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

A good 2/3 of the people I greet never reply to me. I feel so unloved.

Possibly that's down to the fact they never notice the conversation thread on their space, or figure out what to do with it... By the time they have figured out what's going on it'll have dropped "off the bottom" of their conversation list.

I greeted someone I'd recommended to the site a couple of months back, with no response. Some weeks later I bumped into him in a chat room and asked why he hadn't replied; he said he didn't realise he could! He'd seen the "Hi from Peet" header, and assumed that was the whole message...

*ponders doing away with "hello..." and "welcome..." headings and thinks about doing "please click here, there's a longer message..." instead*

"click here to talk to real person"

I often find people wandering around with noe Spaces. I try to ask them, but often they come once and don't come back. Most frustrating.

Yeah. I wonder if something can be done about that...?

I'm an ace but I only ACE someone every couple of weeks, as I try to be more personal by selecting to be an ACE to one person at a time.

Me too. Although if there are a lot of people to be ACE'd, I can understand the need for the cut-and-paste jobbies, but I can't bring myself to do that. I write each Space individually. They are often similar, but never the same.

Well persoanlly I'm almsot three years nearer dying than whn I first joined. Hopefully it is a long way off yet.

H2G2 lives!
What a trip this thread is!

I'm only halfway thru the backlog, enjoying all the usual ambivalence of warm friendly feelings and fiesty harumphs, stifling my grumpy-old-man reactions to a few youngsters' ill-spelled rants, feeling again the pangs of the Great Vogon Detour, thinking of old friends now missing in action, wondering again why so many inevitably come to an all-or-nothing crisis...
Which brought to mind today's front page where Hoovooloo's 'final' entry had suffered the ignomy of very bad editing (and then Anna took steps to put it back the way he wrote it).
I was for a minute or two tempted to list all the newbies I have personally tried to 'save' from Acelessness..
Sighing for those who 'dont get' the nighthoover...
I noted Titania's wonderful synopsis, and Amy's thoughtful contribution... but I plowed onward, knowing there would be others I would want to remark upon.

Then I came to GTB's:

>> H2G2 has more than enough good juju to be exactly what you make of it. IMHO, of course. <<

A perfect hootoo posting!
Short, sweet, positive and in the language and spirit of the Founders.
What more can I say.


~jwf~ (with more to say later I'm sure )

I'll agree with most of what's been said already, h2g2 isn't dying, it's changing, there seems to have been a massive influx of a whole new breed of users recently, with the advent of WebTV etc. there are a lot of people on here who would have never had the chance before... which has got to be a good thing. Oh, and the quantity of BEEB bashing has decreased markedly recently - maybe coz there's not much left to bash the BEEB for?

The number of people on-line seems to be ever increasing... yes that might mean cliques form, but the site is that fluid that people easily pass from one area to another...

Is PR being forgotten about? I don't think so, if you look at PR today,there are nearly 250 entries there, of which, 150 have been written by researchers who've been here less than a year... (Including around a hundred entries by U2..... researchers)

There is a diehard bunch of writers out there, but I wonder how many people join the site to write, then discover just how much life there is outside peer review and end up ranked on the 'largest number of postings' rather than producing guide entries?

The thing with PR and the edited guide is that even if everyone using this site only ever produced one single edited entry then PR would be overrun (94 people have registered within the last 24 hours, 17 of those have already written introductions and only there are only five new edited entries on the front page)

Personally I think what keeps this place alive is the influx of 'newbies', bringing new ideas and new personalities. If you look at the info page now, 50% of the most prolific researchers (both in number of posts and length of posts) have been here less than a year. I know that nowadays I post and write an awful lot less than when I first joined the site, but my attitude has probably changed; although I'm not posting, I somehow don't feel right unless my computer at work has a who's online and my conversations popup box open.

What seems to happen is that a researcher joins, goes through a stage of 'dare I post' through to 'I can't type fast enough to say everything I've got to say' and then settles down to their own natural rhythm... ie posting to particular threads, talking to particular people etc. Some leave, but more are joining all the time, which makes it all the more interesting for the old stuck-in-the-muds like me who always seem to be hanging around the same place, as we keep running into new people all the time, without having to go out looking for them.
As an ace, the biggest thrill I get from the job is not necessarily getting a response from a newbie, it's seeing that newbie on top of the most prolific posters list a couple of months later... That means that they've found their niche and are comfortable here, I might not even have spoken to them since that first posting to their brand new personal space, but, thanks to the sheer size of the site, there is room in here for everyone.

*applauds Whisky*

Hear Hear!

I agree with you Whiskey I'm constantly adding new writers unto the entries list. I also know who is doing the most writing at any point of time as most of the most prolific tend to write in spourts from time to time.

*points at herself in the corner wearing the T-shirt saying : TOO MUCH TIME ON MY HANDS*

I must agree with Whiskey.....and I've been through all the stages.

I arrived here 2 weeks after the site opened....no Post, no parties, no organizations.....no NOTHING! The only thing avalable was "Busiest Forums".....and in short order I made them a LOT busier!

I wrote and had a few Articles accepted in The Guide....then the BBC took over and I got out of the habit of being here.(during "The Great Shutdown")

Now I only post if I see a subject that interests me, and with the PR regulations as they are(and my limited journalistic skills), I've not tried a new Article in a while.

But dying? No. I've got too many old and dear friends here....and every now and then I get to add to that list.

I can't say that about anywhere else I've been on the net. That specialness(is that a word?) about this place will keep it alive. At least I sure hope so!

NM

Yes, it's nice to spend time with the old dears, isn't it!

Yeah....if one could only keep up with the "nick" changes!LOL

NM

I've had the same nickname ever since I joined on 13th of March 2001.

I've always been Amy... just with varied things behind it.

And the name of researcher U135628 has always been Titania - but with various titles/ads/opinions added

Sometimes I've been wondering exactly how many really active researchers there really are, considering some of us have more than one researcher ID...