DNA platform is essentially print-based. The Wikki model is based around the internet and is a fundamentally better way of using the medium to create communal content. Journals are not blogs or as interesting and varied and connected and connectable as blogs. And the h2g2 community is suffering death by a thousand cuts. The BBC are doing some interesting stuff with podcasting and listen again is a fabulous service - (I now get very confused that I cannot just *watch again* in the same way).

To be honest, I am not quite sure why h2g2 is still here. Get Writing had the chance to be really formative in the literary life of the nation - a national forum for amateur and semi-professional writers to get together, share, learn and talk. It would have made the UK unique in the literary world. So there you had a website with the potential for differentiating the UK from all other countries in the world, and it gets closed down. So why is h2g2 still bumbling along, when Wikipaedia, Google and the web as a whole all do the online collective knowledge base stuff better, and the main developments in online communities and online societies are in the blogosphere? We aren't best of class at anything any more, and I don't see why we're here. And the Italics aren't dumb. They are I-media professionals. They must be thinking the same thing in the pub at night.

If it is impossible to see what h2g2 is for from the inside, then it must be doubly so from the outside - hence the pressures to do ludicrous things like share the profanity filter with other BBC message boards. Intellectually I understand the reasons for the profanity filter, and although I stood up for the Italics and objected to the ad hominem attacks being made on them, I do think it was introduced in a clumsy, arrogant, and inconsistent way. What worries me is what pressures are these people under that they end up behaving like that?

One good thing about Chris Evans being on Drivetime - I am now much better informed about the world, and getting to quite fancy Eddie Mair.

Ben

"on the other hand, I've been so far out of the sitegeist for so long that I'm hardly a good route into the cool convos."

Yes, but you do always seem to find the rude ones

For me the whole tone of the site has changed recently, and it just isn't enjoyable to attempt to contribute any more. I've had another recent example of this where something came up in a PR conversation and I thought people might like to discuss it in a wider context so posted about it to the PR discussion forum. The patronising tone in many of the replies that suggests I was wrong to think anyone would want a *discussion* just reinforces the fact that I should just not get involved with anything that approached the 'official' part of h2g2. Of course there has always been a little high-handedness, but frankly, I think I'm established enough and old enough not to be talked down to any more...

Morning all.

And no-one can tell you're a blonde on the internet, so that shouldn't be a problem. It's always been an arrogant and elistist site though.

Ben
(PS - you can't *have* rude conversations here any more. And the only reason I knew where they were was because I'd started most of them. Poo Wee Willie Bum!)

Good morning.

Ben has raised an interesting point as usual. Why is h2g2 still here? I'm glad it is, but if it all goes away, I won't be surprised. I do think we're unique in that we offer more than Wikipedia or the blogs. Maybe we don't do information as well as Wiki, but we have some really good articles in the EG that are much more entertaining. And we have and the UG and all of the conversation groups - of which the Aatelier is the best. Then there are the meets. Also, some of us have become really good friends and h2g2 is our meeting place, like a local pub. So, I'll be sad when it finally goes under.

The great thing about the Internet though is that there will always be someplace for us to meet. It might not have as many bells and whistles as hootoo, but if it shuts down, we'll still be able to keep in touch.

Stand by I can feel an analogy coming on:

Many agree that the epitome of excellent cooking is to source the best ingredients and do as little as possible with them. It's taken a long time to evolve, via French classical and nouvelle cuisine and it takes a lot of skill and knowledge to pull it off but it works.

Hootoo could be compared to say a perfect sourdough loaf of bread. Hand cooked, warm, crusty with a unique taste. The ingredients are all pretty common: text based site, clumpy servers, minimal graphics and low maintenance but brought together by bakers who know their stufff and you end up with a good product.

The trouble starts when you start tampering or not recognising what you have. Don't change the mix, use it to create even better things like a chip butty or bruschetta or a creative, internet savvy community.

Bah. IT came in at the weekend and changed my desk around - instead of being neatly tucked away in a corner, my monitor now faces out towards the office . This is not good for my time online.

What is IT? Should I be scared? Where does IT live?

Well, while their hygiene may be a tad questionable, I wouldn't call them scary as such.

*sniffs cautiously*

I bet the reason the ITers got you was because their rulers, the HSEse sent down a dictat saying all monitors had to have the window behind them. We'll all die of a common cold.