User Pages
Created | Updated Jun 20, 2003
Every h2g2 user has one. They're called a user page, and they can be pretty neat.
Some people ignore theirs until they realize that they can't be greeted by an 'ACE'.
Others update theirs frequently, put lots of pictures in, use fancy 'GuideML', and have drop-down boxes with links to their friends.
To find out more, I interviewed 9 Researchers with these three questions:
- What do you use your page for?
- To you, what makes a good page?
- Do you often update your page?
- Just about everyone said that they used their page for links to places they like, and to see their forum entries. This shows that many use their page for self-purpose, not so much for the occasional visitor. A few said that they used their journal to convey non-permanent thoughts.
- They nearly all liked pages that said something about the Researcher. Although a few graphics were thought to be good,
most people said that a lot of graphics sometimes take too long to load and don't say much about the Researcher. - This last question had a wider range of answers. Some had only updated their page 3 times in 4 months, others updated whenever they bought a new DVD, and yet others barely updated at all. No one, however, updated daily.
Some interesting quotes:
'The most important part of the home page to me is the list of forum entries'
Menza
'A good page is probably one that is to the point but doesn't tell you too much about the person, so that you can leave a forum post asking them about themselves or whatever'
Lisa the Freak
'It's pretty obvious to me that a page that changes once in a while is a page that people will be more inclined to visit on a regular basis.'
Nick O'Teen