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

Time for me to stick my & add my ten penn'orth; since i have been lurking probably far longer than is good for my sanity.

Without taking sides (too much!) & maybe i am a bit thick; but all this migration of message boards seems to me to beg a fundamental question & maybe a total lack of foresight on Someones part at the BBC.

IF Someone in their wisdom decided way back that message boards were a good idea as part of the lovely cosy interactive New Age BBC, surely they should be delighted when oodles of folks actually take them up on it, use the service, prove that people actually do take notice of what the BBC provides? But it seems, no, if the facility proves popular, it "uses up valuable bandwidth" & should be curtailed, if not banished altogether.

I am no geek & haven't a clue how these things are determined, but normally in business, one makes a reasonable forecast of the likely direction of progress & ensures resources are earmarked for possible rapid expansion. This doesn't seem to have happened. How can a major broadcasting corporation employing (presumably) many people with up to date computer knowledge be seemingly faced with a panic situation of "waaaah, all these naughty people want to play, the playground isn't big enough, send them to the school next door & make them play nicely or the Head there will boot them out on the streets!"

When i became an Ace, the role involved actively welcoming new people to this site, not trying to put them off unless they arrive with a few Guide Entries already up their sleeve; or can be browbeaten into very quickly producing them.

Anyway, i will probably get shot down in flames for this, but who cares, i am a bit of a rebel. So: here's a challenge which might be fun for all you Radio Twoites. *resists urge to call you "Old Nacas")

First one to write a Guide Entry on ANY aspect of Radio Two, which gets through Peer Review fast & ends up on the Front Page wins & s for life.

If Peer Review seems too daunting, have a look at <./>thepost</.> instead, which is rather more flexible in the writing guidelines department.

And anyone who wants to come & say hi to me, do feel free to visit my Personal Space, the chatty bit (ie: my just threw up/i suspect it's been poisoned by the KGB) is to be found on the EYE thread on my journal space.

Welcome to Hootoo!

zdt (it stands for zen devil Terri)

zdt

Great message and I fully agree with what you have said. Having said that I can see the italics here point of view here they are not responsible for the actions of another part of the BBC. It's a worrying trend though and the way we have been treated since the announcment by R2 has left a very nasty taste in people's mouths. There are nice ways of doing things and no so nice.

Most of the people on this thread are from the N&CA board of R2 there are a lot of very knowledgeable people around about the history of R2 and I've tried to persuade them over a period of years to write a guide entry so free 's for life and a is a good offer I will post a link to this thread on the Shows & Music board and throw down the Gauntlet for them there to write an an entry.

BDG

One thing that it might be worth remembering is that it's not 'The BBC' doing things so much as individual departments within the BBC having to reassess how they spend their money. Messageboards were once thought to be the only way to provide a service, but as you can see from 606, some teams are recognising the value of full community sites, in the image of h2g2. That's an expensive step to take though, so not every team will take that approach.

As many of you know, the BBC is undergoing a massive programme of change across the board to make it robust enough for the future of digital broadcasting, so the corporation can provide its audience with new services that take the best advantage of changes in technology. Every service is paid for by the license fee and that pot is limited.

As I've said, the BBC isn't one big single-decision-making organism, so I cannot comment on the decisions made by our colleagues in Radio as I don't know their circumstances or the directions they've been given. All I can do is answer on behalf of h2g2's team.



So long as you reply to the moderation email sent to you - including the text of that email - we will be able to provide a reply to answer queries. That may not have been the policy on other communities you've been a part of, but as some of you discovered yesterday, it is the policy here. So if you choose not to reply to that email, you only have yourself to blame if you don't know why that decision was taken. In some instances, we have been known to reverse moderation decisions made by the external moderators, so long as requests are politely-worded and it appears that a mistake has been made. If we are unable to reverse a decision, we'll try to explain why. It might not always end up with the result you want but we'll try to be as flexible as we can be.

You can find out more about our moderation policies on the <./>HouseRules-Transgressions</.> page.



We mentioned this in email replies yesterday, but it's worth noting here: a number of messageboards have been closed or reduced in service recently, and a great deal of members have chosen h2g2 as their 'least-worst' option. That means we now have a rapidly increased audience to look after, but we will not be getting additional resources to cope with that (in fact, because of staff illness and having to use up the remainder of our annual leave, we're actually on a reduced team right now). This is why I've asked our new members to respect the forum set-up that we already have, rather than trying to replicate anything they had on their previous homes. It just means we can find your queries quicker and our volunteers know where to look for anyone who might feel lost.

This is also why we've closed any pages that look like they're trying to just move Radio 2 onto h2g2. It doesn't mean that there's a black mark against anyone's account as we understand you're all trying to get to grips with a new community with different ways of doing things; this is just housekeeping really.



Please do familiarise yourself with our <./>HouseRules</.>. For instance:

posting the same message more than twice is classed as spamming or flooding, so any additional posts may be removed. If you want to contact multiple users, please try to personalise your message so that it doesn't look like you're spamming, and don't repost the same message to a forum.

don't post messages in binary, foreign languages or (grrr) text-speak. If a moderator cannot understand your message, they will fail it.

please respect your hosts. This one's very important, because we're nice people with human failings and woolly jumpers, despite what some puddings may want to claim. We're a lot more informal here than perhaps our bosses are happy with, but we do have limits.

and (even though our long-term members often forget this one) don't panic. Or at least accept that panicking won't make things better.

Most of all, this is your chance to shape a BBC site and see your work on our Front Page in a variety of ways. All of our featured articles come from YOU, so if you don't like what we're publishing, show us how it should be done.

Right - I'd better leave home and go into the office now. See, there's dedication for ya.

Nice one, Smij
Oh, and if I may add something: you defintiely should try to write an entry. I never thought I'd do, and it took me nearly three years here before I eventually did, but now I seem to be addicted (yet another addiction after the one to h2g2 in general).

You mean there are people OTHER than me who wear woolly jumpers,
swoon, thud!

Traveller in Time on the umbrella
"The Italics have 'woolly jumpers' Always imagined them in T-shirts "

In this weather? No chance. I've got my black woolly-pully on today. Most casual thing you can wear to meetings and still look vaguely 'smart-casual'. Also, if I sit in front of a black background, I look slimmer.

Or, I look like a big fat floating head...

"When i became an Ace, the role involved actively welcoming new people to this site, not trying to put them off unless they arrive with a few Guide Entries already up their sleeve; or can be browbeaten into very quickly producing them."

Terri, I may be wrong here, but was this in response to something I said?

I tried to set up a radio2 board on h2g2 - it got modded, I rewroteit as bland as possible - still modded

Traveller in Time listening to the radio
"You are welcome to write an entry about Radio 2, we would even love it to see an entry about the message board 'Radio 2'. However it is not the idea of HooToo to set up a message board mimicing the Radio 2 message board. "

Exactly - you didn't get modded for what you wrote, but for setting up the page in the first place. That's not because the italics are moderation fascists, it's because they want to be able to help you all settle in to existing areas of h2g2.

Geddon

A guide entry is not the same as setting up a board if it's any consulation I did the same thing here for N&CA and was modded, but I do understand their reasons, if you reply to the email as stated above they do give you a very reasonable explanation. Something we never ever got from R2.

If you want to write an entry which is factual about the history of R2 which could even include a section about R2 Message Boards then that would be a different matter as has explained.

Having said that I think we are all agreed that the way R2 has gone about shutting it's boards down is very wrong. They have allowed communities to develop and then cast them out in a very underhand way. Particularly by stopping communities migrating off the BBC. They can't have their cake and eat it.

It's been a very sad day for free speech on the BBC over the past few weeks and I fear the worst is yet to come a very worrying trend IMO. So far h2g2 has escaped that but I wonder if there will come a time when they will think the guide is not worth funding. Let's hope that doesn't happen.

It's a great shame the BBC has cast out 100's of users from their communities I think it's something they will live to regret.

Take care peoples.

BDG XX

Elentari; no, nothing you said at all; it's just that i have been lurking rather than Aceing for ages now, since i am still not entirely sure what the situation is re: welcoming folks from other places.

Anyway, certainly those folks who write Guide Entries & actively contribute to the site are very welcome; so do help yourselves to & or maybe or , probably the best way to find out what this place is like is to visit peoples Personal Space & have a jolly good lurk, join in convos which interest you & get to know us. Most people on here are very friendly, especially if you say you are a newbie.

As for woolly jumpers...hmm; watch it Smij if you take to skulking around in black polo neck types, the Powers That Be may decide you've gone all intellectual & transfer you to Newsnight or something!

zdt

Smij on Newsnight? The mind boggles!


Hello and Welcome to Hootoo!!


lil xx

Well if I were on newsnight, Jeremy Paxman's attitude to user-generated content would have to change

Thanks, one and all for your comments - I understand now. It would have been a good idea to have a place where those who had used the boards for civilised discuusion to carry that on.

Still, all good things etc

Merry Christmas one and all

Just to give you all an update.....well it's been a busy week and Jezza's Exiles is up and running with nearly 200 members and pretty busy to say the least.

I think something positive has come out of it and we are working together more as a community with everyone taking a share of the responsibility and playing a part. We've been able to develop other areas of the show like the Allotment etc.

I have made the point to the R2 Host that if more of the message boards went the way of hootoo in terms of the community playing a part this would have been a way of keeping things without so much outlay from the BBC. I do feel this is a valid point.

Anyway times change and people move on I guess. The show has been in touch which is postive

Happy Christmas to you all and thanks for your support.

BDG

with it, and Merry Christmas & a Happy New Year.

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to you All!!

Merry Christmas BDG,

I'm *really* glad you've all managed to find a new home!