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

Again, I haven't seen any major changes to the house style in that time...

People have been bucking against the system since I started posting here and occasionally something gets through, occasionally it doesn't.

To turn it into a football analogy, I don't think anyone's moved the goalposts - it's just that when a ball hits the post no-one's ever sure if it's going in or it's just going to bounce straight back out again.

And I'm not sure you can say Wiki's got a style, as there's absolutely no control over what's written.

Surely it's a symbiotic relationship between EG and community? You should invest effort in both to improve both. (I'm not getting into the money argument)

"Surely it's a symbiotic relationship between EG and community? You should invest effort in both to improve both."

I'd agree, but how to persuade the Beeb to part with more money, I've no idea...

Maybe employing someone to deal with any of the 'on-site' issues outside of PR would free up the editorial staff's time, thus improving the quality /quantity of edited guide entries.

But considering the 2000-odd BBC staff in the current round of redundancies I very much doubt we'll be top of their list.

Absolutely.

I'd like to show a little solidarity with our BBC friends who are going through these uncertain times.

When will they know their fate? Presumably after they've moved people to Manchester...

Dunno why they're moving everyone to Manchester seeing as us in Salford are getting all excited about a new BBC wossname which appears to be leading to BBC Manchester being cut back a bit.

Reefgirl wrote:

>> IMO h2 is trying to become too much like Wikipedia, instead of copying others shouldn't the guide be trying to set itself apart? <<

As we came first, that's a bit daft to think we copy them. Very daft indeed.

Recently, we were lucky to be joined by former Italic Sam Semple, who helped us catch up on the backlog of entries while both Natalie and Beth were on leave. Sam was blown away by the standard of entries that are coming through now. As Sam trained me all those years ago, and as he was around before the BBC saved h2g2, I turst his opinon implicitly.



Without the Edited Guide, h2g2 runs the risk of becoming just anotehr chat area, and why should the BBC spend money on doing that? You'll see over the next few months how some of the messageboards are realising how less valuable chat is than content like article / entries. You can chat anywhere - Google, Yahoo, MSN, other sites - but they don't provide the unique service that h2g2 does, or Collective or any of the other h2g2-inspired BBC communities out there.

There are certain parts of the maintaining of h2g2 that can really only be done in-house. That's what the team focuses on. There are things that used to be done by a member of the team that can now be handed over to the community. That's what the volunteers do. If you think you have what it takes to help run the site, you can become a meeter-and-greeter and help the Aces. If you have the editorial know-how to identify what makes a good entry (and can put up with other people disagreeing with you occasionally) then join the Scouts or Subs. If you want to help illustrate h2g2 with diagrams or artwork, become an Artist. If you want h2g2 to have different types of content - go and write it, or find other people who agree with you and work with them to build something.

In other words, I and my colleagues can only work with what you give us.

One thing that's been on my mind for ages is AV content. So long as the content is suitable for the family audience we reach to, we can upload audio and video to Edited Entries. We can add pictures too. We can't promise to do this for everyone - simple resources, number of hours we have to work in, will always restrict us to some extent. But we're open to suggestions. We can also add up to about 25 seconds of a pop song or 45 seconds of a classical piece. Maybe we should look into a volunteer group who could work on that for the Edited Guide, making videos and adding sound clips...

I really want h2g2 to have its own user-generated Podcasts too, but after spending a month mulling it over, I'm no closer to finding the time to make it happen. Any ideas, drop me a line on my Personal Space.

"Reefgirl wrote:

>> IMO h2 is trying to become too much like Wikipedia, instead of copying others shouldn't the guide be trying to set itself apart? <<

As we came first, that's a bit daft to think we copy them. Very daft indeed."

I know I'm banging my head against a brick wall here but did you read Post #60 F19585?thread=3265834&skip=40&show=20#p38027075 I did clarify myself

We're absolutely nothing like Wiki

*hands Reef a wall to bang her head against*

Ummm... do you mean post #60 in which you explicitly state that you think h2g2 is "Copying Wikipedia's style".

I was just thinking that...

Have any surveys been commisioned to find out how much the AVERAGE internet user uses the EG? I think this would be good because it would show just how relevant the EG is to the internet at large?

Ferretbadger keeps saying Wiki have won hands down and the EG has lost. Well a proper survey would indicate how true that is. I must admit people frequently speak to me about looking up stuff on Wiki, but never mention h2g2 EG But that just might be people I know.

If I want the dry facts of something that I'm researching, I go to Wiki and use that as a base. If I'm looking for factual entertainment on a subject that I'm interested in, I go to H2G2. I think that distinction between definitively factual and entertainingly factual is something we have to make clear to those writing for our EG.

Just my thoughts.

"Have any surveys been commisioned to find out how much the AVERAGE internet user uses the EG? I think this would be good because it would show just how relevant the EG is to the internet at large?"

Funny you should say that, I did a Google serch for Jan Ullrich yesterday (My last EG piece was about him) and Wiki's entry on him came up as number 2 on the first page, I gave up looking for my EG entry on page 3, I then used the BBC's serch engine still no sign of my EG entry.

"Ferretbadger keeps saying Wiki have won hands down and the EG has lost"

That suggests there was some kind of competition between the two. There wasn't, except in the minds of a handful of Researchers. h2g2 and Wikipedia are producing two different products by two different methods with two different goals in mind. Underlying everything about h2g2 is the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy and the man who wrote it, and the people who signed up as the original Researchers, who are the people who really shaped this place.

Jimmy Wales and Douglas Adams had very different visions for the two websites they kicked off. In reality there's no comparison between us and Wikipedia in terms of competition. None at all.

>>In reality there's no comparison between us and Wikipedia in terms of competition. None at all.<<

Well there's there's certainly no competition or comparison if hardly anyone on the internet apart from hootooers are using the EG. Wikipedia is a well known tool used by lots of internet users.

Then wouldn't an advertising campaign be in order? There must be thousands of people visiting the BBC frontpage per hour, if you put a discreet link to the edited guide then who knows what could happen??

There are links to h2 on the I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue site as well as HHGTTG and occasionally there's been links to the EG on the BBC's FP

Now it's confession time, I did use Wiki whilst reserching my Jan Ullrich piece, because there is sod all information about the man out there, even on German websites

I agree that something needs to be done to promote the guide entries on search engines. For some reason the DNA entries don't seem to be very search bot friendly. I've often noticed how Wiki threads come up all the time, especially on Google, but I don't think I've ever seen a Hootoo entry pulled up yet on a search outside this site.

I also write on Wiki occasionally but hate the way you can put something up only to have it replaced with, frankly just plain wrong information.

I have come across EG entries while searching one was on Wade Whimsies and, strangley, a piece I was writing on the Danish Royal family came up while I was researching the very same piece

I've seen quite a bit of EG stuff turn up on Google. Though for some reason it's often listed as being WW2 rather than h2g2.