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

Re the Yikes button, we're going to move it over to the right-hand side of forums, so it's less easy to hit by accident.

And remember that you have to explicitly fill in the form and click on Submit Complaint to actually send us a complaint, so I don't hold much water with the 'I accidentally sent that complaint' excuse. (Currently we haven't uploaded the code to force you to enter a complaint, but we will later today.)

That's good. It'll help balance out the visual layout as well and should end up looking much better, especially in that lovely single page view.

As for the forcing you to enter a complaint thing, is that to stop you just hitting "Submit Complaint" without entering a reason? Because if it is, that's a Good Thing too.

Sure is. Without a complaint, what can we do to rectify it?

Not a lot.

Precisely. And it makes it hard for people to submit complaints just because they feel like it - they have to take the time out to at least type some gibberish.

Are you going to put in a lexical analyser that checks to see if the complaint is written in a language rather than something like this:

akljhluiqhlkjhsaluhe;aklvmn;eahg;knl;fuihdsa;jknaugih

??

No, didn't think so. That'd be a bit redundant, wouldn't it? Wouldn't do the server load any good either...

Nah - rubbish complaints will simply get a standard 'we do not understand your complaint' email.

Probably a far more sensible approach

MaW
* now on Fit the Tenth and hating Java more and more *

I just remembered - Fit the Tenth of the radio play is the one with the Guide segment on swearing in it. Perhaps we should allow Joojooflop, Swat and Turlingdrome?

Or maybe not...

"(Currently we haven't uploaded the code to force you to enter a complaint, but we will later today.)"

Ummm... excuse me?? Am I reading this right?

I think Mark means that you won't be able to lodge an empty complaint Rather than it being compulsory to lodge a certain number of complaints per day

;^)#

"You are not allowed to post on h2g2 at this time as you have not yet met your complaints quota for today. Please continue to browse until you find something that offends you, whereupon you are required to submit a complaint.

"Your complaint quota for today stands at 5 - you need to make 3 more complaints before your account is given posting rights"

ROFLMAO

A novel suggestion that has 2 advantages:

- the imperative to find complainable things might free up some budget due to the need to no longer employ moderators & there being far fewer posts to moderate.

- it'll cut down on server overload where people are competing for Most Prolific world records on the /info page.

;^)#
joking

lol! Much to the disgust of the people in here queueing for a computer....

* bows *

*looks up guiltily*

I wasn't going for that record *ignores the hospital for now*

Honest

Anyway... the servers need a bit of exercise being out of training for a month

Re: Moving the Yikes button over... : Thank you.

While I'm already here (I haven't read past Mark's post yet), I might as well add my £0.0136149 (current conversion rates ) to the conversation.

Re: Site name. I agree with the original comment on the site name (h2g2.com vs bbc...uk/...). Though I understand the old pointers should still work when re-launch comes. I'd still rather see www.h2g2.com in the location bar of this lizard.

Re: The URLs. I agree with all the comments on how difficult it makes passing on information. What if I need a new part for the machine, and I ask for recommendations on where to purchase? The responded URLs would be to 'commercial' sites, and therefor not even using a temporary guide entry would help. It's just silly, IMNSHO.

Re: Pictures. I miss my ies.

Moving the Yikes! button over is good, but it did sort of expose on Goo how much greener the arrow buttons are than the Reply and Yikes buttons. Some graphical tweaking might be in order, because they really, really don't match.

Yep, the yikes move is a definate improvement. Now I can mentally screen it out.

I still don't think I need to be reminded of the House Rules on *every single page*, though. I signed up to them once - you've got my agreement on record - do you think I've got that weird mental disorder which means I can't form memories??

That's also to benefit non-registered visitors... but you don't have to look at them! I barely even notice them anymore, so much so that I only just noticed they've been compacted down to match the width of the Entry text. Thankyou profusely! It's a grand improvement, it is.

Someone was listening to my suggestions!

Yeah, but h2g2 knows whether its serving a page to a regged or a non-regged person, so it ought to be able to display less legalese to a regged person.

Well, you'd have thought. No priority, of course.

I quite like the blurb at the bottom of the forums - it lets me know when I've reached the end if the page & it lets me know that the full page has loaded (something thats reasonably important in these times of *very* variable site performance

;^)#