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

Well? Anybody know?

Sorry, no answers for you there......

How about this... The user names scroll down in order of joining, with most recent additions to the community at the bottom and the most senior members up at the top. Naturally, therefore, all of the 'new this week' people are going to be together.

There is support for this theory, I think. If you have any links to other researchers on your homepage, take a look at the 'Referenced Researchers' column on the right hand side near the top. Run your cursor over the various names, and look at their user numbers. You should find they're in ascending order with the oldest members at the top. Maybe they use the same system for the who's online box...

That's a good theory, except there always seem to be a few people who get listed after the newbies.

Also, towards the bottom it seems that the names aren't quite in numerical order, unless 151000 is now less than 150000.

So I suppose there might be a different answer, or the H2G2 server might be a little broken.

There must be - I started near the bottom, went up to the middle, went back down again, then for a little while I was right up in the first one or two, and now I'm back down the bottom again......and I'm pretty sure I neither joined before Loonytunes nor after tabatha.....

This is an extraordinarily annoying question. When I first joined, I'm sure it didn't happen and I thought the order people appeared on the list was the order they'd logged on. Now every day I have a quick look at it so that I can post back and say the newbies aren't all clumped together but I haven't managed to catch them - and no, I don't know either

I think it is reverse osmosis. It all started with the first "new this week" person then another showed up and their name immediately gravitated ... hey wait ... maybe its gravity ... or magnetics. Oooo ... perhaps we have happened upon some strange, mysterious force that can be harnessed as a new energy source! We shall name it Whampacity, after the one who discovered it. Then again, I could just be insane.

I would rather you be insane than have an effect named after me, especially if the effect is going to be called "Wampacity."

It seems like the computer that one logs on from has an effect, as on my usual terminal at work, I'm always near the bottom. Switch to a different (and more powerful) machine, and I shoot up the rankings... Weird!

Okay ... I'll see what I can do.

I've been pondering this for ages. Will the list look the same on everyone's machine?

On mine it always looks like this:

Low-numbered dinosaurs
Newbies
Me and Nexus Seven (N7 is always on top! )
A few others

If you watch it for any length of time (Sad! so sad!) people who log one definitely come in at very specific points, not just tagged on the bottom

????

Ottox is currently in the middle of a newbies batch. I _knew_ it wasn't an unbreakable rule

Still, I'm quite new. Maybe the "man or machine or whatever" forgot that I have been here for more than a week Well, then the "New" should be on I guess. Nevermind.

Well, as long as two of us are amused. I want to know how my son always appears above me on the list, even when I've logged on first.
I hope you're still enjoying h2g2

I hate it!!!!!!!!!

I do notice that people I look for are usually in the same place when they are online. I am usually about a third of the way down. It is mostly in numeric order, but there are a couple of odd exceptions. The newbies are always in numeric order on mine.

What an interesting question. I do hope it gets answered soon

I havent a clue because I always change it to alphabetical order before i read the list,find it easier that way.

Once upon a time we didn't have these fancy new-fangled gadgets though