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

Maybe I am missing something here? I haven't seen anyone abusing anyone. Just a very expressive query put, by a respected member of the same community.

My worth. i agree with MMF and Lil I think there are far to many researchers to ready to complain without having all the facts to hand. I don't think this is the place to be 'slagging' anyone off frankly, there are appropriate feedback resources, you can even use the BBC's official complaints page as well off site.
Given the resources the italics work with i think they do well in keeping h2 going the way they do. They've proved before now they listen to researchers and will change things as necessary or as the top brass allow.
I also agree that Jimster is a stalwart supporter of this site and will fight tooth and nail to keep it going, we should applaud that not scorn it.

ST.

Hear, hear.

I still can't see any "Slagging Off" par-se. It's just someone making what to me is a well written comment on what he sees as a worrying trend on site.

Then it should have been addressed to the H2G2 Team.. not an individual. The Italics are more than one person. Jimster had taken the stick from everyone during recent months. Time to address the Team, the Editors or even the Director General.

Pfft, somehow I don't think the Director General would care...

That is likely why Jimster is taking all the flak..

"Pfft, somehow I don't think the Director General would care..."

Unless someone writes to him how do you know that?
He could always be invited to post here, wonder if anyones thought of asking or indeed written to him or any other of the top brass outside of hootoo?

ST.

I have to say while I agree that when things heat up Jimster does get a fair amount of unnecessary abuse thrown at him, I don't think this is what MB is doing. His post is pointed, critical (as in a critique) but apart from addressing it specifically to Jimster I don't see anything abusive. And even addressing it to Jimster isn't abusive. It may or may not have been unwise - bearing in mind that Jimster is the person most often seen in the community by a long shot, which may be part of the point.

Maybe it would have been better to address it to Jimster, Natalie, and Paully (is it still Paully or someone new?), but I am glad that MB wrote it as an open letter for the community to read. Given the content I can't see the point in sending it as a private email to the Eds. Isn't this an issue for the community (researchers and staff)?


There is an edge to MB's post that I personally wouldn't have written myself, but I have an appreciation for the diversity of personality on h2, and the overall point seems a valid one to make. I don't hold the Eds responsible for much of the change that has happened onsite in the last year or so, nor the overall change that MB is talking about (which seem largely driven by staff cuts and from outside of h2g2), but they do need to know how researchers feel, and they do have the capacity to make some changes within the powers that they do have.

Dissent and feedback are important in all communities.


I would point out that unless someone directs the Eds' attention to this thread they may not actually know about it yet. I don't know how often they check into Ask but it's not a given that they read every thread as it arrives (as some people seem to think).



btw I always thought Natalie was the head honcho too.

Nicely put B I agree with you whole heartedly

The third italic is Beth not Paully. My bad.

*Agrees completely with what Kea said.*

I wasn't going to post until this thread had built up a head of steam, but did nobody think that I addressed it to Jimster because he's someone I consider a friend who has answered my queries openly and honestly in the past?

Addressing it to the whole team would kinda negate the point in the last paragraph, wouldn't it?

I'm a bit disheartened by the number of people who haven't quite got to grips with what Post 1 is about, but in a way that sort of proves my point.

B

Thanks for raising these points, B - and I didn't read it as an attack, although it does put pressure on me to answer questions that I'm no more able to answer than anyone else, past or present, on h2g2.

The fact is, while h2g2's staffing level stays at three, we have to scale our job accordingly. Unlike most other BBC sites though, we do have a well-established volunteer network and it makes sense to devolve as much of our work out into the community as we can - so that we're free to work on site development projects. As we've pointed out in the past, it doesn't make sense to depend upon us three to answer every editorial feedback query when there are loads of experienced volunteers who can answer it as well as or better than we can.

When I first joined h2g2 - wow, 4 1/2 years ago - there were campaigns demanding more autonomy. Generally, that's what we've been able to give the community (certainly more than other communities get here, which we have to bear in mind).

An aside: I went to a meet-up earlier last year and said hello to a group who were sitting near the window. 'Who are you?' asked one woman. 'Jimster - one of the Italics'. 'The what?' 'BBC Staff'. 'Ohhh...' she said. 'Never heard of ya.' I wasn't offended. I first joined the site two months after it launched. Wrote one entry. Never once interacted with the then-editor Mark or the community editor Peta because I didn't know they existed until three years later when I applied for a job at the BBC.

I couldn't make the last meet-up and I was embarrassed that I didn't realise there was a clash with a long-standing engagement until so late in the day. But we've always been open to meeting people away from the meetings. If you find yourself near White City soon, let me know and we can grab a drink. My email address is still open to correspondence - as a volunteer you should know that - it's just that you shouldn't send site queries to one member of staff in case they're away and the urgency of your query is missed. Not avoidance, just common sense.

As for the site becoming a messageboard, I might not have said this often enough but the only way to avoid that happening is to...

.... *write entries*. Otherwise h2g2 will become a chatroom. Going on past correspondence, I don't think any of the old guard wants that, yet often the way people choose to protest against whichever policy they don't like is to immediately go into chat mode.

(And just to indulge in a little sycophancy, to this day I cite the 'We Didn't Start the Fire' project around the BBC as one of the all-time great collaborations on h2g2. And as people sit amazed, I casually mention 'Yep, that's just one of the great things about h2g2 - and we've got thousands of them.')

J

>>but did nobody think that I addressed it to Jimster because he's someone I consider a friend who has answered my queries openly and honestly in the past?<<

I did consider this, actually thought that exactly, but I couldn't remember how well you knew Jimster and I feel so out of the loop in terms of the people who know each other in RL that I didn't want to make assumptions. It's also hard to tell if people have fallen out, which does seem to happen periodocally here even with the Eds, and again not wanting to make assumptions.

So good that you make it explicit, as it puts the post in a different light.


It'll be good when we get to talk about the points you raise rather than that (or how) you raised them.

Hmm, interesting comments - and not my place to answer them, but being a nosy so-and-so who's incapable of keeping out of things - I will anyway.


So, the site is becoming an internally controlled and self regulated community site?

My immediate riposte to that is, "And is that supposed to be a bad thing?"

Certainly if one takes out the word "community" from the initial statement, which seems to imply that the edited guide is a thing of the past, then personally I think it's a great compliment to those people who've been actively involved in the development of the site over the years, both staff, volunteers and ordinary (if there is such a thing) users.

When I started actively using the site (at around the same time as MB), it was in the middle of the upheaval caused by the BBC takeover... I walked into a site where the majority of the conversations seemed to be irate people going on about moderation, the fact that all their old conversations had disappeared and the fact that so many restrictions had been imposed on them that they no longer wished to participate (plus ça change...etc.)

It really needed those extra members of staff to deal with the 'culture shock', and the fact the site still exists today should be taken as a lasting memorial to their work.

Four years later, and where are we?
Less staff? Yes.
Has the site changed? Yes.
Is it going downhill? ... Now that's the difficult one to answer.

Personally I'd say no. It's certainly changed, we've been given many new freedoms and much more respect by the beeb itself... Remember when we weren't even allowed to post links in conversations? Remember when we couldn't talk about wars/elections etc. Remember when every single post was checked by a moderator?

Maybe we should remember what we've achieved and how far we've come rather than just thinking about what we can't do nowadays.

Yes, I miss the days you could sit there trading 'friendly' insults with Peta, Mina, Abi, Ashley, Mark, Sam and of course Jimster, yes I'd like to have that level of interaction on the site, but does the fact that the remaining staff no longer have the time on their hands to do that doom the site? I don't think so. As Jimster pointed out, there are whole new generations of researchers who have never seen the level of involvement we saw, and luckily for them, they'll never miss it, and even more importantly, they're filling up Peer Review as we speak.

Whilst we 'old codgers' will, unfortunately for us, always look back on the 'good times' with fond memories, that's all they are now - and the site has to go forward.

Enough of that particular waffle...
Addressing the point of whether the EG is becoming just a 'failed wiki'.

I'd disagree with that, the major differences as far as I can see is the 'vandal-proof' nature of the edited guide and the Peer Review procedure. Whilsts I'd agree those measures don't make the guide infallible, it certainly puts it head and shoulders above the methods employed by Wiki... I.E.: 'I can use a keyboard therefore I'm qualified to write the definitive work on XXX and then someone else can come along and take out all the errors later'.

As to whether the quality and quantity of entries is going downhill... If you look back to 2001 you can come across figures like this...

A661510

We've currently got around 130 entries sat in Peer Review, in a period that's traditionally quiet for the site, if you look at that link above, you'll see that after the introduction of the FleaMarket and the other review forums, in the period between September and November 2001, which should, theoretically, have been a very busy period for the site, we had an average of slightly less entries in PR than we have today, in the middle of a heatwave, with the universities on holiday and the majority of people thinking about holidays rather than writing for the guide.

The quality of the entries has certainly gone up since I joined the site, and personally, as long as there's a final authority in the BBC offices to turn to with potentially contentious issues, then the fact that PR and the edited guide is working with more and more autonomy than it ever did in the past can only be a good thing for the site.


In summary...

Is h2g2 becoming an internally-controlled self-regulated site?

(Note the absence of the word community).

Yes! And we should all be thankful for it!

Let's stop moping around wishing things were back the way they were four years ago and raise a glass to those members of staff, past and present, who worked so hard to get the guide where it is today.

Those I remember, Peta, Abi, Anna, Chris, Ashley, Sri, Mina, Sam, Mark, Jim, Jimster, Natalie, Beth, Paully, and apologies to all those I've forgotten or not run across personally in my time here...





There's no way I'm pressing preview on this and trying to re-read this waffle - so apologies in advance for any rubbish!

**post message**

D**n! - Well that killed that conversation off

No it didn't Whisky, it made a lot of sense

Hi Whisky, I agree entirely with what you say, all that without preview an all. Strewth!!

I'm also in agreement. whisky - I couldn't've put it so eloquently.