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

We're pleased to announce a few small changes to h2g2 that will be coming up next week.

The first involves the h2g2 Volunteer badges. Currently, there are two basic designs for volunteer badges, the ones visible in Classic and Alabaster skins and the ones visible in Brunel. Because the badges in Brunel are very intricate, they make adding new schemes to the site that little bit more difficult. We've taken the decision therefore to make all the volunteer badges look the same, regardless of which skin you use. The new designs are based on the original 'pendant' style currently seen in Classic and Alabaster, but are rectangular.

We appreciate the clunky Brunel badges might have their fans, but this change will make it easier for us to create new volunteer schemes in the future, which we feel is of more value to the community as a whole.

We've also been lucky enough to benefit from a little bit of development that we've wanted for quite some time. As part of our Editor tools, we now have a way of creating customisable credits on entries. These credits can be used to add names underneath the existing 'Written and Researched by' and 'Edited by' credits for artists, project leaders and more.

You should also see a small change to the left-hand navigation menu in Brunel with the addition of a 'Browse' option that links every page directly to the Edited Guide Categorisation.


While there are many activities on h2g2, the Edited Guide remains at the heart of everything we do here. Therefore, one more change is the introduction of a new range of badges for contributions to the Edited Guide. The badges will be added to the Personal Spaces of Researchers who have contributed 25 solo-written entries to the Edited Guide, with alternative badges for those who have written 50, 75 and 100 entries. We still need to iron out how we actually calculate who qualifies for which badge, but we'll start looking at that next week.

The plan is to implement these features on Monday, 8 August 2005. We'll let you know if there are any delays to this.

The h2g2 Editors

Well dones editors

How exciting!

I see the Editors are running heavy on the smiley these days. A pound to a penny says Natalie wrote that Post.

But I'm very excited about the new eatures. Especially the badges.

B

I guess they'l be making a seperate announcement then for the new nighthoover smiley?

will there be badge for the founders of the 5 biggest club/commintty like united friends A703126 with longest "Written and Researched by" of hootoo (400 plus!)


time for shame plug

>>customisable credits on entries

Does this mean that we'll be able to have separate credit sections for "Main Author" and "Assisted By"?

Master B, that'll be a pound you owe me.

"I see the Editors are running heavy on the smiley these days. A pound to a penny says Natalie wrote that Post.

But I'm very excited about the new eatures. Especially the badges.

B"


Is this some mysterious new drug that can't be bought over the counter

Nah, you can't have written it, Jimster. The grammar and spelling's too good.

B

yeayness

So what do we have to do to get a free eature on our space?



Hmm, told you cleaning out those hamster cages would work wonders didn't i?

zdt

Good luck trying to get a quid from Master B, if its anything like peoples previous attempts to get beer out of him, it'l fail dismally

Oh dear. Am I now officially more tight than EV.

The same EV, incidentally who I gather lost a lot of his macho male credibility at the Meet, after spending a fair amount of time looking for Huey and Ralph in the toilet?

B

hey, I never never suggested you were as tight as Ev... I mean theres beign tight.... then .... a few hundreds of logs up the scale, theres EV did he? I cna't remember that do tell all

It's based on completely verifiable and justified rumour.

B

Then why the heck didn't anyone tell me... I'm teh damn king after all heck, I was there!

Well if you can remember that, you clearly didn't drink as much as usual.

B

Funny, because I don't remember it either, and there are no unexplained gaps in my memory of the evening.

How about explained gaps?