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

Hello, this is Cal from Mustardland. Hope you don't mind me adding you to my friends? I'm feeling a little lost and it's nice to see people I "know"...

Cal

That's fine.

I feel completely lost here! It's going to take a while to get used to this, but we'll pull through in the end.

Hi Moo, we're managing to track everyone down! This seems a very confusing place - I keep running back to the Bull.... At least there are no posting numbers to give away how much time we spend online

hebe

Hey Cal, Moo...

I'm a Mustardlander who's been on here almost since the beginning... (It launched at the end of April 1999 and I signed up on the 12th of May!)

If you need any help, just click on my name and leave a message on my space.

Oh, and just since you're from Mustardland, " "...

Thanky, Peet! I've just said hello to you, you do realise that you're probably taking on a full-time job, offering to assist the computer-incompetents of Mustardland in this? Bless you!

Cal

This is a bit odd..it's like there isn't a central board that everyone's on, rather everyone can just post a message to whoever they want but then everyone else can join in. Or something.

Yup, oomchi... Instead of having a different board for each subject, you can think of the "Personal Space" like a different board for each poster...

Conversations can be attached to a Personal Space, like this, or to an "Article". So, for example, if you wrote an article about Food Hygeine regulations in Tom's Sausage plant, people could come along and start conversation threads under it.

It's confusing, but fun...

Yes I keep trying to track down the equivilent of the discussions list in ML. Partly as I'm worried we're bothering people with our nattering (think what some of the reactions would be in ML if all our "hellos, glad I've found you" was going on from strangers). But if there's not time order then I suppose it's less of an issue.

Anyway I think we'll be nearer the Points of View layout than this one....

And apologies if we are bothering anyone,

hebe

hebe, only people who actually seek out your space can read what we're writing here. There's a central list of the 20 most recently updated conversations site-wide, but the site's so huge nobody really uses that apart from watching to see if any interesting subjects show up.

So, how would we start a discussion on Tom's Sausage Hygene habits should we so desire?

thanks Pete, that's a relief - didn't want to be upsetting the regulars (ML has me well trained you see). Don't think we'll count as an interesting subject to anyone other than ourselves ; ) (I'm leaving emoticons alone for the moment - if only so various MLers don't shoot me on sight...)

hebe

Well, you could:

1) Post a Journal Entry on the subject, and let others pop over to your space to discuss it.

2) Head over to someone else's space and start a thread on the subject.

3) Create a "Guide Entry" about it. An "Entry" is a bit like a personal space without a person attached to it... You can "Discuss this entry" and post as many different threads about it as you like.

An example of an Entry might be A2948781, for example...

Well..

I have no idea how Mr K is going to be able to host something like this. Not rubbishing his hosting skils, it's just that there are threads going off here there and everywhere.

I suspect the ability to post *anywhere* will be much curtailed in the new Mustardland... For starters, they say it'll close at midnight, as it does now. But, being a DNA board, I can't see how they'll stop people from hootoo posting there outside hours, as we run a 24/7 establishment here...

Not sure we're going to be quite like this Moo, we're going to be more like the Points of View boards - which look a bit more familiar! So we will be able to keep track of the threads (fingers crossed anyway)

hebe

This is a DNA board then? So this is what DNA looks like close up.

24/7 access to Mustardland..oh dear..will we get any sleep?

Ok, now going to have a look at the POV message board!

When you're done with PoV, 1Xtra is worth a squint too...

http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/1xtra/

It's just another example of a different style.

Good job you are an expert in this Peet!

The 1Xtra board is new - it's the first time I've seen it. But it does show you what's common to DNA sites and what can be changed.