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

Hi Jimster,

It's just come to my attention that the "last one to post here" thread has been closed.
F63252?thread=318069

Why was it closed?

I had no idea there were any problem with the thread and seeing as the forum is a thread on a guide entry I created - in future is it possible to notify the page owner that there is a problem? I would have liked to have thought I could have maybe have exerted some discipline on my own page without having to have the thread closed down permanantly.

Thanks in advance.

Clive.

Someone's going to say this sooner or later, so let's get it out of the way forthwith.

So, Jimster won then

Is that my smother?

cheers in the name of Thursday

Traveller in Time on his head
"This has the looks as if this discussion has not to come to a final conclusion. "

*sighs*

I'm no Thingite fan, but was that really necessary? It just comes across as censorship.

Traveller in Time with 'Unlimited Bandwidth'
"Well, that is obviously not true. As well as for the dna Servers.

We are on the eve of a World Championship Football Competition as for whatI have heard.
The 606 boards are completely outrageaous as they can not create their own threads anymore, they have to comment to given threads by the Hosts. I think this is a moderate compensation .

However, we only seem to loose on the message boards.

--Online list getting long with other site members
--Search for conversations is down
++Quirky online?thissite=1
--Limited More Postings lists
--Limited info page
++Great new smileys
--Profanity Filther
--Split up of info page (no Researcher count even while it was not counting Researchers at all)
+?Graphics on Categorisation Pages

And as far as I see the friends lists are slowing our Personal Pages down, I am afraid they will go to a seperate page to reduce Server load.




Totally off topic:

Has anyone seen an 'Earth' (Harmless) entry in Peer Review recently ?
think the last one was in February "

I'm going to lose my friends???

Traveller in Time on his toes
"No, they will stay your friends in any aspect.

It is my expectation that the list can be placed on a seperate page to speed up the servers. This is just my imagination induced by some hard evidence:
Assembly time per page:

6968 for my complete Personal Space

4750 for 'just' requesting the friends list

297 for MP228046?show=10 Ten last conversations

296 for MJ228046?Journal=124705 five Journal Entries

141 for an Entry

20 for MA228046?show=10&type=2 Ten last Entries


"

*blinks*

Does this mean lil ol' me is going to have to be quiet when the is on?

Traveller in Time only aware of the downside of the stream
"For what I understand is that after each posting to a thread a process will have to start informing all contributors and subscribed Researchers.

The Announcememnt pages are 'heavy subscribed' but the long running threads have many Researchers informed as well. As this action takes lots of processing time it is less desirable.

On the other side, just like the 606 members, we will create other similar conversations, and the end result will hardly differ. "

Oh!

Lil, I think what TiT is saying is that a 'son of last one to post' will almost certainly arise from the ashes of the original, cos that's the sort of thing that happens around here.

---------------------------

The 606 and football thing is a totally separate matter.

The 606 team have taken the decision to entirely gut that board. All discussion that is not related to thread titles that that board's hosts have chosen is banned. No users are allowed to make their own thread titles, and no dicussion related to anything other than the World Cup, German cities and player transfers is allowed. I for one (though I suspect I am one amongst many) will not be going back there if the situation continues.

It's a shame really. The BBC used to host a really good board and that, along with its users has now all gone; and we're finding other places to meet. Bye-bye BBC

He is?

Thanks GreyDesk

-----------

Bye 606 *waves*

You know, maybe it was a server/database/thingy issue. If the thread is very long, it may be a strain on the servers to have to load it every time someone clicks on it.

In which case the italics could post something on the thread stating this and asking the participants to re-start the thread *before* simply closing it down. At least, that would seem the polite thing to do and it would also give people a chance to leave a link to the new thread.


az

Hello all,

Thank you for your feedback. Traveller makes some good points - these 'traditional' long threads do have many subscribers, and do slow down the servers. Of course there are many other threads of this type, but our attention was drawn to this one via the moderation system.

Although some might say '606 have taken the decision to entirely gut their board' it wouldn't be fair to say this without pointing out that all of us on DNA messageboards are subject to pressures that might not be readily apparent to the outside world. The migration of BBC messageboards to DNA has created a variety of extremely complicated situations that have taken time and resources to deal with.

Pressures on commercial sites are relatively easy to understand - they have to try and get as many hits and users as possible. BBC boards have to be sure that they offer something fairly unique that is within guidelines provided by periodical government reviews - such as the Graf report - within a strict budget. For one reason or another, 606 felt that it was not feasible to run their site in its previous form.

These concerns, and the fact that our resources are not infinite means that on h2g2 we have to concentrate on what the core of our site is - the Edited Guide. That's why we have put more emphasis on the site being an incubator for Edited Guide Entries recently. Community is absolutely vital to this, but when resources have to be committed to either one thing or another, then threads that use our resources (whether they tax the servers, or require a lot of moderation attention) yet don't provide much in terms of actual content are more likely to be closed.

If new conversations arise from the ashes of old ones, then that's another new pressure that we would have to use limited resources to solve. It'll be at the expense of us focussing on things that are absolutely essential to the site's future.

However, we do appreciate constructive criticism of this type and so have taken on board your comments about warning thread owners before threads are closed.

h2g2 Editors

I understand the reasoning behing monitoring closely threads which draw resources or require heavy moderation.

And I am glad that your taking my comments on board about letting thread owners know.

However, there is something I continue to not understand, and I suppose this connects a little to the moderation filter debate, which is this: if there is trouble brewing between researchers on a thread what has become of the disiplinary proceedures that existed to moderate individual researchers?

Where is the sense in this collective punishment of thread closure?

I ask only because when I found out TLOTPH thread had been closed, I went and read a weeks worth of backlog to see what had caused the closure. Now I can't obviously read the moderated posts but everything eitherside of those posts seemed like the normal, fairly-good humoured jousts between the previous last-posters and an incursion of Thursday sympathisers onto a Thingite dominated forum.

If the removed posts were sufficiently bad to warrant the attention of the Editors - why weren't the researchers responsible punished (warned , put on pre-mod etc.) rather than closing down the thread?

I understand the context in which you've explained this already about resource heavy threads and moderation proceedures but the communtiy it seems is moving away from personal responsibility and retroactive moderation eg. If the posts in TLOTPH broke the House Rules in anyway any other researcher could have yiksed them and the researchers responsible brought to book.

At least, that was how I thought the system used to work and I am therefore surprised that what appears to me to be relatively few removed posts have resulted in TLOTPH being closed.

Yours in Befudlement

Clive.

Also, I'd just like to say that as a serious encyclopedia or repository of wisdom, this place will never, in my opinion, make the grade. h2g2 has always been and will continue to be a community-dominated webpage and without that community the site is absolutely worthless. People will migrate to other fora of public opinion online and use different sites for information (considering the serious lack of information here - on almost anything, another site or search engine can easily provide more information - the latter is already happening).

Alienating those people who use the website will not help h2g2 in any way, shape or form. It's a curiosity, not a much-used site, and although it is a hidden gem, an attitude which summarily closes conversations which (from my reading of the thread) have no innate problems besides the fact that the Powers That Be don't like them will not further the usage of this site.

The users expect a certain level of respect and interaction between them and TPTB and I'm losing faith that this is occuring. Which is a very big shame, considering that this used to be one of my favourite webpages.

Traveller in Time glued to the screen
"This kind of threads are also part of the stickyness of h2g2, they make Researchers come back to add the last posting. The thread itself may not contribute to the Edited Guide directly or to any Entry. The Researchers posting to it do, if not by writing the entry themself, then by beeing the public to read the Edited Guide. "