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

Well, the provider I was using for graphics on my home page has rearranged their site, and now the graphics don't show. I could rearrange and use another provider, but you know what? I'm not going to. Why not? Because it's not fair. Not fair to the other providers.

By requiring Researchers to host graphics offsite, H2G2 is condoning, encouraging and participating in bandwidth theft. This is not the sort of thing I personally wish to encourage. So, until Researchers can host their graphics right here on H2G2, my home page will remain without graphics.

It's not like allowing us to upload graphics, and providing for them in GuideML, requires clearing some great technical hurdle. Moving graphics from a client to a server is well-understood technology that I'm sure H2G2 could implement very quickly if they were motivated.

Right now, I'm a lone voice in the wilderness, which probably won't provoke change. If you join me, maybe we can change that. Remember "Alice's Restaurant": "If THREE people do it...it's a movement".

What you can do:

1) Reply to this message, letting the H2G2 powers that be know that you think H2G2 should start carrying its own weight in the graphics department.
2) Add a Header section at the top of your home page. Title it "A PAGE WITHOUT GRAPHICS". Link back to this topic.
3) Take all the graphics off your page until H2G2 agrees to let us store graphics on their server instead of stealing bandwidth from other Internet companies.

Sure, maybe this will have no effect. But I'd like to think that the Researcher community can have a voice in the way this place is run.

Various hints & posts about the site suggest that onsite storage at h2g2 is on the 'To Do' list. Where on the list I don't know, but I can confidently predict that it won't happen this millenium (populist definition)

;^)#

OK, before this leaps into the realms of name calling, some points.

1. We never actively encourage people to put graphics on their pages, so saying we 'require' users to host graphics off-site is unfair - we'd rather they didn't have any to start with. Yes, it's possible in GuideML, and we do explain how to do it, but that's because people will do it anyway, and we might as well tell them how to do it without breaking the site. Preventing people from doing it *would* be quite a technical challenge - one thing we've found is that h2g2 members are seriously good at working out how to do exactly what they want.

2. As far as I am concerned h2g2 is a repository for excellent textual content, not graphics. The forums and entries are textual, and any graphics in the approved guide are held on our servers. We're not and probably never will be a graphical site in terms of our content.

3. We do hope to provide graphics uploading some time next year, but the issue isn't technical, it's storage space. 30,000 members each with a quota for graphics means a lot of disc space, and that's not a trivial concern. Until then our attitude is that it's up to the individual: we won't prevent people from putting graphic links on their pages, but we won't encourage it.

So the message is this: if you want to protest against people putting graphics on their pages by taking them off, that's fine by us. We get no hits from off-site hosted graphics, they don't (as far as I am concerned) add hugely to the content of the site, and they slow things down. I'd be thrilled if your campaign was a success, but that's not me condoning it - it's just me pointing out that branding us as bandwidth thieves is harsh.

A very interesting post, though.

First, let me apologize if you took "bandwidth theft" as name-calling. To me, that's a technical term, but perhaps I've spent too much time prowling around the infrastructure of the Internet. We could discuss this in more economic terms of externalizing some of the fixed costs of your operation, if you'd prefer. I don't want to let the words get in the way of the ideas, and whatever the tone of my original post, I'm not mad at H2G2 at all. If this degenerates into a name-calling thread I'll do my best to kill it myself.

Personally, I'm glad to hear you say that your vision of the Guide is textual rather than graphical. It seems obvious that you'd feel that way, given what we've seen of the WAP initiative and the vague hints at what we might perhaps call the 'X Device' that will someday bring the Guide to real life. But some members, alas, don't see it that way.

Storage space, hmm, let's run the numbers. Being generous and assuming all 30K members were to suddenly become active and each require 2MB of graphics on their pages, you're talking about 60GB of space. With 10GB drives available around the $500 price point, that would be $3000 if you were to magically need all the storage all at once. I'll grant you about an order of magnitude for redundancy and faster drives, but it looks to me like a back-of-the-envelope reasonable figure is about $1 per researcher. I'd hope you can squeeze this much out of your backers.

I'm aware that I'm ignoring the cost of backbone upgrades to handle the load here, as I have no real data for costs in the UK for such things. I don't expect you to reveal financial details here either. But it does look to me that we're talking moderate but not sky-high costs.

I'm happy to hear that graphics uploading is in the plans. Perhaps simultaneously with that, you can work out a community-based way to discourage people from going overboard. If the average page *were* to get that 2MB of graphics figure that I pulled out of a hat, I don't think I personally would visit the average page. One rather draconian solution would be to simply set a very low quota per page, coupled with some education as to why small graphics are best, and how to condense a jpg so it takes up less download time. I dunno, I'm just throwing out a first idea here. I do hope you address the social side of the equation as well as the technical one, though.

Anyhow, I think I'll keep the note on my home page, and we'll see whether anyone else becomes moved to contribute to a discussion of appropriate graphics. You've probably noticed that I'm in general quite a supporter of H2G2, even if there are a few things that I think might be done a bit different, and I'd love to see this project continue to succeed (whatever that might mean).

Thanks for the quick response.

ffmike -

I agree with what you are saying. Being a system administrator myself, I do not blame the host servers for putting an end to graphics hosting for other servers. I also agree with your rough idea of what the space restrictions are. I am usually draconian in my administration of systems and think that 2MB is way too much space for users.

I like the idea that we can have some graphics on our pages, however, as Mark stated, we are primarily a text shop and that's the way I prefer it.

Like anything with systems, it's a matter of user training and knowlege. If they understand what's expected then they should fall into line.

So, I agree that H2G2 should provide some space for graphics hosting, which Mark has stated is in process. Just like you, ffmike, I love H2G2 for what it is and what it has the potential to become. I think that the constant strive to improve will lead us where we want to go.

Courtesy

Jolly good, we're all happy then.

And thanks for the calculations, which don't look too difficult. The real worry comes when we look at our prospective user levels in the future, which will hopefully run into the millions of members. Then storage space *does* become more of an issue, but I guess I was probably thinking out loud (which doesn't imply thinking logically).

Good to see activist behaviour, though. I thoroughly approve.

Damn. Looks like this was resolved quickly and quietly. It looked like an ideal opportunity to exercise the anarchist in me.

Nonetheless, looks like 'my' brisline has to go. Shame really, I'd asked Seoman to do a personalised one for me (and he never gave a response, the Philistine), so it looks like I'll have to have a NIMH-less homepage. And that means a lot to me.

Well of course your graphic doesn't "have" to go. It's purely up to you whether you agree with this hardline stance or not. There's not too much point in being aggressive about a protest when the powers-that-be are being so reasonable

Well, the big names in the NIMH community (Nathienal Price, Daphne Lage, Steve Vanden-Ekyel etc) have a very dim view of bandwidth theft and if they found out I'd been stealing Steve's bandwidth they'd all get hot under the collar and go "damn you to hell, newbie!"

So I figure I'd better cover my tracks pronto.

I hate to be a pest (not really ) but I have to disagree with the whole graphics uploading thing. If h2g2 starts allowing graphics uploaded to their servers, then they'll have to start limiting us with size quotas. I've already inadvertantly found the text limit in the editpage works (though I don't know what that limit is, since I haven't managed to be bothered to check the code for the textbox size). If you start putting down limits, then where would you put all those entries you're submitting?

H2g2 has graciously given us emoticons and goo (the goo setup already mucks with lynx ) and other graphics for the site they've designed. The editors strip graphics from submitted entries before approval. If researchers want pretty pictures (I have a few, I admit), then I think it's their responsibility to find a place for storage. If the sysadmin of the off-site is so egocentric as to not allow people to look at graphics on their site unless they're actually poking around in their own hallways, find another.

'Nonnie

Ah well, I suspect we'll just have to agree to disagree then. I'd be rather amazed, given what Mark had to say above and the apparent business plan of H2G2 (make money by selling content that costs them nothing more than the overhead of web hosting) if they were to apply quotas to Guide entries.

As for lynx...pardon me, you may have inadvertently mistaken me for someone who gives a hoot about text-based systems.

Yes, I too have seen the text limit (curiously enough, only one day after you helped me, 'nonnie ). And, once again, I am in agreement with Anonymouse! I live and breath graphics, unnecessary or not; a limit on the amount I could have on my page would seriously hinder my experience on h2g2- there are many "graphic lovers" like myself out there, like Shazz, Madmunk, NM, Monsy, Frustreren, etc. Obviously, to us pictures are just part of our webpages- ways to bring about a certain perspective of ourselves- and NOT a part our entries.

BTW, as an aside, 30k is more than enough space for graphic storage. While I can barely struggle with the limitations of 14gb I am the first to admit that it is my own vice, and thus I should be the only one made to suffer from it; if 30k is too little for some, well, there are ways to get around it- like it or lump it.

Apparently I haven't made myself entirely clear. If you have a host that approves of the practice of storing graphics on their server and only showing them via H2G2 pages, that's great (as a text person, I'm less likely to visit your page, but who cares? There's room for all of us here). The practice I'm objecting to is storing them on servers that do not condone this (such as Geocities or HomePage or Tripod) and hoping they don't notice. That's bandwidth theft. It's been quasi-endorsed by the powers that be (for example, see some of Bruce's notes in the GuideML clinic; I'm aware that he's not an employee, but he functions as part of H2G2), and I'd rather they took a firm stand against the practice. If H2G2 gets into the graphics hosting business themselves (as I think they should), then it would make sense for them to set firm limits for that storage, not for the total amount of graphics on a page. Whether you agree with me or not, I hope this is more clear.

Sheesh, I'm lost. I think I'll set fire to a bin or two.

*hands a lighter over

Yup, I caught your drift earlier, but I was on a tangent there

'Tangent'? New word to me.

*woomph*

Up goes bin.

Not fully understanding the techo jargon I found that my fish only loads if you dive off into the 8m.com site I have.Loads it into the cache and away one goes when one comes back to h2g2...does this not present a win/win situation? A few choice graphics which can add to the site... [ e.g take a look at the Opening page and other official areas of h2g2 for somewhere there is quoted "a picture is worth a thousand words"] and for the free site yet another hit registered which is after all how these guys attract advertising which is what pays the bills. Hence- if you want the pics you can shoot off and load them then come back and read the technicolour wonder or if you can't be bothered just scroll on and enjoy the wit.Personally I find a few pics add to the experience.
One thing about having a pics limit is that like any free site limit it does tend to make one judicious in the use of heavy graphics.
Internet blossomed basically cos someone found a way to add the visual wonder and its converging and growing even faster cos of graphics and images. Men are always telling me that they only buy those mags for the articles but always spend time looking at the pics!

*having stuck her 2c worth in she sits down and warms her hands on those flaming bins*

Going by the gist of what you said, I think this sounds like what MadMunk (I think) and someone else are doing. You send 'em a picture or two, they'll allow you to upload it without fear of annoying someone.
And they do give you a limit on how much you can have. Fair enough.

Spork, u can have yer lighter back. Why u no reply to Dom da Gates?

I am soooooo sorry... Forums have a way of getting buried. Away for 14 hours and I have three pages of forums to catch up to- argh!

WHAT?!?!?
Crazy.