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

Hi Beeblefish

I'm not quite sure what thoughts you're looking for, but I'm glad to read you're going to ask follow up questions, so I'll write something here and look forward to you letting me know what you think about it!

I'm a relative newcomer, only having been here for 7 years.

I've been to two official Meets so far. I go in the Atelier. I also set up an h2g2 religion - the Monastery of the Order of the Towel, with KB as founder of the philosophy. I contribute to conversations, write for the Edited Guide and The Post, and I've completed a University Project. I am a Curator, Scout, Sub-Editor, Editor and Communicator. I like how the history of h2g2 is in the site to be explored, so I enjoy reading Entries in the Underguide, as well as learning about activities such as The Stretcher and sharing the experiences of Researchers past and present by reading what they wrote.

I struggled in 2011 because the Beeb closed my favourite messageboard (Ouch) at the same time as they sold h2g2, so my energies were not 100% focused on h2g2 at that point. As a result, I never really understood what Field Researchers Limited was, and most of the transition work passed me by. It makes me feel a bit guilty that I didn't help more with that, but it couldn't be helped at the time. I hope I have made up for that now by being a volunteer as well as part of the community and it is my pleasure to do what I can for the site and the people in it.

SashaQ: Thanks for your thoughts! I love hearing from people who joined at different times. The move *to* the BBC (before your time) was similarly fraught, with for example some articles that didn't meet the BBC guidelines surgically removed from he guide and transplanted—to wikipedia I think of all places. What was your favourite message board? Was it on h2g2 proper or elsewhere on the BBC. Also, I want to know about the process of the move. I know it was down for maybe a week and people were not he Noesis message boards in the interim, but was it a sudden closure, are were there announcements and a lead up?

Ah, that's interesting about the beeb removing some Entries from the Guide. In the transfer from the beeb, the similar problem I encountered was that an image on one of my Entries was copyright to the BBC, so they took it off when h2g2 moved. Quite a number of Entries were affected, I think.

My favourite messageboard was Ouch, for disabled people. It was elsewhere on the BBC, but they moved it over to h2g2 software at some point so we got all the groovy smileys, then they moved it back again at some other point so we lost all the groovy smileys (but got the basic cute ones back). Then they closed it in 2011.

There were announcements a few months in advance about Ouch - I remember it to this day that I was in my late partner's office at work and she spotted the news just before logging off as we were going out for the evening...

In relation to h2g2, I saw the news reports that were made, but wasn't on h2g2 much to take notice of anything else. I recall looking at the Noesis messageboard (and the cancel thread by a pretend nighthoover), but didn't register for the site so didn't post. I see I did NaJoPoMo 2011, so I couldn't resist the lure of h2g2 for very long even though I was also posting on the new disability messageboard that was set up by one of the previous Ouch posters

So interesting! paulh also pointed out that in the move to the BBC (and I had forgotten this) all the non-English posts were removed too and you could only post in English during the BBC time. Fascinating how copyright images fall into that too, so there were issues affecting possible content and they got users both coming and going! I'm glad that someone revived a new message board in another medium!