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

My thoughts are in my journal, for anyone interested: F110768?thread=8020389&post=105587975#p105587975

http://news.slashdot.org/story/11/01/25/0133208/BBC-To-Dispose-of-Douglas-Adams-Website

h2g2 Community Consortium page: A80173361

Pravda???


As the saying goes....

No News in Pravda, No Truth in Isvestia!!!




GT

For all those attacking the BBC for the way this was announced: is there any way the BBC could have announced this that would have made you happy?

I was the first one to see the news story and post it here, and I'll admit my heart dropped like a stone, but I imagine I'd have had a similar reaction if I'd have seen a nice gentle post from the Italics.

There was no way of making this news easy to hear. What we were told is what really hurts, not how we were told.

"Or is it a case of us being a world-wide community..."

I am getting sick to the back teeth of the way the word 'community' is bandied about without so much as a second thought for its implications. The vast majority of people lamenting the loss of a 'community' have done *nothing* to grow the EG or support it. They have simply traded asides in discussion threads.

So, this next comment is is directed at non-writing 'Researchers': if you cared that much about the community, you had your chance on numerous occasions to put something into it, but all you seemed to be concered about is what you could have got out of it. You have nobody but yourselves to blame for this.

I'd have to disagree, the failure of h2g2 has nothing to do with a lack of EG entries and everything to do with the success of Wikipedia and Facebook.

FM, I think you're wrong - if the measure of the community was the Guide and nothing but the Guide, we'd be like Wikipedia. Similarly, if we were just a talking shop, we'd be like 606 and I don't see anyone over there formulating a rescue plan.

The BBC has explicitly stated it isn't going to try and become an ecyclopedia - that's the Guide out of the window. More Entries wouldn't/couldn't have saved us.

I've written a bunch of entries, I've been active in Peer Review and I was a sub for a while but that doesn't give me any more of a claim to the community than say, Effers or azahar, who (to my knowledge) have never written an Entry.

I rather suspect that finger pointing as to the reasons why hootoo as a site didnt fulfil it's potential is fruitless. it didn't happen, end of.

The question now is about the future. I sort of feel like it is vaguely improper me getting too worked up. Whilst I have never given up on hootoo for quite some time now it has ceased to be my first port of call on the interwebs. Blogging, twitter, FB is where I spend most of my online time.

I love the thought of h2g2 surviving in some form and would be happy to offer some support to the h2g2c2 project; but the reality is I will not hold my breath on it happening or working in the long run. I do wonder what the realisitic chances of us being able to maintain a guide are, and if it is just a community message board I worry that there are not enough current active users to maintain things in the long run.

Whatever happens I hope to be able to maintain the freidnships and aquiantances I have struck up on hootoo over the last 8 or so years, in the blogosphere, on twitter, on facebook or even on h2g2c2 or n2g2 or wherever else we end up.

I think it is fair to say the community side of hootoo is as much a state of mind as it is a place we congregate and that gives me some hope for the future. For me (and I know others have said this too) a sizable proportion of my twitter followers, facebook friends and traffic to my blog come from current or former h2g2 reserachers most of whom I have never met IRL.

I love h2g2, really to the marrow of my bones, but she is a dading southern belle now. Perhaps, like Blanche, she can for a while "always rely on the kindness of strangers" but I suspect that if this isnt the end, then it is the beginning of the end.



FB

H2G2 has always meant a lot to me, it is a place where I got to know my missus.

Never wrote an edited article myself, I never found a subject interesting enough(or managed to alter any of my many essays to fit the formula)

I did however volunteer for the site in a variety of other ways such as ACE, Artist and on the The Post, I made so many friends whilst helping out on the site.

<>

Funny, that. I'm getting sick to the back teeth of you acting like you are the only one who knows what's best for h2g2 whilst making no effort to actually *do* something, like what a lot of us are with h2g2c2.

Face? Bothered?

I've been there, done my bit (plenty of EG entries, 4 years continuous tour-of-duty as a Scout). As I've pointed out elsewhere, if h2g2 had any *real* popular appeal, this would not be happening. I've pointed out the problems staring us in the face on many occasions and even suggested how they could be addressed, but it fell on deaf ears. It's a bit late in the bloody day to start panicking now, sunshine.

"The vast majority of people lamenting the loss of a 'community' have done *nothing* to grow the EG or support it. They have simply traded asides in discussion threads."

Felonious, you seem do have fixated on just one aspect of the "Community", the "Edited Guide", and are dismissing everything else.

For me, the "Community" aspect has always been about the conversation threads, the games and the interaction, your Personal Space with your Journal and "Community" pages like "The Post". The "Edited Guide" is just a happy spin-of of those for me. I'm sure others are attracted here by different combinations.

My point is that just because you can point at someone and say "Hah! You don't participate in (x)!" doesn't negate the existence of a very real community. The USP of this site is the variety of ways you can use it; I thought the BBC were making a mistake trying to always focus on the Edited Guide.

I'm not going to comment directly as enough feathers have been ruffled there.

My view: the rules have changed on us.

We were cosy in the BBC. Not always happy, of course, but doing OK. We didn't have to justify our existence too much as we weren't a commercial enterprise.
We could get by with a small number of Entries being produced with the knowledge that a lot of useful and informative discussion was happening on the threads, that other community projects were contributing to the knowledge we put down.
There was a lot of tripe being discussed too, but that was all part of the hodge-podge of h2g2.

We were drifting. It was pleasant, but we weren't really pushing the Edited/Approved Guide too much.

That won't be enough any more. We've got to appeal to a buyer who is able to make money out of the site to justify buying it. Perhaps not to a profit, but we need to have an output that is *tangible*, and conversations threads are not tangible.
We need more Entries pumping through (what happened to five a week??), more people commenting in Peer Review, more activity where they can see it, otherwise they will just see a bunch of people chatting down a virtual pub.

That requires more than just a rescue plan in the short term. It involves changing a lot about the way the site functions and where the focus lies. I've been talking about this a long time in personal conversations and tried to get the Guide Revised project up and running before my personal life got in the way. Having a stagnant Guide is (in my opinion) just as bad as having one with few new Entries.

So yes, we need to seriously think of a rescue plan in the short term. But we also need this wake up call to decide what the Guide really is and how we can market ourselves to a potential buyer of our services (I mean both for a new owner, but also sources of revenue if we were to try to market our output ourselves).

That may not be possible, or we may change it to become commercially viable and lose some of the spirit of what we have here. Trouble is, if we stay as we are we will continue to drift, but this time we don't have the BBC to keep us afloat.

Sorry for being so wordy.

The site doesn't need to do anything productive other than get people to look at it, because advertising on the pages (similar to the unobtrusive ads you get on a Google Search page) can pay for the site if enough people look at it.

For people to look at it, we need Guide Entries, but not necessarily Edited/Approved Guide Entries. They can be "The Post" or "The Underguide" or whatever.

"The vast majority of people lamenting the loss of a 'community' have done *nothing* to grow the EG or support it. They have simply traded asides in discussion threads."


Yeah but for every article written, surely you need more than one reader other wise it would be a waste of the time and effort taken to write the "article"...

h2g2,,, is far superior to many of sites around of a similar nature, the members are from all demographics or seem to be to me and in many cases whole families rarely seen on other sites...

LTP, there's no point in trying to reason with FM... I've just tried and basically got lectured on how I'm a worthless human being with no real priorities.

&#39;One thing I must say about this place. I&#39;ve never, in my life, done anything else for so long. 11 years&#39;

Agreed..

"LTP, there&#39;s no point in trying to reason with FM... I&#39;ve just tried and basically got lectured on how I&#39;m a worthless human being with no real priorities."

Agreed. Some people really have a really,really inflated opinion of themselves..and tend to belittle others to make themselves self important.

It would have been nice if they had made an effort to join in with trying to save the site instead of picking fights with everyone else.