Archived h2g2 Announcements 2014
Created | Updated Nov 28, 2017
2014-11-12 Announcing: About the recent downtime of h2g2.com
You may have noticed recently that h2g2 was inaccessible for a fair while, so much so that withdrawal symptoms were starting to show, but we didn’t panic!
The reason for this was that our content delivery network (Cloudflare) was suffering from a Distributed Denial-of-Service attack. Some very naughty people were trying to bring down the network that we use to make sure that you get as smooth an access to the Earth Edition of the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy as we possibly can, and until measures were put in place to defeat this attack, we weren’t able to provide the access to your collected wit and wisdom that we wished.
We’d like to apologise on behalf of our providers for this, and to assure you then they worked very hard to do everything they could to stop the very naughty people from disrupting your pleasure.
For Pastey and Tech
/Milla 
2014-09-07 Announcing London Mini-Meet, September 27th 2014
It looks like a London mini-meet is on! When? Saturday 27th September.
The evening venue will be the favourite haunt of h2g2 in London, The Shakespeare's Head, Holborn, as it is large, disability-friendly, has cheap food and drink (for London) and good transport links. Officially we will be there from 7pm.
We will also be doing an afternoon trip to the Imperial War Museum, recently reopened after extensive refurbishments. We will meet there at 12pm.
To sign up, find out who else is coming, what we might be doing on Friday and Saturday and ask any questions you might have, please visit the London meet page.
Looking forward to seeing you!
Milla
on behalf of the lucky people who are organising and attending the mini-meet
Thursday 12 June 2014 - Announcing The Lounge, and a Word from the Moderators
From the Community Editors
The Lounge has been launched! The Lounge is the place to find links to the most popular community threads on h2g2.
The link to the Lounge The Lounge can be found in the menu bar at the top of the Front Page. There you will find links to Miscellaneous Chat, Ask h2g2, Games Room and Science Explained as well as the five most recent posts for each forum. The Lounge also has its own forum for posts that don't quite fit into any of the other categories.
The eight most recent posts across the entirety of h2g2 can still be found on the Front Page.
The Community Editors Team will be moving some threads that better fit into other forums as they come across them. Once you are subscribed to a thread your subscription will move along with that thread, so 
.
From the Moderators
The h2g2 Moderation Team would like to take this opportunity to publicly acknowledge our gratitude to our Researchers for making h2g2 such a fun and friendly place to be.
For the most part, our Researchers exhibit some of the most exemplary behavior we have seen in any online community, and do a fabulous job of alerting us when necessary. An overwhelming majority of you make our job incredibly easy. You make the h2g2 Community a vibrant and special place, and a wonderful one for which to work.
You may have noticed over the last couple of years that some prohibitions that were in place under BBC management have been relaxed. For example, we no longer remove foreign language posts, provided their content does not otherwise break any House Rules and that translation could feasibly be obtained if necessary. We also have somewhat relaxed the rule forbidding swearing (although we are still using the filter we inherited from the BBC for the time being, so we do still have to override some flagged posts on a regular basis).
We do ask that everyone continue to think before posting, and avoid excessive or hardcore swearing, flaming, trolling or flooding.
Flaming and trolling include name-calling, derailment, and other disruptive or abusive behaviours. Flooding is making more than two posts in a row without allowing other researchers to reply in the interim - particularly when subsequent posts change the topic or are out of context to the thread (as opposed to natural topic drift). Dropping a series of links into a thread without any comment or stated purpose would also constitute flooding.
Please remember that hardcore swearing and being abusive toward others is never permitted. Please try to wait to hit the post button until you have included most or all of your thoughts, and if you don't receive a reply right away, please wait to give others a chance to reply before replying again.
Please feel free to contact us directly at [email protected] any time you have questions or concerns about h2g2's House Rules or the moderation procedures.
Thank you once again, Researchers, for your loyalty and stickiness over these last two and half years, and for making h2g2 such a fun, friendly and informative place!
Best regards,
Milla
on behalf of the h2g2 Moderation Team and the Community Editors
Monday 19 May 2014 - Announcing the Retirement of QOTD
It is with regret that we have to announce that QoTD will no longer be updated.
As you all may be aware, Quote of the Day has not been updated since the beginning of the year. Due to the lack suitable of quotes available it has not been possible to change the quote daily or even weekly. QoTD will now be removed from the FP . The email address will still be open and checked regularly and should sufficient suitable quotes be submitted in the future, the feature may be restored
Thank you all for the quotes that were sent and used. We couldn't have done it without you.smiley - applause
For the volunteers
Milla
Monday 2 February 2014 - Announcing the return of Italics
We're delighted to let you know that since the launch of the new version of Pliny, we've been able to continue fixing and tweaking things behind the scenes. Today one of those things is able to come out to the front and show itself off. We've been able to launch the Core Team badge, a shiny multi-coloured badge that will sit on the Personal Spaces of those Senior Volunteers that make up the 'Core Team': those that manage the running of the site on a day to day basis.
Every official Volunteer on the site gives up their free time to keep The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Earth Edition, up and running, and we really can't stress how grateful we are for this. The site would not be here without their effort. There’s a lot more volunteers than you might first realise, quietly beavering away behind the scenes.
Managing those volunteers and their hard work is the Core Team; these are the team leaders and their deputies, who are always in contact with each other, have official monthly meetings, and between them and their interaction with NPL, guide the daily running of the site and plan out its future. In short, these are the people who are responsible in the same way as the paid staff were when the site was run by the BBC or earlier when TDV set it up.
In order to assist in clarifying the management structure of h2g2, the Core Team will not only be distinguishable by a shiny new badge, but they will also start appearing as Italics in the forums.
The Core Team comprises:
For the core team,
Milla
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