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

Yay, Otto, I thought I'd drop by even though I've posted a generic post in the thread you started some time ago on the Community Consortium page.

I've set up Magrathea's Workshop here U14791015 as a central place for the sort of organisational design work you described in your non-exhaustive list post. It's a Shared ID which will enable different individuals to take on a specific aspect of h2g2, sumarise the discussions about it so far, and ptu together a proposal for how it could and should be.

It's worth doing this because (1) the community may end up running h2g2 and (2) the community may end up running h2g2. In scenario (1) I'm thinking that there may not be another bidder acceptable to the BBC in which case we'd be on our ownio, and in scenario (2) I'm thinking that the BBC will pick a bidder who understands us and is willing to accomodate our little ways.

So....

Would you - could you - come over to the workshop, pick a topic in the list and run with it? It involves setting up a page, linking to relevant stuff on the site, writing a proposal, and hosting any conversations on the subject.

Come on... you KNOW you want to! Drop me a line at agirlcalledben at gmail dot com and I'll let you have the username and password for the account.

Ben

Hi Ben,

I've rather fallen behind in following discussions about the future of the site, much to my shame. It seems like a huge amount has been written, and in general the most I've managed to do is to skim-read the emails from the google group. In general I've been confident that things are in good hands, and my MO (on this site and elsewhere) tends to be not to intervene unless I've got something new to say - otherwise I just contribute noise rather than light.

The Magrathea idea looks like a good one, but I think the topics are very broad, and I'm not sure they're the right ones. It might be worth thinking of dividing topics down into constituent parts or smaller blocs. In terms of time, I can't really see myself finding time to take on a whole topic, but I would be willing to draft a discussion paper on a smaller area - moderation, for example, was something I picked out in my original post.

I've been thinking (as I'm sure a lot of us have) about what professional skills we bring to bear, and, well, I'm a professional generalist. But policy reviews and discussion papers are something I can do, but I've only really got time to take on something quite tightly defined.

Tightly defined is good. I like tightly defined for a lot of reasons. Two good ones being (a) there's some chance of getting a tightly defined subject nailed down so that we can move on to the next one and (b) the more tightly defined subjects we have, the more individuals we can get involved doing something specific and achievable, and I think that is a good thing.

Which subject would you like to pick? Moderation is fine, if you are up for it. You could split it out between the mechanics and the rules or tackle both. Z has been finding some bits and pieces out about the mechanics.

I think I am going to start a volunteer for Magrathea thread so people can sign up to tackle a topic and we can timetable putting up the pages.

Ben