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

It's been a tough morning for us all, hasn't it.

I thank you for taking the time to come and post here. I'm pretty sure there's a lot of shock going around - how much more warning did you guys have than us?

All the best,

Vip

Warning = 0 hours 0 minutes... I found out after you guys... well in fact I actually found out FROM you guys. Very disappointing but it could be a blessing in disguise

Really? Crickey, that's no fair, not after all the work you put in.

I agree that it could be a turn for the better, but at the moment there is so little information to go on that I am just going to remain calm and try to be cautiously optimistic. This site has been very dear to me for the last nine years but it does have a habit of eating my life away!

Yes, I think that some people who had their ears to the ground heard rumblings, but to be honest, no one here 'knew' as far as I'm aware. It's so far above our heads, that we were all as shocked as you.

It's dear to us all, and that's why it's so disappointing. I'm really hoping to come up with some good solutions for the community, but it's hard because the sheer amount of legacy data that's contained in a 'non transferable' DNA system is going to make it very difficult...

I'm hoping to join in the conversation about the future soon. But I want to wait until I have something worthwhile to say rather than just adding my rather inconsequential tuppence worth.

I just hope everyone in and on the community creates as much buzz as possible, as that will help SO much. I've been trying to get Stephen Fry to join the debate... but without luck

Stephen Fry is a busy man. One of his recent blogs talked about how he was not having to say no to everything, simply because of the sheer volume of it and the ability of a stray comment to come back and bite him later. He doesn't have the time to push 3000 causes, and we are just another cause, probably less worthy than 1500 of the other things he's being asked to push!

I think you taking the time to post really helped things around here. You could almost hear the sigh of relief to hear from one of you guys who cared enough to sign up and post. You and Damnyoureyes backing each other up was lovely to see.

The buzz is dying down a little but there is still some discussion. It gets nasty in places but thankfully they are few and far between. The Consortium are busy planning but I have a feeling that their work will be wasted when the next round of information comes out. In the best possible way I hope I'm right as that will mean that there is a decent chance the BBC will have found a buyer.

The axing of h2g2 is something I have been expecting for a few years. The MOT and the rebrand made me think that the BBC had changed their minds and really decided to invest in it, but finances have taken an ugly turn and all the reasons the wanted to get rid of it before will have probably resurfaced. The timing was a shock but it was coincidental that it came at the same time as the Barlesque launch.

I keep meaning to spent more time in Peer Review and write another Entry but even though I seem to spend a lot of time writing responses I should really be doing actual, paid work...

Right, back to work (and checking My Conversations every two minutes. ).

Ugh... If what you said about the DNA technology not being transferable, that WILL be troublesome. This entire site is built on it. All the entries are written in GuideML.

That will be a headache indeed to sort out.

But if the BBC are serious about offering us up for adoption, it'll have to get sorted out somehow.

GuideML is just a version of XML, so that's not such a big problem (right?).

Extracating the site out of dna, SSO and now the full BBC login system could be a harder task. Ah well, bridges when we get to them, that sort of thing.

Ah, I was thinking in the terms of DNA being non-transferable in the proprietary sense, as in if the BBC owned it and it wouldn't work on other systems/servers.

Oh, I see... that would be hard to do. "We want to sell you a website, but none of the code underneath." Let's hope that's not the intent! Otherwise they're just selling the concept of the website and the text of the Entries and Conversations.

Potentially not my place, but I think the problem is that the data is formed in a precise way to work with DNA's systems. It would take an *amount* of work to migrate that to XML that another system could ingest without choking and reaching for the rum. Not impossible at all, just all things to consider

Ah. *takes notes*

I guess without someone writing a dna clone it would be hard to mesh the two.

Although I'm not trying to press you as it may be a conflict of interest, what knowledge you are allowed to share would be useful at https://groups.google.com/group/h2g2communityconsortium
The site is a bit full of ideas at the moment so you may want to be selective on what you read.

I recommend looking out the chap called Pastey. He's a developer himself and is one of the ringleaders when it comes to dev. He and I have been discussing this sort of thing for years.

Anyways, I should really go and read that c2 backlog myself.

Type to you later,

Yep, I will join thanks. Although as you say, I don't have much to say at the moment - BUUUUTTT I am trying