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

Working a treat now, thank you

Just one of the many things that those you don't see much of have been doing. Brian spent a while yesterday and last night fiddling with things to get Ripley up and running again.

And I do appreciate that

I am sure that there are many things that I don't see going on behind the scenes which is why I asked

I do wonder how viable this site is sometimes, financially and how sustainable community wise. I admit to personally have some feelings of insecurity about its future

I also recognise that asking any questions or expressing any doubts or feelings is always taken as criticism of volunteers, it is not, just an enquiry about how things are going and the progress that is being made because it isn't *always* visable to me

I don't feel entitled to answers or information really it is none of my business

Well, we're still finding our feet even though we've been doing it for over a year now. The structure that we've got is incredibly unusual, if not unique. Normally a site that's run by volunteers is run from someone's bedroom, or has a huge amount of cash behind it. Either way, the community itself very rarely has a say on the overall direction and running of the site. So, we're still getting to grips with a few things, but there is a huge amount that goes on behind the scenes.

Most of the volunteers are in near constant communication, and we bandy ideas about all the time. Some are small tweaks that we think will make nice changes, others are a lot further reaching. But it's all discussed out before anything actually happens.

As for us being viable, I'd say that we are. We're still here a year later, and we're in no immediate danger of closing down. Thanks to the income from the advertising and the work of the volunteers we're able to keep going and to keep planning ways to increase readership, and community.

If you've got any ideas, do let us know them

Well that is good to hear that we are in no immediate danger of closing down, I can put my insecurities aside for now then

"Thanks to the income from the advertising"

I wonder how many of the advertisers realize just how few of us see their carefully targeted ads.

You don't have to sign in to read the ads, RE. We get tens of thousands of readers who lurk / find the site through Google, etc.

But! We do of course appreciate when our signed in users choose Pliny, and thus help generate income via ads

All the little trickles...

"We get tens of thousands of readers who lurk / find the site through Google, etc."

That's of even greater concern, Icy.

I've just found the site via Google. The first conversation I tried to post to brought the first error message:

"Unable to find your page
Oh dear.
Sorry about this.
This isn't at all what's supposed to happen.
This is exactly the sort of thing that can cause stress and anxiety.
Those are not good things.

Have a look at this calming image that we've chosen just for occassions such as this. Hopefully it will help keep you calm while we look into the problem."

Even our error messages contain errors!

I don't like Pliny. If I had to, I'd look at ads in Goo, but so far there aren't any.

Thanks for fixing the error messages.