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

Very interesting idea. But I could see it backfiring spectacularly!

If you insist that people contribute to the site they'll be scared off somewhere else. Whilst the people that use h2g2 as a chat site don't contribute anything to the guide, they make it a more interesting place to visit. Also I think the longer people stick around, the more likely they are to eventually contribute. That's certainly the case with me - I've been posting since February but only started writing entries last month.

So true disco stu


My friends been here for over three years, all of a sudden he's gotten round to putting the entries he's written into peer Review. *giggles* they'll probably be thinking he's had a brain wave or something!

Please don't call the community, non-Guide portions of this site a chatroom While there are some places here that funtion like a chatroom, there are also alot of places that have converstations distinctly non-chat.


If TPTB really want to know what the Guide would be like without the 'non-contributors' then by all means suspend all accounts of anyone without an entry in the Edited Guide and see what happens.

For the purposes of this conversation I think it's crucial to define what constitutes 'contribution'.

Actually I should just go to bed before I become even more gobsmacked than I already am

While I appreciate the need to keep the EG the central focus, I *really hope that people here don't see non EG writers as superfluous, or worse dead weight.

The problem isn't that people don't contribute... I've only just got my name on an Edited Entry, and that was only because I provided a couple of additional facts. It's that people don't realise that there's a difference between a chat room and a community message board. On pretty much every board I'm a member of the intelligent, witty people who post using real words and real feelings are the ones who make friends... the ones who just post things like "where do u come from" or (even worse) "m/16/uk lol i got mad l33t skilz" are ignored or gently persuaded to get into the spirit of things.

Back to the old "blah, blah, blah... only the guide is important... you non EG writes are wasting the site... blah blah blah... only writing for the EG has any value.... blah blah blah"

As far as I can see what makes hootoo so popular is the composite of the guide *AND* the community aspects.

I have 10 EG entries of which I am very proud. But the truth is I am here for the "intelligent chatroom" aspects of the site.

Sorry to all the EG facists out there for polluting your wonderful guide with chat.

>Back to the old "blah, blah, blah... only the guide is important... you non EG writes are wasting the site... blah blah blah... only writing for the EG has any value.... blah blah blah"

Nope - just the simple truth that without the EG OUR community would 'hang off' nothing and disappear into the BBC shredder!

'Community' has only one more letter than 'chatroom' if people are looking for an alternative.

Yes Mort, but no-one is suggesting that the community should exist without the guide, or that the guide should be restricted if people don't contribute to the community.

*hangs head in shame*

I really must think of something for an EG

My philosophy is the both the guide AND the community are both essential constituant parts of hootoo.

Let me turn it around Mort. Without the community surrounding the guide what is it but a piss poor inferior copy of wiki? If all it was was an encyclopedia b ut with online equivelents which are lets face it much better how oculd the beeb justify spending licence payers money on it?

Like I said I like both bits, and with 10 entries in the EG I dont think I am a massive EG slouch.

However I am sick and tired of sanctimonious bleating about people not paying enough attention to the guide. Live and let live.

Me neither - what I have apparently failed to say is that acknowledging that the EG is the reason Auntie Beeb likes h2g2, does not mean that I can't see how they (EG and Commiunity) both work well and enhance the site as a whole as well as 'feed' each other.

Just when the pennies get counted they won't look at how much the Community brings in.

Is that any clearer?!

(Been up half the night chasing Trojans so brain given up)

Sorry FB - took so long to post that you had posted already

Going a little off topic here

Jims can't there be some way that updates in particualr circumstances are credited on their own merrit?

I ask this because for the guiding updates that I did, because the programme had changed that much I had to completely rewite the entries, yet they will still not be credited as stand alone guide entries.

To be honest though I think the beebs overriding (and only real) interest in hootoo concerned the the technology and the technical expertise.

I am sure that hootoo ticvks enough boxes (and probably doesn't cost enough) to get cancelled.

But lets not kid ourselves if hootoo's existance depended entirely on the EG then we would be gone... bang...

It isn't "unique content" and it isn't something that can only be provided by the BBC. The EG as a stand alone think would get cancelled the minute a bean counter looked at it and ocmpared it to Wiki. THey aint gonna care that it is "quirky" and "funny". They would just see it as inferior duplication of something already (and commercially) availible on the net.

As the combination of "community" AND "guide" h2g2 offers something different AND unique IMHO. So lets not rubbish ther community bits.

Mort. Anyway I've been at the pub all night so probably should take my own advice and go to bed

I did just reread Jimster's cat/pigeon post. I think I am reacting to it because it is so confrontational.

>>But there are some people who are quite content to use up bandwidth without ever giving back. <<

That does seem laden with judgement. Probably what's pushing my buttons is that it sounds so similar to what some people here say about people on the dole or other benefits. Whereas like more beneificiaries I know, alot of researchers here contribute to h2g2 in a myriad of ways not just the EG. And I would argue that those who support the place and have never written an entry actually support the EG just in indirect ways (if it wasn't so late I'd put some teeth into that argument).

If the EG is in danger of being outweighed by the community, and there is a need to get more people involved in the EG, my suggestions are to make Peer Review more user friendly, and to clear up the ambiguity between the functions of PR and the Writing Workshop. If there is a serious intent to get people who normally otherwise wouldn't write and entry to contribute to the EG then I think the WW needs some serious revamping and promotion.


I'm actually not totally agin the idea that access to the site changes to put more focus on the EG, because my sense is that the whole community would probably take a broadish view of what constitutes 'contribution'. I just think Jimsters original post about this could have been worded more carefully perhaps.

Jimster has left us this little quiz/problem solving exercise to keep us out of trouble while he goes to catch up on the work he hasn't gone done this week.

He is like Dr House. He will turn up in an hour or so with more interesting suggestions and then set us another challenge while he has lunch

I certainly don't think I'd hang around here if there was no chatting to be done while waiting for inspiration to strike, or during the wait between being picked and hitting the Front Page.

It's journals that keep me here, although I wouldn't have stuck this long without the EG to write for.

I know what you mean.

Whenever I say I have been off sick for 3 years I immediately follow it with "but I worked for 17 years before that since I left school so am still getting back what I paid" And I hate myself for saying it.

I think that it fills the gaps I want depending on how I feel.

Like you Ideno, if I can't face writing etc then I can do something else onsite but when I feel like a bit of grey matter battering then it fills that need too.

>> has anyone else got anything *sensible* to say?

Wibble.


>> So my question is, should those people who choose not to contribute be given the same freedoms as those who are only too willing to get involved?

Jimster, I assume that you have not thought this through, because I would hate to think that this is a seriously considered proposal, and I would hate to think I belonged to a community which thought of itself in such an elitist and ... product-driven way.

The community is important, and by and large it functions very well as a community. People meet, make friends, keep in touch. They even form relationships, get married and have babies. Most of my best friends are internet wierdos whom I've met here.

Many people who don't contibute much if anything to the EG do contribute to the community by forming clubs and societies, by contributing intelligently to conversations, or just by smoothing the path and oiling the wheels.'

In fact some of the more - ahem - difficult characters here have been significant contributers to the guide. They either felt that this gave them special status to ... oh ... I don't know ... light torches and circle castles for example, or else that it might protect them or those associated with them from being banned. I am thinking of witch-hunts and tantrums which are now over 4 years old as well as events which took place less than 4 weeks ago.

I am going to do something which I always swore I never would do. I am going to mention DNA. I thought - and I may have got the wrong end of the stick here - but I thought that the whole Digital Village / h2g2 experiment was to find out what happens when people interact online, to find out about what an internet community actually is, how it works, how it grows, how it deals with problems, how it handles diversity, how it handles bother-makers. As I said, I may have got the wrong end of the stick, and it grieves me to invoke DNA's name, but I genuinely thought it was a two-pronged experiment, guide and community, community and guide. I am disturbed by the implication that it isn't any more.

Finally, the community is pretty hard to join anyway. As Ancrene says, we are a bunch of long-term friends and it is intimidating to join in. Hell, it was intimidating when I joined in 2000 and I have nerves of steel a neck of brass and tongue of silver. *Tries and fails to think of a neat gag about conducting electricity* I hate it when that happens. I also hate to think what it would be like to try to join h2g2 now, and hold my hat off to people like Ancrene who have done just that.

Is raising barriers to joining really a good way to create an extensive and inclusive community?

I appreciate that you may well have been playing devil's advocate by slinging the nasty bloodthirsty cat in amongst those cute little white turtledoves, but I do feel very strongly, (more strongly than it shows), that what you have proposed is a difficult and dangerous idea.


>> I didn't get angry once while posting that... I'm rather proud of myself.

And I didn't get angry once when replying to Jimster, and am feeling rather proud of myself too.

Ben