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

Could someone give me an example of the *cliquey* behaviour? I'm not quite sure what some of you are getting at...I've not seen anything that could go under that title myself! I talk to everyone!

Almost everything changes over a period of time, and hootoo is no exception. One can take a somewhat nostalgic view of how it used to be, as I tend to do, but it still retains, as has been said, a sense of substance, which is totally lacking in other venues.
As long as it can engender this feeling of *belonging*, I think it will be here indefinately.
Certainly hope so.

I personally have no problem with the site- if anything I prefer the site now than in the last couple of years- probably because I now take a bigger part in it than then, but still.

I've certainly observed much more friction on the site in the past few months, but these things often go in peaks and troughs. And it's a fact that the more researchers there are, the more potential there is for disagreement. It's like 'good news is no news' - things seem to become much more noticeable when they go wrong or have some unpleasantness about them.

Saturnine, I don't know if it's what was meant about cliques, but I have come across some conversations where people who seem to know each other digress into a more personal conversation which somehow makes it difficult for new people to join the thread. Or have 'in jokes' that others can't understand.

It's easy to be superficially friendly, or to visit someone's space & converse dircetly, but not so easy to have a chat with a small group of people.

It maybe because there are so many people here that conversations can move on very quickly, unless you're here frequently, it can be hard to keep up. I've noticed some names that were frequent for a while, then seemed to disappear. Perhaps they're elsewhere in H2g2, or can't be online or whatever.

Still, I've greatly enjoyed my time here so far & hope it will long continue

Teaswill - Putting it that way, I start to see the point...

There are certainly more researchers around, but there are also plenty of sub-communities and interest groups. I think it's great that the edited guide has become less important and the community more important in the time I've been around (or that's my perception anyway).

I would be more worried if new people weren't joining. Some researchers used to be around a lot more than they are now (well, around where I am, anyway....), and many have gone or have cut down because of life changes - reduced internet access, travelling, increased work or study loads, family commitments and so on. The site will lose people over time to a greater or lesser extent, and they do need replacing. It would be a dying community if people weren't being replaced.

Otto

I'm not sure the edited guide has become less important- ironically I'v estrted pying more attention to it as the years have gone by- but I think it's good that's it not the be-all and end-all. I don't believe that the community aspects of this site resemble a chat-room as some people claim. Look at all the clubs, discussion fora etc.

I agree with posting # 6 (by Amy).

I like H2G2 but sometimes I will go through weeks of obscurity where I tend to not exist. For me its something I seem to pick up and put down. I like writing articles and probably wrote 5 in the first 6 months of been on the site. Since then its been one this year.

Hi folks,

I'm an ACE and I would like to guage your opinions on something. Do you think that ACE greetings are too impersonal? Do you think copying and pasting a huge number of links is the right way to go about things? How can ACEs make people feel more welcome? I personally think that we should just drop by and chat, not telling them right away that it is our job to greet them, and tell them where to go on the site. It should evolve as a conversation.

What do you think?

Ste

I think everyone deserves a welcome...I have to admit, when I joined (last January) I didn't get that much help into being shown what h2g2 was about. Had to find it all out myself! Only recently found askh2g2!I think the ACE greeting should be just like someone has popped over to say Hi and tell you whats going on...links are helpful as well...

Dorian,
you may be right that the community is changing, but that is normal evolution, or everything would freeze forever.
There is however an aspect I never saw from one of the posters here.
WE are changing too, after some time. At first everything is new and unexplored and seems great, but you miss undercurrents and troubles.
I learned only weeks after the fact that some people had been kicked out, for instance, while being here for months.

Now it seems like I know most of it (not true, I realise that) and things seem sometimes to repeat.

So are you on the verge of collapsing too, or don't you like that evolution?

I think the community is far from collapsing.

I think the focus of the site has gone from writing entries so that they might get canonised in the EG to talking to one another (I would hate to use the word 'chat' in this sentence), so in some sense you could say that the community has strengthened.

Dorian, perhaps this is more a reflection on how you have come to view the site. Perhaps you've been here a while and are a bit bored with it? No offense, just looking at why you would think what you are thinking, that your attitudes to the site are perhaps changing more than the site itself.

Saturnine, you've only just found askh2g2? Really?, I would never have guessed

Ste

Only since the plain skin became available. I'm ferreted here via the Telewest Digi-box (a fabled beast) and before the skin became available, I couldn't really access long conversations. So I was mainly an article-browser...now I am both!!! And more!!!

Hooray!

http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/info

Researchers with the Most Postings in 24 Hours

-Saturnine (you would know, wouldn't you?) (138 posts, average size 167)
-Moose }:8) Thundercat, keeper...wants moose smiley... join the campaign...spy...NOT male... (81 posts, average size 358)


138 Posts! You are a h2g2 machine! Do you sleep?

having been involved in threads with her at 5 in the morningbefore now, I'm not convinced she does.

Ste, yes, I think they are too impersonal.

But then again I read a number of them on newbies' Personal Spaces. Maybe they don't seem impersonal to the individual newbie.

What makes me wonder about the automatism and impersonality of ACEs is that they post welcome messages to the homespaces of people like "Poet By The Toga's (U50758) portable MP3 player" (U192731) without questioning whether that person might be a new persona of an old user. Makes it look like a pure cut and paste job.

Tube,

"Maybe they don't seem impersonal to the individual newbie"
That's a good point. When I try to put myself in a newbie's shoes I think I might be a little overwhelmed by ten or so links, but perhaps that is just the thing they're looking for. When I greet I like to feel like I am just dropping by to say 'alright?, how you doing?' and welcoming them, trying to lure them into a conversation and then maybe giving them some links to try out.

"What makes me wonder about the automatism and impersonality of ACEs..."
I know what you mean. It's like there's a race to greet newbies. Fire off a quick copy and pasted post and chalk another one up. Is this damaging potential new recruits? I saw a greet the other day that was pasted with the wrong name (someone elses name that he had just greeted beforehand it seems), the ACE had to post again apologising! It was a bit ugly.

Hmmm, perhaps this should be in the ACEs homepage... Oh well.

Ste

And there is the anti-spamming rule that it is not allowed to post exactly the same on a lot of threads, so the greeting has to be personalised (a bit).