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

Or a keyboard?

<./>beware.of.the.leopard</.>

TRiG.

There's a feature of Ripley I didn't know about!

Point (d) is about expanding. Personally I'm much more interested in that than a skin.

How are we going to get more people? And people with different cultural backgrounds and more people with different sexualities. A bit of cultural dynamism is needed IMO.

I often feel like an odd ball here a lot of the time aside from anhaga Can't we get more artists a bit like me in, for me to talk to? I'll be less trouble then..

Well, we're all oddballs here, to a greater or lesser extent, but yes, more diversity would be good. I'm thinking particularly of geographic and racial diversity, but all sorts of diversity is good.

Diversity is useful in and of itself: http://timothy.green.name/links/the-value-of-diversity/

TRiG.

Thanks for the link Trig..I'll read her article you linked to.

I find this place generally very British and conservative And non Brits seem Britophiles essentially. I'm English.

The only other serious artist I know here is anhaga..and sexuality isn't seriously discussed..and there's not much about actual relationships..also people that don't just come from a traditional western type culture.

I don't feel safe here talking about a lot of things that fall outside the culture here. If we had a lot more people and a greater variety I think I'd feel a lot more comfortable.

I replied on your blog about the article. Maybe we could discuss it there?

i have a such a tuneful bum this morning

I agree on the Britishness, as that's kind of inevitable given the site's background... but conservative? Really? Apart from a few whingers and a bit of joking from others I would not call the prevailing attitude 'conservative'... would we be where we are now, if we were conservative?

Haha Britophiles, I guess that's pretty true.

'Hampsters' is how Elton spells it, and he should know:

A710092

Go on, beat him at the staring-whitout-blinking-game - you know you want to....

Great pic.

But he's not staring into my eyes... he's looking at my....




(belly button, yea, that's what he's looking at.)

Can I ask a question about advertising?

I've got nothing against hootoo hosting adverts for legitimate products (though, personally I'd ban payday loans ). But could you, would you, screen out scams?

Effers, there's a lot of all sorts of people here, you just don't know them all (yet). As for Britophiles, there's this language issue. I find it hard to keep up with native speakers and UK-centristic issues don't really excite me. I don't think I am a Britophile at all, in fact. I just happen to speak that language (a bit).
You don't know me and I don't know you either. But we are both here.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Yorkshire-Dictionary-Dialect-Tradition-Folklore/dp/1858250161

There's only one language and that's Yorkshireall't rest is foreign

As has been reported previously in the Announcements, usage statistics show h2g2's appeal is international. What I haven't had time to report yet is how much that appeal is growing outside of the UK. I'll have to add that to my list of things to do.

*scribbles at the bottom of a long list entitled 'Happy Nerd's Comms Honey-Do List'*

In the meantime, I want to acknowledge all the hard work currently underway by the Tech Team. A big 'thank you' to everyone serving as beta testers, bug trackers and zappers.

About advertising...

In general, we are working with dedicated agencies on sourcing advertising that is both unobtrusive and "interesting" to the person viewing it.

This means that we also actively try to weed out the categories of advertising we believe have no place here, as well as the rubbish that is simply trying to con/scam/trick people into parting with something of value.

But .. and there is always a but.

Publishers and Agencies also get conned from time to time, and what tends to happen is that the campaign that looked completely above board and legit, for a 100% genuine product, that was clearly within the scope of what was expected .. well, it wasn't.

Late at night (usually on a Friday), for a small geographic area, for a small number of impressions.. the nice banner promoting fluffy bunny slippers (pink, blue or cream) on sale, gets swapped for a banner selling the Eiffel Tower at the low low price of £9.99 (+£3.49 P&P)

We do everything we can to prevent it, including paying other companies to check the advertising at all times, from around the world and automatically block any campaign that has any hint of being dodgy.

But nothing is foolproof, and as a result all we can do is to honestly say that we are doing whatever we can to prevent scams and the like from coming to a browser near you.



/Brian

Beautifully put, Brian. The effort is much appreciated. We're lucky to have dedicated experts like yourself on the job.

(Especially since we're so gullible. )