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

One of the good things about working at the BBC is that you get to meet some very interesting people.

Jimbo Wales one of the co-founders of Wikipedia came in for a chat with Andrew, Dan and I this morning http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jimbo_Wales

We had a long chat about community generated content systems, how we both dealt with trolls and troublemakers, contributors and volunteers, we both seem to be experiencing many of the same issues and delights.

I laughed when he said, "So, do you know Martin?" and I knew *exactly* who he was talking about - Lucinda, you've certainly managed to make your mark...!

Our chat has left me wondering about how h2g2 and the other communities (if there were any) would have developed if we hadn't come into the BBC. We accept a number of restrictions now, that certainly weren't in place when I worked for The Digital Village, in the pre-BBC days. We didn't have moderation, we had really so very, very few restrictions on what people could or couldn't say. I think we probably would have developed the volunteer schemes more. Volunteer moderators are aa beautiful idea, and I'd totally go with the idea on a personal leve, I know how responsive community members can be, but I'm not sure that the BBC would ever realistically be able to devolve responsibility in this way, partly because we'd be much more likely to be targets for political or other activist groups than Wikipedia.

Anyway, a very interesting morning.

When I first heard about Wikepedia, I thought, "It'll never work". But it does, and while I've only used it a tiny little bit, there's something very satisfying about being able to add a line to an article and it's there straight away.

I think volunteer reactive moderation would work great. You might have to be careful about, say, keeping moderators anonymous, but if people love a community I'd say that they'd do a great job.

Traveller in Time visiting WikiPedia not frequently
"Just how do they keep any content consistent? For what I have seen any page can be changed by anybody at any time.
There is much to say for the dynamics, only it would require a majority of users just only keeping the content sane. "

I read an interesting article about them the other day, written by the Former Editor in Chief of the Encyclopædia Britannica. He says is
"However closely a Wikipedia article may at some point in its life attain to reliability, it is forever open to the uninformed or semiliterate meddler."
"The user...is rather in the position of a visitor to a public restroom. It may be obviously dirty, so that he knows to exercise great care, or it may seem fairly clean, so that he may be lulled into a false sense of security. What he certainly does not know is who has used the facilities before him."


http://www.techcentralstation.com/111504A.html

It puts me off that I could spend a lot of time researching something, and some johhny-come-lately could just wipe out my hard work. When I think of some of the 'corrections' that have been posted to the forums on my Edited Entries on h2g2 because they are either 'common knowledge' or have been found elsewhere on the internet that have been completely wrong I shudder to think what would happen to an article that people could just change - which backs up what that chap coely quotes says.

Of course, I'm not saying that sites that can't be edited by anyone are ever completely accurate, but having a peer review system does mean that people might have to justify why they've put something into an article.



I also like the idea of making more of the volunteer schemes. There are lots of sites out there that have volunteer moderators and hosts/editors. I know from my own experiences with h2g2 that nobody works harder when they love what they do so much that they volunteer to work for nothing (I tried to get into h2g2 before there was actually a job by volunteering to work just for expenses, if only they'd let me in).

They do have volunteers that check updates, and restore the previous version if the update's no good.

Yeah, but how are they to know that adding or removing a fact is a problem if they don't have a knowledge of the subject?

It's not that I'm knocking it, and I know that sites like h2g2 are as likely to be reliable, but there are more checks in place on h2g2 *before* content goes up, and that's what I (personally) prefer about h2g2. Also I don't want to share my hard work with anyone who fancies it.

Personally, I'd like to see a wikepedia type site but for subjective things, like restaurant reviews etc. Things where hard-and-fast facts aren't such a big deal, like they are in most encyclopedia entries. It frustrates me, for example, that almost all of the entry I wrote about the Trafford Centre, and got accepted into the guide on h2g2, is now out of date. With wikepedia, it would be a lot easier to update that sort of thing. However, for stuff like astronomy entries, once they're right, they're right.

Traveller in Time on a banner

[Sales at the flower shop]

"The only disadvantage is some will tend to advertise. At least if I would have a shop mentioned in such entry I would. "

The thing that surprised me is that apparently it's all run by volunteers. Not a single person is paid. All the coders, the people who run the servers, the people who maintain search, they're all doing it for love, not money. Even the CEO Jimbo isn't paid for his work on the wikipedia site. that's a *very* different way of working.

Apparently because articles are 'watched' by the people who created and contributed to them, there's not much chance of them being radically changed or wiped, without them being reinstated. I can think of some instances when it might work for us - Talking Points would be a lot easier to do if they didn't need all the subbing work, collaborative poems on Get Writing might be possible. It's an interesting idea I think, very organic!

Traveller in Time on his head
"Try 'Collaborator' < U717892 > ?

Though the BBC can not take full responsiblity < F1806703?thread=416279 > ?"

Nice one traveller!

I should have guessed someone would have tried it!

When I first saw Wikipedia I instantly thought of it as a H2G2 rival.

Yes, we probably started off around the same time too...

I don't think it really is - though it's pretty close. Theirs is more boring...

less skinable, no neat SLTA tags and all the rest of the gubbins that we enjoy on H2G2, plus H2G2 seems quite old to me, perhaps it's just because of it's grand size and scope, although there is no beating the quality of articals in the guide.

Traveller in Time on a balance
"HooToo is like a place you visit,
friends on every Forum corner,
Weird things happening,
Good things happening,
Sad things happening,
Decorated with brilliant entries,
Half of them pure and informative,
Some of them nonsense,
Most unexpected.

Wikipedia is a website,
It is a project,
It is big,
It is sterile,
It is impressive,
Cubicle

The above is just my impression Though I have not seen half of the DNA cluster, I bet Wiki does not even have a < <./>RandomEntry</.> > link. "

Seen this one Peta...

WikiNews...

http://demo.wikinews.org/wiki/Main_Page

Complete with Peer Review and articles that are frozen once completed, which sounds familiar .

http://demo.wikinews.org/wiki/Wikinews:Article_stages

Sounds like they're planning on taking on the whole of the BBC now

Of course they could just not bother to actually write an article but just link to one already on here instead!
See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_Stone with the link to the unedited entry, ie the one that still belongs to me and not the BBC. I've a good mine to remove it and replace the content on that linked page with an entry on something else. Any ideas?

Traveller in Time looking at Stones
"How about a link to the edited entry about WikiPedia?


Don't Panic

WikiPedia <SMILEY TYPE="winkeye"/>

Sorry for the interruption in your search for the London Stone, The Entry is currently in the process of divertion to another number.




Or something weird like that, please do not delete your unedited entry

"

I won't remove it, I was just asking for suggestions. The problem is that if you google for the Stone you get the unedited version first due to the fact that other sites have linked to it, which is what bumps that particular version up the google listings.