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

Some people put ACE in their name but I don't think it's obligatory. The badge is on my Space if anyone looks.

Glad you like the message.

thing is though, there's a lot of effort and time taken by aces welcoming newbies - but it often seems they go unnoticed.

There seems to be a high proportion of newbies who never do anything other than register. Are they even 'real' h2g2 registrations or are they the side effect of some other registration on the BBC?

Then you get the obvious cases where someone is registering multiple times to get round bans and premod. They're really obvious to spot most of the time (and more so for the admins) yet they still get ace'd. And the ace'ing gets ignored.

It seems that
a) people abusing the registration system are wasting ace's time (can't they put a registration block on email addresses that are associated with banned or premodded accounts?)
b) there's a load of 'ghost' users who are also wasting ace time (but probably not even aware they have an account on here!)
c) There's a large number who simply ignore the ace message either through ignorance or simply not being aware it is there.
Is there some way to make it more 'obvious'? Some sort of special status for ace messages? Or heading or something?

A lot of people probably aren't aware that it's even there. Because it will be a few hours, if not a whole day, until they get ACEd, they've got time to go away and forget.

On the other hand, I wouldn't want them to get a 'standard' message from the Eds because it would lack the personal touch. I still remember my ACE, knitbunny, and the conversation we had - it made me feel special that someone actually took the time to say hello.

One thing has changed from the earlier days - we now ACE every new account. When I started it wasn't possible to post to a Space until the author had written an Introduction (even just one word). Thus, we're ACEing a lot of people that never intend to come back.

Do we know if we're ACEing people who join to comment on a blog or other board, and won't even see their own Space?

I guess the people who are registering many times because they have been banned or on pre-mod ( usually not from this site ) are using a host of freebie email addresses, such as hotmail or yahoo. I read that this is what they are doing in one of *those* threads - I admit it I lurked for a few posts, but it is SO boring.... But the fact that h2g2 is so open to this form of time wasting and abuse of the moderators time, is quite annoying. The majority of regular members here seem to have an altruistic purpose in being here and creating The EG, etc.

The only way around spurious membership from banned people like this would be an IP ban.

There can't be that many that are re-registering, surely? Do we know the scale of this problem? I always assumed that there were only a handful of people doing that. Perhaps it's bigger than I realised.

nah, just a handful from what I have seen and they were caught up with and seem now to have moved to sites more in line with their requirements.

The registration and where it comes from does seem a bit unconnected in a systems kinda way. I remember when had a number of new regs because those playing the H2G2 game on the main site had to register to play (or something). Still, with the new reg. system coming in I guess all this will change anyway.

On the ace message, I was just wondering if there was some way to highlight it - maybe bold the subject or something. Give it a special status. Is there anything in the reg process for H2G2 that says you will get welcomed by an ace? Perhaps some message could be added there so that a) they know it will happen and b) they know it is a human. I've seen people convinced it is a bot.

Well, we do all post the same message over and over again (I used to write personal messages, but in then end I'd spend hours hunting for the right links and stuff only for the message to be ignored). I can see why they'd think we were bots.

hmm, yeah, but they don't see all that multi posting do they?
I think it is just that most websites/forums/services do use bots so they assume H2G2 does too.

Yes I agree, I find it over complicated, not easy to follow, and too limiting. You cant even post your own pictures into your conversations.
Its like trying to use something with your hands tied together.

This site needs to be more user friendly and clearer. Otherwise people get frustrated trying to use it, and go elsewhere.

Hi whovisions. We see that you're a relatively new arrival, so welcome to h2g2! Thank you for your comments. We're actually in the process of quite a major redesign of the site, and we're looking at overhauling the contibuting process for new users (or at least simplyfying and making it clearer, as you suggest).

We're aware of the initial problems new users encounter on the site. But h2g2 has had little in the way of major development for getting on to near to a decade - unheard of in wider web terms. But we're taking the opportunity to improve things considerably in this redesign.

We hope you get the hang of the site soon. We're sure you've already found our Who-related Entries (our most recently updated: A14151016 and A7952312 we think), and hopefully one day you'd like to contribute a Whovian Entry of your own.

Cheers
h2g2Eds