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

Hey, Merkin! Your "Reality Construct" played host to about 40 limerick threads before "Rupert" (as the great closure seems to have been named...) - it was one of the pages I missed the most when the BBC re-opened the site. Good to see you back!

Peet my old son. It's bizarre to be back. Rather like going back to your parent's house and climbing into the attic, and finding boxes of old stuff that had faded in Momory but are still just as fun and sparkly as when you last saw them. Just discovered my MUCUS Underground revolution page. A suitable find in these turbulent times!!

Rupert seems to have knobbled most of my stuff - still I should hardly be suprised, it was all very immoderate! Still, I've found a game of limericks, signed up for Zaphodista, resurrected the Righteous Knights (though most of them seemed to have been killed in the last battle of Rupert), and all's well with the world.

Peet my old son. It's bizarre to be back. Rather like going back to your parent's house and climbing into the attic, and finding boxes of old stuff that had faded in Momory but are still just as fun and sparkly as when you last saw them. Just discovered my MUCUS Underground revolution page. A suitable find in these turbulent times!!

Rupert seems to have knobbled most of my stuff - still I should hardly be suprised, it was all very immoderate! Still, I've found a game of limericks, signed up for Zaphodista, resurrected the Righteous Knights (though most of them seemed to have been killed in the last battle of Rupert), and all's well with the world.

Technology clearly ain't what it used to be. I thought they fixed the double posting thing about 2 years ago? Don't suppose there's a way to delete forum posts yet?

Afraid not.

Despite all the hoo-ha about the huge amount of resources the BBC are putting into H2G2, nowadays their servers seem to time out more often than the old ones did, leading to re-posting and the inevetable double posts. I've seen the "white screen of death" on the site more often since the Beeb took over than in the entire year before it.

I wonder if they've done something odd at the server end, like making page requests time out sooner so the site seems faster to those who *do* get the page they asked for...?

Could be. However if H2G2 is now sitting on the same pipe as the Beeb site, then guess which one will be getting the lions share of the bandwidth, and h2g2 isn't exactly slimline itself. You could be right about the time out settings though.

Strange that they would discard functionality they'd already built though.

So if they are putting huge amounts of resources into it, what are they planning on getting out of it - other than experimenting with the infinite number of monkeys theory...?

My guess is that they bought an already active community in the hope that the "web-credibility" would rub off on the rest of their sites. By adopting a moderation policy which frustrates and angers the users, they've really shot themselves in the foot in that respect...