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

No way I could pay by the minute!
Awful nightmare!
Ads could come first.

Suggestion someone else made, can't remember who, only vaguely referring...if I can even remember rightly...

The site stays essentially the same. Free to use and etcetra, everyone can contribute. Yay we all have fun. But an option to have a paid account might be good. Those who pay, get more privileges. Private/lockable journals as was mentioned. An email system or something like that. Little things to make it worth paying for. That way everyone can still enjoy the hootoo-y goodness, but those who want those little extras can scrape together the dosh to do so, and everyone's happy.

Just adding my two bits as well.

good compromise I think - IF they need to do it some day.

Noooooooooooooooooo! Never never never! This site is an oasis in the horrible consumer mire that is our planet. freedom of speech (ish) as long as you pay for it? Nooooooo please noooooo!
take care
boots

important point to make ... in away practally everyone in the uk is already subscibing to the site ...

the bbc is funded by the tv liecense that everyone has to buy, yes thats for tv, but that will incude teh websites linked to the programs which motlikely extends to this as well

Good point that researcher! promotion overdue.
Take care
boots

I would pay for h2g2, but it would possibly do a lot of harm to the site. I was a member of another forum/community site, and the owners decided to charge for usage of the site/software. Most of us who were already members decided to stay with the site, and pay for a subscription. However, there was a serious lack of new members, and the site eventually started to lose existing members as well. Eventually the site owners closed it in 2001 due to a serious lack of interest from new people.

I would be happy to pay a small amount for h2g2, it could work out great. We would have more rights, no grids being sprang on us and we would be able to talk about any current event we wished to, ie the Iraq war.

The funny thing is that I do pay for that already and have no rights, but to pay for h2g2 specifically would give me specific rights.

It would also be great it paying for it directly, especially if it became an independant organisation. Then we would hold copyright for our own articles. We could talk about sex, which the rules at the moment completely ban (that works well doesn't it?!). We could moderate ourselves.

Basically we pay, we have a say, would could be wrong with that?

Oh never more than £1 a week.

1. I already pay for it via the TV license, and that is a stupid amount already.

2. If (hypothetically speaking) I was to pay for access to the site, I would therefore demand the going rate for every Guide Entry I have written. Which, judging by the words counts of some, could be something up to £500/£1000 per Guide Entry (Gnomon could be onto a financial winner here, if my memory serves me correctly).

If you turn it into a revenue based site, then you are going to have to start paying out for those who provide the essentials *of* the site. Which would either put the site into debt, or put the fees up to an astronomical level that no one could afford. When running a site that is based on a give and take ideal, money should never be brought into the equation.

Stupid question. It's fine how it is.

Having read what Master B. said on the first page, and then skipping here, I don't know if anyone else has challenged it. But the idea that those who wouldn't be willing to pay for anything being those on the site who are unwanted, and without them the site being better - eek! Wrong! And very much so!
I'm sixteen. I'm too lazy to get a job. I'm engage in daily, nay, hourly arguments with my parents. I have no credit card, or nuffin like that. I'd like to think that I put in a valuable contribution to this site. I can't pay. There must be many others here in uni and full-time education who wouldn't be able to pay, and with them gone, the bulk of the intelligent conversation would leave too, leaving only rich golden oldies.
But anyway, I should hope it's unlikely to come to this. If H2G2 starts getting into a tight spot, then they could request donations and fire all the moderators (no offence) thus leaving behind a truly golden, free-speech filled H2G2. Firing the moderators would actually be a benefit, since they seem to spend most their time making Hoovooloo annoyed.

I consider this site entertainment. I pay for a newspaper subscription, magazine subscriptions, satellite tv fees. If the fee was reasonable, I would pay for it. I certainly wouldn't spring for a per minute charge.

As to no one over 16 being able to participate in an intelligent conversation.......sigh.

I never said that. I just said that with the most of the students gone, much of the serious talk will go too.

Balderdash, to put it politely, Fnord. I'm not a student, but I'm not a 'rich golden oldie', either. I like serious discussion, but some of the serious debate has got been a little too heavy for my taste. (Having said that, a lot of the 'conversations' on Ask H2G2 have got too trivial for my liking, but that's a different matter.) I certainly don't believe that getting rid of the students will cost us the 'serious' talk. Then again, I don't believe in doing anything that will cost this site any of its membership.

Okay.

So once again, let me ask all of you against paying for h2g2, how do you propose that it's funded, since most if not all of you have only ranted against the idea and have yet to put forward a suggestion.

And don't say 'licence fee' because there are so manny of us who don't live in the UK.

It doesn't matter that many of you don't live in the UK. Those who do, and the other couple of million people here who haven't discovered the joys of H2G2 will pay for you.
It's almost like the NHS like that.

When the license fee is disbanded, probably after the review in 5 years, do you really think that the bbc will maintain h2g2 from its own profits?!

So this question is valid, its time to start thinking what will happen then.

The license fee will never be disbanded! Never!
So how would they make their profits if it was?
And that's a bit long term. I don't know if I'll still be on this site in 5 years, or if all computers will have been banned due to lack of resources to support them, or if a tardy millenial bug turns up a bit too late, or something.

Never be disbanded?!

Why do you think the government is having a review in 5 years with a view to disbanding it then?

And why has it been such a news item this year then?

And the real giveaway, the beeb are showing more and more adverts of themselves, to get their timing right cause even they know it will happen one day. Then they will get their revenue in the same way that all other tv channels do.

It's been asked several times of the naysayers, just how would we keep the site running, if it weren't free, and no answer has been given.

I suspect, it's because most of us don't sufficiently care. I, too, consider this site part of my entertainment, and I have a definite budget of things with $ priority, and then things to which I volunteer priority, and the remainder it things and life situations that fall into my lap. H2G2 is just such a thing. I don't have a particular trustee relationship with BBCi as an artist or subeditor, even though I am quite capable of and do enjoy doing these kind of things. I also have only a few entries in the Guide at all. Both of these are deliberate choices on my part.



I am somewhat alarmed that the UK government would change it's long held attitude about who actually owns the airwaves, and who does the administration. The cautionary tale of media deregulation in USofA is turning out pretty horrible. (The Voice of America isn't something that any average Unitedstation citizen could tune into. Our federal government merely oversees what the private broadcasters do without broadcasting anything itself) When a 'sell it to the highest bidder' administration gets in power, as has been the case the last 20 years, the variety and kind of information degrades quite a bit; and people consider voting for Schwartzenegger because the media tout him at every turn.

There are certain things which must be done collectively, like fire & police protection and pollution prevention, so long as the raw materials of civilization exist. Perhaps America will run quite fine with economic rapists doing in the stockmarket and our electric systems, as was done in the 1920s. Perhaps I only find your government's 50 year experiment charming only in the way that I find your royalty. It's possible indeed that your government will need help funding its broadcast service, this I do not know and don't comment on, only to say that the New Labor doesn't seem very Labor to me.



I remember when cable was new. The whole point of paying for cable at all was that the cable-only channels were commercial-free. I remember my friend's reception, and it was miserable, and service was often out. Now, they all have commercials, too, and the networks broadcast so poorly that having a nice atenna is no longer helpful, smack dab in the middle of Los Angeles and San Jose. And Adelphia, one of the stockmarket rapists which happens to have the monopoly here in LA, is now having poor reception again AND raising the rates.