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

they won't tell us!!!!!

we are only the community, we will be the last to know!!!!

it'll probably be....logon......H2G2 sponsored by multinational conglomerate international.......welcome to your worst nightmare.....you have been shafted by the BBC.........now click some adverts and make us $$$$$$$$

Well, I think we can safely conclude that a few of us can answer the subject line's question with a resounding "No!"

However, there's not much to say past that. For those who are interested in what's happening with the new h2g2, what can the interim committee do to make the transition painless and helpful, assuming that our bid is successful?

Avoiding the appearance and reality of factions is key. Also important are involving the wider community at every stage, being as transparent and responsive as possible, and justifying our decision-making in the bid process.

Also important is the question of how much change should be attempted during the transition. It seems that many people are wary of sudden change. However, to me, the transition is an excellent time to fix some of the glaring problems h2g2 has now. I think we would do well to begin attacking some of the technological, moderation and editorial issues that have gone unaddressed for years.

*Whoever told you that, clz, is wrong. WRONG*

*Really. I've yet to see anyone post anything like that.* I assume that's sarcasm, Effers.

*Yeah, we should change the site name to Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy for British Hitchhikers but only if you've paid your BBC licence fee.* (sic) Again, I can only hope that researchers memories are so short or they've been here for such a short time that they don't remember non-Brit researchers being told that they should butt out since they had a *free ride*.

And again I pledge to support the noohootoo in whatever form it becomes (except maybe the new version or Goo)

There is NO nootoohoo.

I'm interested in something real when its real. Of course the people putting the consortium bid together have to put a suggested plan to the BBC.

But its getting silly with all this endless talk of interim committees and transitions etc.

It may not be painless..we'll deal with that.

One can't control everything in advance by pure guesswork.

I prefer to deal with reality.

And at present a lot of us are impatient, angry, upset and irrational..lets just accept that and care for one another, because we care about h2g2. And yes a lot of us feel quite depressed and hopeless, and we don't want to think we have to be all constantly jolly hockey sticks..and not be allowed to voice fears. I'm bloody scared..No I don't feel excited.

When the time comes we can slowly deal with stuff. I certainly don't want to think a lot of stuff will suddenly be fixed in transition.

Blimey it is enough to deal with that THERE IS A TRANSITION.

I've never been a fan of 'revolution'...I'm British

## Also important are involving the wider community at every stage, being as transparent and responsive as possible##

##I've never been a fan of 'revolution'...I'm British ##

revolution!!! a state of affairs where the colonial british rulers round up trouble makers and shoot them!!!

##One can't control everything in advance by pure guesswork.##

but you can try to control what others say when they are working on guess work!!!

>*Really. I've yet to see anyone post anything like that.* I assume that's sarcasm, Effers.<

No, not at all.

You said in post 29

>I've been told by so many researchers over the past 9 years or so here that I shouldn't have a say in anything Hootooish, since I don't pay for a Beeb license.<

You're saying so many researchers have said such a thing to you.

No I haven't seen it. Not ever.

My memory isn't infallible of course. But `I honestly don't recall anything like that.

I think just about everyone knows that I avoid conflict like the plague, but I do remember catching whiffs of the "non-Brits should sit back, shut up, and enjoy the free ride" attitude. Thing is, the whiffs I caught were around the time I was pregnant with PaperKid, which was before you joined, Effers. Which could be why you don't remember ever hearing it. Or it could just be a matter of what circles people are in--I've argued with fluffy several times that there's no heavy anti-USian sentiment on here (then again, fluffy sees USian as an anti-US phrase...).

I had a point, but I got distracted

Taff, I appreciate there is a significant problem for people that will lose access once we leave the beeb. Can you please start a dedicated thread to discuss that, so we can see how many people are going to be affected and trouble shoot some solutions.

Likewise Effers, I understand your pain about the bbc, but if we get into that here it's going to derail the thread.

I'd really like to keep this thread on topic

To recap, some things to discuss:

1. Community Editor: What was the role historically? What should it be now? How many? Who could do it?

2. How are we going to manage the transition? What can the IC do to make the transition as smooth as possible? What can the Community do to make the transition as smooth as possible?

3. To what extent should we attempt to make changes during the transition and initial time on the new site? Or should we wait? Changes to things like tech, editorial and moderation processes.

1. Community Editor:

I don't remember that role really so would appreciate some historical context from those in the know. I like the idea of having someone in a role whose job it is to keep an eye on the wellbeing of the community. IMO the community suffered alot in the years when it was seen as undermining the EG. I'm of the opinion that the community underpins the guide and the health of the EG is dependant on the health of the community. An obvious example is that if you want more people writing for the EG then you need more people onsite in general.


3. To what extent should we attempt to make changes during the transition and initial time on the new site?

I think we should err on the side of caution, but I think there is definitely space to discuss the issues now. The consortium conversations yielded alot of good ideas. I'd like to see some from the wider community.

Also, if the IC wants to share what they have been discussing on this and the transition that'd be great. Just if it's easy though, we can carry on talking about it without that input if IC people need a break.

Christ I just finished watching that BBc drama featuring a few psychopaths

Why do we have to do everything in advance?

Do we have so little trust in ourselves as a community not to just come through it first..however it happens?

Get behind our bidders..cheer them on..have confidence..but in the full knowledge that might not win. Someone else may win. But if I had to put a bet on..it would still be on our horse.

Whoever wins we settle own..and then gradually evolve.

More on the community stuff. This is one of my favourite things ever written about the site. It's from former Editor Natalie and while written for another purpose entirely, it still says alot about the importance of the community:

>>
57. At 14:52pm on 8th Aug 2009, Natalie wrote:

Although I respect the 'do one thing really well' statement in regard to the general MOT process I think that it might be a bit of a red herring in relation to this unique site. (I should point out here that I'm the Producer of h2g2).

The reason I say that is because I think h2g2's greatest asset is its community. However, a strong community can't exist without a common purpose. To have a strong community, you have to do at least one other thing really well – otherwise the community doesn't have a reason to hang around. h2g2's common purpose is the creation of the Edited Guide. Though much of activity on the site appears unrelated to this central aim, that central editorial proposition is the engine that drives the site. It's properly symbiotic: the Edited Guide exists because of the community and the community because of the Edited Guide. Even the users who don't create Entries for the Guide take part in discussions that are populated by people with inquiring and curious minds - people drawn to a site that inspires them to share their knowledge and learn something new in the creation of the Edited Guide. It's a properly collaborative enterprise: users don't just post scraps of information in relative anonymity but get to know each other and learn from one another. You can see this process in action and it strikes me as precisely the sort of thing that the BBC wants to achieve.

So, as far as community creation goes, this central proposition proved far more powerful than the more standard approach of saying 'Here's a product...please go and have a chat about it - and behave yourselves!' It's why h2g2 continues to succeed where many other communities have failed.

I'm not that convinced that h2g2 could exist in anything like its current form as a 'completely independent external community site'. Even Wikipedia (which I use an example purely because of the central idea of content creation - I believe they've evolved into substantially different sites but as I've explained, the central process of content creation is key to h2g2) has a central organisational structure and is backed by the Wikimedia foundation (powered by public donations).

So, out of necessity, h2g2 does more than one thing really well. It produces distinctive, quality content *and* has a proper community in a very meaningful sense: one that collaborates, teaches and learns, creates large amounts of quality content of different types, interacts intelligently, and, to a large extent, self-moderates. It's precisely the sort of community many companies would give their eye-teeth for – a community of a type that the BBC has struggled to develop elsewhere.
<<

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/bbcinter...mots_putting_h2g2_though_its_p.html

I also wanted to repost this, a post I made in the Stockholm thread in the hope of prompting some discussion about how we care for and nurture the community (there had been alot of discussion about the EG in that thread, not so much about the community):

In the middle of the thread there was some debate about whether the future direction of the site is the social side or the EG side. Firstly, the h2g2 community is much more than a social networking site (I really want to write something about the differences). But more importantly it's not an either/or dichotomy, or at least I don't think that dichotomy is useful in this context (it may be useful when designing the FP).

The point for me is that the community underpins the guide, and they're integral to each other. That means there are really important people here who have never written an entry or been in PR. The vitality of the community keeps the EG alive. I agree we need more people here, and I think the health and attractiveness of the community is key to that. Yes we need to sort out the issues of PR, and EG qualifications etc, but reading through this thread it looks like we already know the answers to most of that.

eg How do we encourage newbies to write? Send them to the Writing Workshop. In order for that to work, we need people willing to spend time there helping them. That stopped working when the community numbers got too small.

What I'm saying is build it and they will come. And I don't mean the EG . I mean the community, which is a writer's community that is open to writers, readers and anyone who loves the place. Stop thinking of the community as separate and alongside the EG, and see it instead as encapsulating the guide. The EG is the point of the community. They're not separate things.

When we have a vibrant community, there will be enough people here to write good entries and wo/man PR and the WW etc, and volunteer etc. We already know how to do all that stuff.

The other thing that I keep thinking about is what someone (anhaga maybe) said about how much good writing is in the threads. How can we take advantage of that? (I've always thought it a shame that SEx threads didn't generate EGEs). When the site has been vibrant there has been a huge amount of untapped energy there that could feed the EG better.

Back to Icy's idea, and to get all dichotomous for a minute. I think the community needs prominence on the FP, for the reasons I've just gone into. It was making the community a second rate part of the site that led to its great lessening IMO. The FP could be very simple - an introduction to the site, and then act as a portal to the Guide Central and the Community Central. These then each have their own FPs which take someone into the rest of the site.


*

The main thing from that for me currently is how do we nurture and care for the community?

>>Why do we have to do everything in advance?


We don't have to do *everything* in advance. I want us to do *some* things because our historical experience is of having change thrust upon us, and having the opportunity to prepare and be proactive is a good thing in comparison.

I also happen to believe that irrespective of who buys the site, the community actually owns the community. We will ultimately get to control what happens in a broader sense. Best we step up to that than wait passively for shit to be done to us. What Z and co have done is a prime example of making things happen rather than waiting.

I also agree with the idea that in order to avoid the potential cliques and politics it's good for the community to keep discussing things creatively.

shall we stop calling it the MOT and label it what it realy was, market testing, the beeb saw it had a product that it didn't want, like the message boards, but also saw they could turn a quick £££ by flogging it off, unlike the message boards......

My very strong instinct now is to just concentrate on getting fully behind the people who have put in all the work for our bid..and that's it, for now. If they don't win all this stuff is a waste of time in any case.

And if we win and noohootoo is ours we that..and then get down to it .

And then we sink or swim...

>>> I didn't like kea's remark about the BBC, and I haven't liked stuff Happy Dude has said about not even beginning to understand its position in our culture, and then there was zoomer's remark earlier.

To be fair to Happy Dude, your complaint is with me and not him.

And to be fair to me, I am not a member of your culture. I am not at all British, not even a little bit on a long-dead grandparent's side.

For no particular reason, I've compiled a list of the researchers who have weighed in on this thread:

kea
Amy P
Icy North
Jordan
Z
Just Bob aka Robert Thompson
Ben
Ferrettbadger
KB
2legs
Tavaron
jwf
Ancient Brit
Haragai
clzoomer
Rod
Rev Jackruss
Effers - Heavy Sleeting
Minicheesemouse
Taff
TRiG
Happy Nerd

I think 6 on this list are on the interim committee. Like all the other members of the Interim Committee, I would dearly love to relieve the anxiety that comes of not knowing.

I'm going to stay as quiet as I can on this thread, despite my nature, because I am more interested in what others have to say. I'll try to answer questions as I can, but as you know, the biggest question none of us can answer.

I'd been wracking my brain trying to remember what Happy said (I can't remember the last time I saw him on h2g2), not realizing it was a matter of having the wrong person

HappyDude, aka Happy--Brit (London), male, shares my birthday, 6 years older than I, long brown hair, skinny, very tall, hasn't been active on h2g2 lately (that I know of), older than I in h2g2 terms (pre-Rupert, but not a 5-digiter).

Happy Nerd, aka HN--not Brit (northern California, 4-5 hours south from me, has been to my house twice), female, not sure of birthday nor age, long light hair, my height or maybe a little shorter, has been active on h2g2 lately, much younger than I in h2g2 terms.