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

I would pay if they added things. Like email, storage and more preferences. Depends how much the charge is too. 3 month trial would be fair,it can take a while to learn your way around and make friends.

Only if we could have a bozo filter

Seriously, consider the enormous amounts spent on weapons, worldwide. Consider the huge amounts wasted on other stupid things by our incredibly foolish governments. Consider the obscene revenues 'earned' by greedy corporations, such as Micro***t.. Consider banks, insurance companies, the so-called 'entertainment' industry. Consider the punitive, excessive taxes we are forced to pay. Consider..

Ok, I'll stop. I'm getting depressed......

My point is, we all pay for a lot of things we generally despise. H2G2 is far from despicable.

So..

I would pay for h2g2, if I could afford it, simply because I think it is the best thing on the web, and I am idealistic enough, or deluded enough, to believe the Internet may just be a significant part of something greater, that could perhaps even eventually help us to save our sorry a***s.

As long as we can keep the greedy, arrogant S.O.Bs who think they run things from destroying us...

I wonder what the proportion of H2G2 users are foreign guests like me (I'm unitedstatian)? I know I try to stay indirect and in the background about most subjects that involve the running of the site, because it's not I who is paying the unitedkingdomese rates for it.

Most of the delight I get here is available also in Wikipedia and through diligent searching in dmoz.org (the Open Directory Project). I hang here because it's cute, and it's interesting to see what my unitedkingdomese cousins are thinking. This doesn't amuse me enough to make me pay, especially with Auntie Beeb's moderation policies.

Perhaps if it was a pay site, some of those moderation policies might not apply, in rather the same way that premium cable channels such as HBO don't have to bleep out sweary words. Of course, that raises the point that a lot of kids won't be able to access h2g2 (or parts of it) because they don't have a credit card with which to pay the subscription fee, and I know that the Eds are keen for h2g2 to be open to all.

And I quite fancy abbi's idea of email facilities - I like the sound of gosho at h2g2 dot co dot uk Wonder what'll happen with Researchers who have the same name though, like the 47 Slartibartfasts

Let's come at this one from the opposite direction though shall we? Why should h2g2 remain free? How long can all this free stuff on the web continue? Think of one other web service which is free - Yahoo! That particular organisation is hardly ever mentioned here without an accompanying remark decrying the amount of advertising you have to wade through. It's the advertising which keeps it free you know. You want that kind of stuff here?

You don't get ads anywhere on the BBC which is why you have to pay the licence fee. There are no advertising signs on Centre Court at Wimbledon, which is one reason why the prices are so high there. You don't get ads on HBO, Cinemax, or Showtime, which is why you have to pay extra on top of your cable bill to get them.

You can get basic versions of software such as Zone Alarm for free because they make money selling the pro version to businesses. Perhaps the BBC will eventually licence the DNA engine to other organisations, enabling all the DNA sites to remain free to subsribers. I wonder who owns copyright on it - Jim Lynn and his team, or The Beeb?

++++++++++++++++++++

In the beginning was The Internet, and The Internet was populated by geeks and hackers, and the geeks and hackers gazed upon The Internet and saw that it was good, for The Internet allowed them to exchange information and to co-operate and collaborate in ways they had only dreamt of. The geeks and hackers so loved The Internet because they could perpetuate the ethos of Open Source and could help each other to improve each others Code for the good of all and for free.

But lo! The Great Satan (I mean big business in general, not just Billy Gates) also gazed upon The Internet and saw that it could be used to make much wedge, and there was a wailing and a gnashing of modems amongst the geeks and hackers as their beloved Internet was swamped with banner ads and spam. But all was not in vain because the ethos of Open Source and free stuff remained, and underpinned the very shape of The Internet for a number of years.

It shall come to pass though that The Great Satan Capitalism will have his way and the amount of free stuff shall wither and perish unless it is kept alive by the faithful.

So I say unto you, learn how to Code and contribute to it. Embrace Linux and Sourceforge and Mozilla and GNU and OSDN and Open Office and The General Public Licence.

But don't expect the whole damn place to be a free lunch forever matey boy

Yes I agree Gosho this free ride will not last forever.
You see more surveys asking that on sites.
The bottom line is would you pay to not be bothered by advertisers?

I have software that rids me of most of the adds and banners but I figure we are in some sort of limbo with all of that. Maybe there will be a yearly fee for it eventually.

You cannot expect spam , (sales phone calls and junk mail) adverts to go away while having free sites forever. The mail will become a problem again because I get mail from sites I visit now. I wonder if some sites will offer the choice; pay for substance and no fuss(privacy) or get it free with adverts, spam & mail.

It could also become more like TV shows there will be one sponser and it will all get crunched (with the numbers) and become more like a cable tv package deal. You will be able to have private events and more extensive pages. More content will be like slate or the NY times where they try to get you curious enough to pay for new or old archived articles.

Hootoo could be free to read but not post. If an email was included you would have the choice of emailing but it would not appear on the site. Paid members could do all and have a *private journal* space not viwed by teh public. You could also request it me moved to a public area and give your permission or not. That would do away with moderation because it would be a private members area.

I imagine there will be a dozen large owners and a few independants like the rest of media is.

Things will change.

This is beginning to sound like the coming of an apocylpse.
There are still people in the world who maintain their site because they are passionate (obsessive?) enough about something to feel the need to tell everyone about it. Also people who do it for the prestige of the thing (I say this looking mostly at gamers) which can only increase if more and more sites go over to paysites.

I can't see any immediate way in which these people are going to dissapear, I feel that there will always be parts of the internet which are free if you know where to look for them. Also I think Aunti Beeb wants to have an online community - they wanted it bad enough to buy this one when they couldn't set one up themselves. Charging anything, even a nominal fee will cost them a lot of researchers and I don't think they'll do it.

As for three month trials I have never taken one in my life, because I don't have the confidence in my memory to remeber to cancel the account before I start paying and I don't have the confidence in buisnesses such as Aol (for example) to process the cancellation any more quickly than they can possibly get away with.

What I have noticed though is an increase in sites that want something to allow you access, I found one looking for info on FFX the other day that asked you to email 3 hints to the guy running the site for a password to get in and see all of the hints that have been submitted - great idea, a site created with a little work from everyone who visits for everyone who visits.

I can see the benefit of h2g2 going that way - you need to submit a guide entry to register your account, it would certainly have got me to put my house in order (I am writing, just taking my sweet time about it) It'd also help to remind people this isn't a chat site.

I really hope they do not start charging on h2g2.

There are people out there who cannot afford to pay for access to sites they enjoy using. I love h2g2 and have been a member since it started. But if they started to charge me for the pleasure of visiting, I'd 'resign' my membership. I can't afford it. And even if I could, I probably wouldn't subscribe.

I subscribed to get the Dilbert cartoon emailed to me every day. They've now started a service called 'Cartoons Extra', or something. This gives you the cartoon and various other features, like access to archives of Dilbert cartoons going back to Day 1. However, this is a subscription only deal. It would be nice to have access to the archives - there are some great cartoons that I would love to see again. But I don't want that enough to pay for it. Similarly with H2G2. I've enjoyed my time here and hope to enjoy it for a long time to come. But I haven't enjoyed it enough to want to pay for it.

Just my

I'd pay a minimal amount, because a lot of people paying a minimal amount adds up to a lot of money.

3 months trial is a good idea, but some sites ask for credit card details up front, and as has been said, I wouldn't trust myself to remember to cancel it. Credit card details should only be asked for after the 3 months. However, then you would get people that still use it for free, but just sign up a new account every 3 months, which would lead to lots of abandoned User pages etc.

And adding email and all that felafel is too much. h2g2 is quite simple, adding extras would just be to attract more people - the sort of people just here for the spangly bits, which would speed up h2g2's denigration into a chat site.

I like it just as it is
Italics

Being British I already pay for it through my licence fee. So unless they change the rules of how the BBC is funded I have to pay for the BBC by other means I'm not prepared to pay any more for H2G2 at the moment and will fight to keep it free.

It's free to me!

Yeah, you should add it to your presidential manifesto- will fight to keep h2g2 free. Sounds very Presidential

It does doesn't it.

Yes.

No I am a student I can't afford to pay for it

So, from all of you who aren't prepared to (or can't afford to) pay for h2g2), I'd like to know how you propose that it all gets paid for - the servers, the database, the Italics, the bandwidth, the connections, everything - without upping the BBC licence fee.

Ads

Before H2G2
Before the widespread use of the internet
Before AOL
There was Q-Link.
6 cents a minute plus local connect charges

Q-link was as addictive as H2G2 (and in my case even MORE addictive than H2G2).

Our phone charges were over $600 per month.
Thank goodness the service was only available from 6pm to 7am local time and 24 hours on the weekend. You can figure out how much Q was getting from us. I'm too tired to do the math.

I don't want to count the number of online friends (myself included) that went way too far over their head with expenses.

Addictions often lead people into bankruptcy.

Would I pay for h2g2...NO.

Been there. Done that. Gone broke before. Ain't going there again.

Hmm, would I pay for h2g2 now? Yes...

Would I have done 3 months after joining... probably not

Would I have given my credit card details over just to try the place out for three months... NO WAY!

I suspect a lot of newbies would be the same.

Having said that, it wouldn't surprise me if the BBC eventually developped a 'premium' internet service for certain of its products...

There's already some kind of system being set up (or already running) that broadcasts BBC TV via certain broadband ISPs (In the UK only), once everyone's on broadband and if they could figure out a way of making the premium BBC site available free of charge directly from UK ISPs it wouldn't surprise me if you'd have to pay to access the site from from abroad (I.e. access via internet servers not passing through a UK Broadband ISP).

This sounds terrible!
Don't make us pay! I don't even have a job yet!
Anyway I would probably say no I wouldn't want to pay because so so much of the Internet is free.
But then I love this site so I'd be lost without it!
I think maybe if we pay for it then we could get paid for our entries.

I think it would really discourage new users and just keeping it within a sort of 'select group' would probably narrow the scope and make it a lot less interesting than it is.

Are they considering this? Noooooooooooooo!

I understand that people who'll pay will be more dedicated but doesn't that detract from the whole idea to get everyone involved and contributing from all over the world? It also doesn't mean that people who wouldn't pay are less into the ethos of the site but rather financial contraints do limit a lot of people.

Just a couple of thoughts!

I would have to say that i wouldn't pay, but im just a lowly 16 year old who is still at school and dosn't have any money to begin with