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

I've recently noticed they are back on the FP.
Do people's message centers have to be included? I find it somewhat disturbing to have my conversations with friends displayed on the FP (and I'm not talking about the journals here).

Bel

I agree it should be journals only. They are for public consumption and open house to new posters.
Message centres contain one-to-ones like subbing threads which, while not strictly private, could be disruptive if anyone else posted

GB

yup i agree on that!

emo_kid_08

Is there actually a way for the site software to differentiate between them, though? I think a conversation on a PS and a conversation on an unedited entry would look the same to the average database. I may be wrong, but I'd imagine it's hard to make a distinction.

I don't disagree, though - I just think it would be hard to implement. The best solution - start more conversations elsewhere

I agree. People use message boards to speak to one particular person, and it's probably the most 'private' type of conversation on hootoo. I think they should have at least asked before putting these more personal conversations on the front page, like they asked for volunteers to put their personal spaces on the front page. I don't want newbies coming onto a long-running conversation between me and a friend and refusing to leave, as has happened before.

As for implementing it, maybe there could be a thread where we could ask for a particular conversation to be removed, or just have them checked one by one as they go up - there are only twenty, and a lot of them stay the same. I don't see how starting more conversations would help, unless you mean specifically posting lots of nonsense in 20 different conversations to push the private ones off the FP.

It would be interesting to know what defines 'most popular'. I mean, if there is a journal on the list which hasn't been posted to for six days, it gives the impression that not much is going on on hoootoo.
I remember we had a similar list when I was new here. I don't recall how many conversations it showed, I think it was ten at the time - or maybe even just five, and I don't think the one-to-ones were among them.

There were lots of 'Ask h2g2' conversations on there, from what I recall.

If, like Skanky suggests, it is difficult to differentiate between journals and one-to-one conversations, why not take those out in the first place? I'd think there are enough other conversations going on in the various fora. Give the Peer Review threads a chance. Surely, they must be more popular than 'private' conversations anyway?

Traveller in Time on top
"I have to disagree. The email conversation on 'Captain Malcolm Reynolds™' Message Center is something we all should know about. Though it is a bit private, the fact conversations between message board members stretches into HooToo should be known. "

There's always the info page for those who all this private stuff anyway. I object to 'private' conversations being highlighted on the FP.

It's very confusing, for example I just clicked (randomly) on "Have you ever been sexually attracted to your sibling(s)" but got F19585?thread="smiley - sadface" title="sadface" class="smiley" src="http://www.h2g2.com/h2g2/skins/Alabaster/images/Smilies/f_sadface.gif"/>

Could have been worse, it could have brought you to the bra thread - oh, wait, that's on the FP anyway, isn't it?

The list is completely out of date - not just by hours, but by up to a week.

Known by whom, ? If there's a problem with hootoo resources being used by other messageboard users, then it's surely a BBC internal matter, and not something to splash across the Front Page. I hadn't been disturbed by that researcher, and indeed many of us (myself included) joined h2g2 as fugitives from the BBC messageboards, and some got hooked.

The Eds should recognise that this is a community and that so-called 'private conversations' are the way that this resource is generally used. If this top-20-conversations feature discourages community members from discussing things one-to-one, or, far worse, if anyone decides to leave as a result, then it should be removed.

I, for one, have already stopped posting to a one-to-one.

I would too, if I could convince my friend to get skype. We revert to email for the more private issues, but it's too slow a lot of the time. I really enjoy talking to him on hootoo, and I'll risk lurkers, but I don't like that it's advertised on the front page.

I like hootoo, too! I guess it's exiting for everyone!

Traveller in Time lurking many pages
"I am sure the Captain does not matter

He has been a member of many boards since the message boards came over "

Oh

At a glance, that listing appears to be a snapshot of the most recent conversations AT THE TIME of the snap. In earlier days, such a list automatically updated every few minutes, whereas this one seems to be every few days. There's the first problem with it. The second quirk that I can see about it is that it does not reflect the thread that is displayed, but the root thread. If it's a one-to-one PS oriented thread, the link takes one to the message list of that PS. If it's an ASK thread, one is taken to the conversation list of ASK. I wonder if the more automated and selective code from 4 years ago is still laying about on a cutting room floor somewhere?

There are more flaws than those. One conversation even went up one place although nobody posted to it anymore, whereas others which were posted to dropped a place or two. How can that be?
One of my journals is on there, although it certainyl didn't have more posts than another journal of mine at any time - the journal that gets lots of posts every day is not on the list, though.
Makes me wonder what exactly defines 'popular'.
There is not a single PR thread on that list.
To be honest, I'd want the journals and message centers taken out. If we have to have a list at all, it should only display community threads and PR, the AWW and other fora - things of interest for everybody.

As I suggested, it seems to be an instantaneous snapshot of the single moment ... that remains frozen at that exact moment ... Until the system chooses to take another snap. If the timing of it is all wrong, it might one day show a list of the 20 most recent greetings from a single ACE, meeting his or her duties by welcoming a load of newbies.

Atleast that is how it visually appears to me. I haven't had the time to compare the list to any given moment's traffic.