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

>>Not to mention all the Elvis' PSs that are going to look complete crap for all eternity.<< (kea)

I'm seriously considering to make screenshots of all pages Pheloxi created. He is no longer among us to be able to alter them, or create new ones, and it saddens me deeply that their beauty will be lost forever.

Have a look at my page U230913

and

http://www.bbc.co.uk/user/U230913

to see the difference.

What's the S word?


I've noticed a couple of new functionalities. Can't remember what they are for the moment... what was that about a blizzard?

I prefer the original, Bel.........


The new one sucks!



GT

That's a great idea Bel! I've asked the Eds for a timeframe on when the old site will be removed.

Although, we could make a case for keeping the old site in place as read only (not sure if that could be done for multiple skins though).


Should I attempt to drag this thread back on topic?

seems a huge oversight not to have designed a new version which was backwards compatible with the.... however many thousands of entrys and conversations; any links to conversation threads, using the old system, will not work in the new site... (as I found out looking at the links to conversations I have in my PS)

That encapsulates the issues. We have been robbed.

I've tried to get the musehome shirt work (on a test page), but there is no way as long as the BR tags don't work.

Kea, something new is that you can now post to Ask h2g2 directly from the FP. I just did. You can go to PR directly from the FP, too.

Bel

No-one outside at the BBC of Hootoo care about such things(hooto Eds etc are 'inside' Hootoo)...everything has to conform...those people further up wont use this it of the BBC if they use any of the BBC at all..it's just a job that pays the mortgage and hopefully gets them up the greasy pole a bit more.

Has no-one here followed the murdering of every other part of the BBC website with the introduction of this new format? I have been saying for over 6 months it will totally screw the site up but did anyone listen? A ho a ho ho ho ho ho...

Thanks Bel.

2legs, there is a description in Paul Goodenough's blog about why it was hard to design backwards compatibility. Did it make sense?

3Dots, yes we know about the messageboards etc. You've said this so many times now it looks like you're using the h2g2 problems as a platform to slam the bbc.

I love the BBC. BBC is mother. BBC is father.

Now go away and annoy some one else please.

Kea; yeh, the description made sense; effectively H2G2, when it was taken over by the BBC (this being back in the wild west days of the internets), was a bispoke creation, it then got added to over many years, by differnt people, and became a mish mash of differnt technologies, differtnt criteria, using some guidelines of the web, kinda ignoring others, so it was always a bit 'cobbled together', with some bits ending up having to get quite complicated to get round not wanting to start all over from scratch each time some small change was needed....

Hi - I&#39;m the executive in charge of H2G2. I&#39;ve been reading this thread with interest. We still have bugs so please do keep reporting them. I&#39;ve tried out a smiley and I can see the problem.

I&#39;ve asked the H2G2 Editors to compile a list of bugs so we can discuss them sometime next week. Smileys will be on the list.

Thanks

Cheers, Nick.

Nick, great to have some kind of response from the bbc, thanks.

I am concerned however that even though you've read this thread that you have only mentioned the problem with the bugs. There are two major issues here:

1. the new site has been launched with so many bugs it's virtually unusable

2. there is a whole bunch of functionality that appears to have been designed out of the new site (and we haven't been told about it).

The former issue is less of a concern, because presumably it just needs time to sort. In the meantime however, many of us have reverted to using the old site and there is a very annoying bug with that - all apostrophes posted in barlesque appear as &#39; in the old skins and it's making some posts difficult to read. Someone needs to make a decision on Monday morning to stop using barlesque until it's functional, and let us keep using the old site without the &#39;.

The second issue, the loss of functions, should be of major concern as this will affect the functioning of the community and thus the Approved Guide. It's incredibly disappointing that this issue isn't being recognised or acknowledged.

Not only that but the developer has decided we are 100% happy and

>>The knowledge of the existing community with their fantastic passion for the brand, and our cold, logical IA work to detangle the site and increase accessibility to new users yielded surprisingly positive results. Everyone's fear that change could upset the community turned out to be unfounded - in my opinion, this was 100% down to the efforts of Sam, Chris and Nick to involve the community so integrally from beginning to end. This process was a credit to both the community, and the passion of the H2G2 staff.>>

kea -

"1. the new site has been launched with so many bugs it&#39;s virtually unusable". My experience of the new site is that it is very usable. Yes there are some bugs but I&#39;m using it right now, sucessfully.

2. It was not the intention to design out any significant functionality used by the community. But H2G2 is a vast thing so there may be something we have missed. So please report any significant functionality you think has been removed to the Editors and we will take a look at it.

Thanks (have to go now).

>> My experience of the new site is that it is very usable.

Ok, that's nice for you, seriously. There are a couple of researchers who are finding it fine too. But there is a swathe of experienced hootooers who are saying this isn't working properly and have gone back to using the old site. I don't know how much time you've spent on the old site or the new, but I'm guessing not alot compared to most of the people here.

Whereas you have a pool of researchers here who have been here for years and have just spent two days testing the new site, and they're telling you it's not working properly. I feel like you've just dismissed this very real concern, which is incredibly patronising and likely to just increase the bad feeling currently onsite.


I know it's the weekend and you have other things to be doing, but the ball has been seriously dropped on this. I really hope someone is going to pay some attention soon, because I've seen online communities lose members rapidly for far less disturbance than this.

Personally I would appreciate you posting here from the old site, because that's what most of us are using and having to read all your apostrophes as &#39; is very offputting.

A snappy name? What about The Great Green Arkleseizure?

>A snappy name?<

CarCrash