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

There's no Scouts list on the Scouts home page... when did it get removed? I know that after one of the Hootoo updates there were some problems with the lists, and the list on A1039105 is hopelessly wrong, but all the other volunteer home pages have lists

Did I miss (or - more likely - have I forgotten) something?

All the volunteer lists seem to go tits-up every time that the site gets upgraded. There is some deep and meaningful reason as to why this happens, and it's buried somewhere deep in the backlog. It's been happening for years.

The one thing I do know is that the list had to be updated manually, and that there were no longer enough hours in the day to do that.

Perhaps the Aces, SubEds and Gurus should have their lists removed too then...

I know they haven't been updated for ages. I haven't checked recently, but when I first became a sub-ed back in October or thereabouts, my name never went on the list. I never checked the Scouts' list, but my guess is that my name was never there, either.

We've had a few whinging conversations about Drop-Down list on Aces Home Page, (apparently, the Aces are the most troublesome of the Volunteer groups, but I never told you that. ) 'though I think we eventually gave up, and just ignored it. It's never correct, and would be no big miss.

Emmily

The lists can be a useful resource for new researchers looking for help, though. I wonder if there's anyway the lists can be given over to the individual groups for upkeep?

I don't think that the page would be so much the worse without it - I personally can't think of a good reason why anyone would want to go to someone's PS just because that person is a Scout/Guru/Sub/ACE, but maybe there is. If the ability to have a list exists, let's have one, and let's have it up-to-date. The Volunteers wield a certain amount of power as seen by non-Volunteer Researchers, especially the Scouts, since more than anyone else they get to decide what goes into the EG. Not having a list of all the Scouts could be seen by Resarchers with either a suspicious nature or an axe to grind, as secrecy.

Are you thinking of anyone in particular?

I think it's nice to have a list of possible people to contact. If a newbie had a question about the EG, it might be nice to have this perfect, ready-made list of scouts and subs that they could possibly contact. I know that there are separate systems, like the 'hitchhiking into the EG' thing, but it couldn't hurt to have as many ways as possible to contact people who are well acquainted with the whole system.

Seconded

I'm happy to take charge of the subs and scouts ones...greedy thing that I am! How can I do it? Who do I ask?

Beats the hell out of me - even the list of members on the Scouts Yahboo group isn't accurate

Mmm I know. That's why I've resorted to asking everyone to send me their Unumber. Seeing as Jimster says that it all gets magically updated...I'm not that impressed so am setting out to show that I have a better list...if everyone emails me their Unumber

Or perhaps leave it here U147203 since this a thread on the Scouts home page, to which *all* Scouts ought to be subscribed... but if they're not, how are you going to finfd them?

I guess you could go to Yahboo group and look back through the last month's messages, making a note of everyone who who got a reminder to pick their recommendations... but Jim Lynn never gets one of those.

There's an email out

I can't, of course, reveal my sources, but I believe that many people who receive reminders on the Yahoo group aren't Scouts any more...

So my sources say too Which is why I've sent out the email so that ACTIVE people will reply and anyone who just happens to still be signed up etc won't...and I can secretly do some weeding

I don't get it Kat. What are you trying to achieve by this?

As far as I can tell, that's already been discussed and explained in this thread - the reinstatement on the Scouts page of an accurate and up-to-date Scouts list.

Well in theory that should be a trivial thing to achieve. All that should be required is a count of those who have the attribute within their listing.

The problem as I believe it to be is that the current methodology looks at the incidence of *changes* to that attribute against some original list. Now whilst that doesn't make a lot of sense from where I'm sitting. On the other hand, I don't have the full story as to how the attributes work within the database. If it was originally programmed this way, then I can only assume that it is supposed to work most of the time.