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

You manage to put so eloquently quite a few things I've been stumbling around for ages.

Very good.

My brain just had a little fart - how about a towelmeter for rating? 1-5 towels?

I'm not sure I completely agree with everything you say, particularly as it relates to attracting new members to the site.

I don't think the EG/UG relationship is quite as simple as you suggest, partly because the UG defines itself in contrast to the EG - if the nature of the EG changes than the UG will inevitably change to reflect that.

I agree that PR needs a name change (it sounds terribly academic, for one thing) at the very least.

My issue with the PR process is that it seems to be passive on the part of the Reviewers - I must confess I'm not familiar with it beyond the PR page - researchers have to actively submit their work for consideration.

Would it be possible or feasible to set up a system whereby anyone - even casual readers can 'like' individual entries? My idea would be that once an entry received a set level of approval it would appear on the 'PR' radar automatically - there'd be different variants of PR for old-style EG entries, more creative writing, reviews, etc.

Or, possibly, a 'suggestions for improvement' page attached to everything that isn't in the Approved Guide - separate from actual conversations about the page.

My aims are really to make what's currently the PR process more inclusive - so every article written for h2g2 would be subject to some kind of review process, all the time, while still retaining the author's control of their own material. These are just the first ideas that occurred to me.

All really interesting ideas.. we need to discuss and work on this further..

"My idea would be that once an entry received a set level of approval it would appear on the 'PR' radar automatically - there'd be different variants of PR for old-style EG entries, more creative writing, reviews, etc."

Rating Entries has been mentioned independently by several people in different places. It is certainly a model that is being looked at closely in the c2 forum.

Given than anyone can submit stuff for PR I assume the original purpose of it was closer to what you suggest, but I still think that people need to be able to choose to submit their writing to scrutiny or even up for rating, or at least to opt-out (like the Not For Review box now).

There's also the big problem that lots of people don't stay on h2g2. There is no point in being able to submit one of their Entries if they are not there to make changes.

Am in serious danger of posting the same ideas in three different threads here.

I'd be in favour of an opt-out rather than an opt-in, personally, just as with organ donations.

My issue's really with the whole idea of people having to actively submit their work at all. It feels slightly archaic on a modern site.

The site I've seen that's closest to the h2g2 model is WEBook, where all work is automatically open to review and critique but the original writer retains control. They don't have our equivalent of an EG, however: they have a progression/rating system but it involves cash changing hands and it's how they fund the site...

Yeah, I just got confused with which thread we were in.

Perhaps we should just stick to that other one?

Makes sense to me.

As far as attracting new members, I think I take a different view from most people. I'm more in the "Field of Dreams" school of thought, which says "If you build it, they will come." If we present quality content and an attractive community, a greater and more suitable portion of new members will stay on. This is also true of site functionality, but I'm afraid I don't have much to contribute in that sense.

Awix says, "the UG defines itself in contrast to the EG - if the nature of the EG changes than the UG will inevitably change to reflect that."

The UG's relationship with the EG is complicated. In some respects, it does define itself in contrast to the EG. For instance, I explicitly wrote the UnderGuidelines to make the writing in both mutually exclusive. On the other hand, the UG imitates the EG in a lot of ways. Miners=scouts, polishers=sub-eds, etc. The reason that the UG has had to define itself in contrast to the EG, when it has, has been that the Editors were unable to give it the same level of support they gave the EG. The UnderGuide was not named accidentally - it was always going to be a subculture or counterculture in the BBC h2g2. I don't think it needs a name in the future, though.

PR as a name is fine to me, but I think we need a fresh start. How about something like "Writing Forum". WF. Doesn't have a great ring to it, but worth thinking about.

I definitely think it's worth rethinking the way that content goes up for review prior to publication, but I do think that there needs to be that intermediate step between writing and publication. For its many faults, PR has been successful in improving thousands of entries. It frequently provides encouragement and advice, perhaps as much as it scares newbies away. h2g2 will always be about improving writing in a collaborative setting. Having only given it cursory examination, the idea of an opt-out rather than an opt-in seems like a good one to me.

I would submit that h2g2 shouldn't be a site where an individual writes something, leaves it, and never comes back again. We shouldn't alter our functionality to cater to that kind of thing, because h2g2 is a place of improvement and conversation. I'm sorry, but not everyone's lifestyle and temperament is suited to h2g2. We must admit this. I've heard what seems like thousands of anecdotes about new users leaving because of some perceived flaw in the way h2g2 operates. Sometimes these are valuable, but often, I think to myself, "Well, that person may have just not been suited to be an h2g2 community members." Is that elitist or exclusive? I don't think so, not any more than if I wandered into a message board for native Swahili speakers, and felt out of place.

Okay, I understand entirely where you're coming from with that.

However, if we proceed along the lines you suggest - renovate the existing site without a major change of emphasis and accept that it's not going to be everyone's cup of tea - and it transpires that (for whatever reason) that model doesn't attract enough people to keep the site going, what do we do then?

I hope it won't come to that, but if it should, are we prepared to simply admit that h2g2 is fine in theory but just not viable in practice, and walk away?

I don't ask this in an aggressive way to challenge you, but simply to sound out how you feel about this whole accessibility/'stickiness' issue and how it relates to the EG project.

(Well, actually it's the 'What's the point of h2g2?' question again, rephrased slightly... )

You know, that's a stupid hypothetical question about a several-orders-of-magnitude hypothetical situation. Forget I asked it.

Well, sure, but what if we renovate the site to appeal to as mass an audience as possible, and in doing so, we lose our uniqueness, contributors and readers? What do we do then?

(see what I did there?)

That's not just me being a smartass. I know I'll be much more likely to stick around and donate money to a project I believe in.

A super-focussed but only tiny-minority-appeal h2g2 and an everything-but-the-kitchen-sink but no stickiness one are surely both route maps to the same place.

Hopefully a happy medium somewhere has no idea what's going to hit it...

Crap. I just wanted to 'like' that post.

'Like' - the Facebook lurker's friend.