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

This is an important message from Nick Reynolds, BBC's Social Media Executive. Please take the time to read it as it will affect you all:

"Hello,

I wasn’t involved with h2g2 the last time the BBC changed its signing in system. But I’ve heard that for some of the h2g2 community it was a tricky experience and that a few of you have the scars (and the badges) to prove it.

Some of you may have noticed that the BBC is changing its signing in system again. There’s a useful blog post about this and some help pages:
- http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/bbcinternet/2009/10/welcome_to_bbc_id.html
- http://id.bbc.co.uk/users/help/

This seemed like a good point to update you about h2g2 in general and reassure you about the new sign in system.

Firstly the mood around h2g2 is good. Sam has done some sterling work on the new designs. Hopefully we should be able to tell you very soon about the new person who will be filling in for Natalie while she works in another part of the BBC.

Next: the new sign in system. It’s called BBC iD and it replaces the current sign-in system (SSO). It’s already being used in places like the iPlayer message board, and from Monday it will be switched on for all BBC blogs.

It is one of things driving the new design for h2g2. At some point before March we have to switch BBC iD on for h2g2. And to do that the site has to be in new format called 'Barlesque'.

But we won’t be implementing the new designs (which are in Barlesque) until after Xmas so for the moment h2g2 will not be directly affected by the changes as it will still be using the pre-existing sign-in system (SSO).

But – and there’s always a but – if you sometimes venture outside h2g2 to leave a comment on, for example, a BBC blog, from Monday your SSO log in won’t work, because the blogs will now be on the new system. You will have to upgrade your current sign-in account (SSO) to the new system if you want to comment.

There’s a lot of work involved to get h2g2 ready to switch on the new system. At the moment we’re estimating that we won’t be able to do that until the New Year. And so that means for a while you’ll potentially have two accounts and two log-ins.

There is a simple solution to this:

Upgrade your current BBC membership account, the pre-existing sign-in system (SSO), to BBC iD.

You can only upgrade one account per email address – although you can have more than one account as long as it has a different email address. The intention behind BBC iD though is that users only have one account which they use for all BBC services so we’re trying to discourage users from having lots of different accounts with different emails. So try and avoid this if you can.

Choose which account you migrate carefully as all the data, comments and content you’ve created should follow you into the new system.

If you have lots of different accounts but they all have the same email address then you won’t be able to bring them all together.

We’ve had to take a decision for the whole BBC about this, and try as we might we weren’t able to find a simple and cost-effective way of doing it.

For me personally all this was relatively easy. I upgraded my account a while ago and all seems fine. All I did was use exactly the same name, email address and password as I used for my pre-existing account (SSO). This so far, touch wood, has worked fine for me.

So my tip would be while the pre-existing sign-in system (SSO) is still on h2g2 but not elsewhere, upgrade your current account using exactly the same name, and password. That way you’ll end up with two separate accounts during the transition but at least you won’t have to remember two different sets of information.

Incidentally, because I know this is important to h2g2 people, you should be able to change your display name when you want to under the new system.

Once h2g2 is safely in the new system then it will be linked up better with the rest of the BBC. This will enable us to hopefully improve the site and promote it more. We have some quite interesting ideas as we’ll be able to use some of the tools and services being developed for the whole BBC.

I’ve knocked around the BBC long enough to know that the best-laid plans sometimes go awry. So, although I’m confident everything will go smoothly, events can always intervene in unexpected ways.

But I will talk to you about what’s going on when I need to, and I know that Sam is going to start a thread about this on Ask h2g2, so I will respond to any questions you have. And we do have a fair amount of time to talk about it."


- Nick Reynolds (Social Media Executive, BBC Online)