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

If anyone's ego is going to be stroked....

Yes... a few years... well quite a few on the stats page we had a list of the ten researchers who'd made the most posts (I guess in that 24 hour period), and also of the same thing but for longest posts... Ithink they were ultimately removed because it caused too much strain on the database/server, each time the page with those stats was brought up, by any individual, as it refreshed the lists, and did about ten gazillion queeries to the database in 1/42000th of a nanosecond... or something like that... Badgers may well have been involved with some part of the expliation but it was a long whiel ago


Personally I think it'd be a bit weird if you were, as a researcher, immediately, and automatically subscribed to each new guide (guess edited guide), entry...

Hows abouts... an easier and more prominant link to new entrys; like at the top where you've the links on the left, 'my sapce', home' read' write' etc., etc., one link there to 'most recent articles/entry's, so you could quickly, from any page, go to a page where the last ten, twenty or whatever entrys, to enter the approved/edited guide were listed...

But, the real problem... is that people never did, and Idon't know why it'd suddenly change, ever seem to comment much on any articles; People would read an article, on 'sex', or 'male anatomy', but the Penis thread, is then started in ask; .. though its kinda catch 22, as the person who started that thread, was right*to start it in ask, as it'd not have gotten noticed by many people were it stuck onto the relivent or a* relivent entry, as its unlikely vast numbers of people are subscribed to that*entry and so you go round and round .....

Maybe a role of a community ed, would be to move conversations from ask, a bit more proactively/critically than is currently the case; not just for reasons of 'not sutiable for X forum...', but more a case of 'more suitable to be attached to this*entry...' if that makes sense I guess, in such a case, it'd still have grabbed the attention of people signed up to 'Ask', where the conversation was first posted, but then it'd just appear instead hanging off an entry more appropaite to the convversaion topic..

Or... Rather than having the 'discussion topic', or whatever its called eac week; have a 'featured entry and discussion', so one entry each week is highlighted as a particular topic which woould be able to spawn discussion... if that makes sense
Or... dunno... *thinks* Could there be a techy type thing, wehreby, if a researcher is logged in, and spends more than 5 minutes, with an edited guide entry A page open, the system, automatically subscribes them to that entry (on teh basis that even if they didn't like, it, if they've had it open five minutes, or whatever, then they have at least read it...) *thinks*

I'm thinking about how other internet forums are organised, and its not helping... we're really q1uite a differnt structure... often other forums have a single 'main' forum, (I guess kinda like our ask h2g2), but they've rarely got anything remotely like the ability to have conversations actually 'off of' any entry/page... maybe sometimes they have a few sub-fora; 'main', 'feedback discussion', 'discussion on moderation', 'games', 'idle chat' etc... hmmm...
*thinks*
I have to stop thinking now... its hurting...

Oooh, I like the idea of an Entry picked for discussing. It makes more sense than a Talking Point to me.

I like that idea, too! I like the Talking Point as a concept (although never really commented because so few people did) and think tying it to a relevant featured entry would be great!

Picking an interesting Guide Entry, and making it the focus of discussion sounds like a great idea!

Who decides what's interesting? Or does the Infinite Improbability Drive choose?

At the moment, the Eds decide on the talking point.

My suggestion is that the ACEs - the assistant community editors - step up to the plate to replace them. However, this could be as simple as using the Infinite Improbability Drive and then writing an opening post. It needn't be a big job. Or it could be something topical, or the ACEs may get into this in a big way and really want to have a cool and funky plan of really great topics.

Hi, Vip. Now I'm getting baffled (not a hard state to get into). I thought someone said there were only two ACE's left now that Lil is sick. Should we give them a lot of vitamins and hope they can also do some of the editors' work?

There are only two of us, but that's not the point, really because it won't stay that way forever. If nothing else, we'll give up if it doesn't get better, or at least I will. Bel may have more sticking power.
You don't write a job description around the person who you think might do the job, you write it around what you need, and then advertise for a suitable candidate.

In the same way, we should look at the volunteer roles as what needs to be achieved, then make sure we recruit to fill the roles. Once the job has been mapped out we can advertise it properly, have a clear set of guidelines for the new recruits and we can start this job properly!

Part of the reason we only have two ACEs is that technology has made the ACE work miserably awful. Once we move away from BBCiD most of our problems will vanish overnight. I can't in good faith tell anyone it's a good job at the moment, it isn't. It's got no job satisfaction because the rewards are too few and far between. The new Ace role *has* to be better than that.

Yup: remember that there will be a whole bunch of jobs that need to be done by community members when/if the community takes over h2g2. These will just be one of them.

I suspect that it will be a case of asking everyone who wants to help to pick one of the jobs and make sure it gets done, and I hope people will because lots of people have offered. Some of the roles will fit neatly into the exisiting volunteer roles, and some of them will fit more loosely, and will be up for anyone to do who is capable and willing.

I was kind of imagining, that the 'entry for discussion this week', would be chosen out of the three, four or five (or however many), new entrys for that week, appearing on the front page; but actually, maybe having it as a sort of random chosen entry 'from the past', migh tbe a good idea too, kind of a bit like picking an interesting entry from the past which hasn't spawned any conversation threads off of it, and giving it a new fresh appearance on the FP, and inviting discussion/comment on it a la 'talking point'...
In the new hootoo ACEs will have the power of life and death, magical powers of lvitation and beer drinking... I think
Are there really only 2 ACEs left? I'd not seen any request put on the page for new ones

On the old h2g2 we have the 20 most popular conversations on the Front Page and these show what the community actually wants to talk about rather than what it is hoped they will talk about as required by a talking point.

So are you making a job for the ACEs when there is no need? Could you just look on the 20 most popular conversations and know what the talking points are?

This depends of course on which version of h2g2 is going wherever it may be going. Is it Classic/Alabaster/Brunel or Barlesque or will you need to write a whole new one from scratch?

I think it does matter because if it is the Barlesque you are missing the Newusers page, Whose Online, 20 most popular conversations , and a configurable info page to go back more than an hour or so with the most recent conversations and entries.

Anyway another thing. I did follow the story of the bullfinches and understood that, but can someone explain the badgers to me please.

The point of the Talking Point is not to help existing members of the Community talk - we all know they can do it already. It's a way of focussing attention to one place to try and draw in readers and turn them into contributors. Newbies tend to post there reasonably often, but only the Eds are there to hear them at the moment.

Don't get me wrong, it's more work for me so I'd be happy to drop it, but then we don't have any volunteer group that is thinking about how to engage the rest of the web.

There are a lot of things we CAN try, there are probably quite a few we SHOULD try, but we currently don't know how effective they are. And we won't know for sure unless we track the site statistics.

Right now, the only entity in a position to do this is the BBC. If in fact they have ever tracked the effectiveness of one outreach activity over another, I am unaware of it.

For example, we now have about 2 months worth of information about newbies signing up since Barlesque. We could compare that with the previous 2 months. If we had a way to do so.

Another example is if we held a writing contents or a writing challenge. Promoted the heck out of it on as many channels as we had. We could test the effectiveness of the event in drawing in new members if we compared site statistics during and after the event to a period before. Are readers and newbies coming by? Are they reading, writing, signing up, staying around, getting frustrated? What exactly are their behaviors?

Here's an example. One web-store wanted to change their front end to a different design, but they also wanted to know if the change was better or worse than their current design. So alternating customers arriving to the site either went to the old one or the new one. In this case the desired behavior, buying something, was easy to track.

Now suppose we think of all these wonderful ways our 2 or 3 remaining Aces can interact with newbies. Which of those Ace activities effectively promote desired newbie behavior? Here, I'm supposing that the desired newbie behavior is get involved with h2g2 activities.

Right now we don't even know which of the newbies that sign up are actually signing up for h2g2 and not some other BBC site. Of the newbies signing up for h2g2, we don't know how many of them are running into software bugs.

How many websites is the BBC running? Dozens? Hundreds? It must be hard to focus on the well-being of any one of them when there are a lot of them. I think of the Old Woman who lived in a shoe.

Its also very difficult to pull apart seperate effects; In the past few months, there does seem to have been a fair few more than useual new people signing up; is this because of the new skin, or the wide-spread newes about the demise of h2g2, attracting back, often people who had used the site many many years ago, plus probably some new researchers....

In an associated/connected thing, in the UK at the moment the BBC is rebranding BBC radio seven, one of our DAB digital stations; as BBC Radio four Extra; They are re-branding it, because not enough people ever apparently knew about it; as part of the re-branding BBC Radio Four has been full of adverts for BBC Radio Four Extra (the station formally known as BBC 7).

This 're-brand' will almost certainly go down as a 'great success', listeners up, etc., etc., and this success will almost certainly be put down to the 're-brand' itself. Of course, its pretty bluddy obvious that if you plug a station a million times more than you've ever done before, with all the adverts on BBC terrestial Radio four, then its going to attract more listeners, quite indepndantly of the 're-brand' itself... (in this case isolating the re-brand as being the re-naming of the station etc). ; They could have just stuck on a ton of adds, as they are at teh moment for 'BBC Radio seven', and probably achieved pretty-much the same results; though of course we can never know this... Corrilation does not equal causation, whatever the average reader of a tabloid might think, statistics are all in the interpritation of them, there are no (or very few) absolutes...
I'm sure I recall Jimster telling me about some quite detailed visitor stats and usage sstats... oh, but this must have been years and years ago at one of the London meets, so don't know what level of sophistications the beeb have been using of late to monitor site traffic and other stats

Because we'd only be running one website we would be much better placed to monitor things about h2g2 alone than the BBC.

I totally agree about trailing new ideas about visitors and testing, the BBC don't get it about that, I think it's something to do with not enough people having science degrees.

There just arn't enough people in the world* with science education full stop.... The times I've been having a discussion with someone in the pub, and then wehn I point out the fatal flaws in the so-called 'stats' they're basing their arguement on, might* just* have been manipulated by the person/paper/news outlet/organisation to suit their own needs... And they just don't get it... "But the stats can't lie..." "stats are stats thoug"....
I'm weird though... I can't do basic maths to save my life, but I understand statistics and maths, even though often I can't do a simple multiply two single digits together in my head

One thing, I was wondering, how would it affect visitor stats, as they are at the moment, were we not hosted on the BBC?; I mean, what extra gain in visitors is just because its a BBC site at the moment... ; I think* the Beeb don't link to h2g2 much, but I might be wrong, ; Is a lot of the traffic people reading a news item or comment piece on a bbc page, then clicking on the 'read more about XXXX here on h2g2' link...

Or people just go the other way and don't believe any stats because 'all stats lie'. So they end up disbelieving all science at all!

Or they don't get statistical significance - yes earthquakes are significant if you are under them, but that does not mean that there are statistically more earthquakes than could be predicted by chance.

PS I understand mutlpication on an algebraic basis: x * y = xy. The numbers are just irrelevant...

We can't do much about how many visitors we'd get after the BBC without trying it I don't think..

Exactly.... I imagine some people make some very bad descisions based on their misunderstanding of things like probability, when it comes to medical treatments...

Oo!:
"I understand multiplication on an algebraic basis: x * y = xy. The numbers are just irrelevant..."

I may have to steal that phrase