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

There are vast tracts of h2g2 of which I am but dimly aware, and I've been here for years.

TRiG.

Ditto.

I see what you're saying, Icy. I think it definitely merits further discussion.

Thanks Elentari

I was beginning to doubt whether we have the appetite to design something from the top down.

I'm not pretending I know what this thing will look like or how we will get there. I'm not pretending I can drive it through - I'll need a lot of help. But the more I think about a central community page the more I think we need one.

If anyone has an alternative vision then go ahead.

When these conversations bubble up onto the front page, I always suffer from two fears: first that someone is going to shut h2g2 down because it isn't attracting enough interest; second that someone is going to redesign the site, make it massively successful, but destroy its soul.

The site is about community. It used to be about h2g2, but to most newbies today I suspect that h2g2 is just "this film they once saw". The character though remains; the guide itself is very h2g2 - occasionally apocryphal, unevenly edited and, I admit, I rarely read it, except when something on the front page leads me there. The community though retains a consistent sense of fun, we should attract folk who enjoy "I'm sorry I haven't a clue", "QI", that kind of thing - so if we advertise then it should be focussed.

My usual portal to the community is the ask forum. I would expect this to be the entry point for most visitors, yet it isn't particularly prominent on the front page. It too has problems. Standard layout shows the first ten (most recently updated) conversations of this form, of these:
-7 are long running conversations that newbies won't have the time to read fully (Dawkins, my penis).
-3 are religious wars (Dawkins, linux)
-2 are long running conversations which are topical (so don't require reading the full history) (weather, news)
-1 is a tech-support question
-1 is a very strange in-joke
-1 is fresh and topical
(Yes, I know that is more than 10) I realize that other forums exist, but they mostly so quiet. How about combining them and using tags to classify the conversations. Tags would be contributed by the community, including the researcher who started a conversation. Tags could be developed specifically for easy-entry topics allowing newbies to find the 5 most recent topical threads for example.

So many of the ideas here were fresh when they were started, but there are so many social-networking, blogging, wiki, etc sites out there now that do things things more smoothly. What h2g2 has is a community and a blend of useful applications that sort of work. Do I have any hope for the future? I just think about the journal editing issue, which has been discussed for (what? 10) years, with nothing done. I think about changes that have been made, like trying to remove "underage" researchers and I hang my head. I imagine how many newbies we can attract in our current form....

I share those fears, too.

The Ask forum is a huge success, probably because as community activity has shrunk, people have retreated to it. I'd rather we didn't touch it - leave it for what it's designed to do. It has a safety valve in that miscellaneous chatters and games lovers have better places nearby.

We may well see a big influx of new researchers when the site is relaunched, but I'm not sure how Ask might cope with that. It may not be the best thing to send everybody there in the first instance.

I've been having a think, and I reckon something halfway between categorisation/portals and interlinking (as per <./>Askh2g2</.> with the other chat pages) would make the site a lot easier to navigate, and thus make the site seem more like a single community rather than a sprawling mass.

Just getting my head around that.

Categorisation: you mean in the form of the "All About h2g2" tree at C54822?

Portals: you mean as I've described it? - a single page announcing itself as 'community central' (or whatever)

Interlinking (as per Askh2g2): you mean 'families of community pages' in discrete chunks?

Yes, but without endless levels of categorisation, and without creating any new pages in an attempt to centralise everything.

So what you're saying is something like:

Create more 'clusters' of Community pages.
Ensure each cluster is linked to the Front Page
Make more use of the Categorisation system to map the more remote community areas of the site.

Is this fair?

Perhaps - just adding more connections between individual nodes and groups of nodes, if that makes any sense.

I'm all for multiple connectivity.

So, when the FP is launched and great hordes of unwashed newbies descend on h2g2, what do you think will be the typical routes by which they will reach the key (sticky) community pages?

<./>Welcome</.> and <./>ThingsYouCanDo</.> - the latter contains a list of busy conversation forums.

I'm New - What Do I Do Now? - designed for newbies to post to, could do with a list of forums.

<./>Askh2g2</.> (as a place that some are directed to by helpful passers-by) - needs to provide links to a wide variety of conversation, could form a sort of central hub together with HowDoI, MiscChat and GamesRoom.

Their own user page - could do with a help note that redirects them to useful conversation forums if they try to use their own Leave A Message function.

(I'm New - What Do I Do Now? is at A868098)

If people are new to social websites, then I agree they may need to follow all those steps (particularly since h2g2 is quite quirky in its design). We just have to hope they're patient enough to do so.

One reason I think a Portal might help is that we're likely to get a fair few newbies who want to get to the action a bit quicker - perhaps they have a short attention span - and I'm not sure how they would cut through all the existing FAQs and see at a glance just how big the community is - a kind of 'Total Perspective Vortex' in h2g2 terms, I suppose.

I don't know if this tallies with some of portal/front page mashing that's been discussed here, but I liked the earlier suggestion of tags - maybe a section on the frontpage that had one of those word cloud things on the portal or whatever (something seen within your first two clicks onto the site) linking to the 25 most used tags on the site (e.g. a bit like Delicious does) leading to the various convos (or lists of conversations).

Private convos wouldn't have to be tagged, keeping them off the general radar but still visible to friends lists etc; but you'd have a dynamic view of the community, especially if you tagged PR, the workshops and the UG as well as Ask etc.

Maybe the tag cloud could appear somewhere on each userspace as well as the portal.

just a thought

I'd like to see the busiest conversations on your portal - somewhere people can go and join in.

Newbies get fed up because they don't get an instant answer when they post to societies or conversations; users have got used to instant responses and h2g2 isn't like that.