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

There's one thing which should be taken into account as to who's up for the posisitions. While some will step forward, others who would be at the top of any list may not nominate themselves. At the same time it doesn't seem right to nominate others without consent, why put someone through having to turn down something they never had any intention of standing for?

I don't know the best way to scope out such a subject, be it asking in ones personal space or going the email route. I do know I'd much rather have folks opt out up front like Ben did if they can't take on the task due to reasons of their own, it's most fair to the individual and the community alike and will help to aviod unnecessary complications or confusion down the line.

Spy

Just ask them first personally if you're going to nominate anyone. No point making a big public show of it if they aren't even interested in doing it...

It's great to know that people would consider standing if their circumstances were different as well, it gives us an idea of the willing people.

I think that their should be a discussion about who would be good onsite, and people can nominate who they think of. Then if they can be persuaded to stand that they can.

I don't have a particularly clear idea of what the people in these elected positions would do. Apparently they aren't the same as the business team (or are they?). They aren't synonymous with the Scouts and the ACES, and the subs, so what exactly are they? Do they run the "The Buck Stops Here Desk" and make decisions when grumpy people come to them with intractable moderation disputes? Do they give the green light to publish Guide Entries when the subeditors are deadlocked? Is there something obvious I haven't thought of? (actually, not thinking of obvious things is one of my greatest talents, but anyway....)

As I understand it, these are the positions that cover what the Italics do now/used to do a long time ago, with a return to more than 2.

Paul, try post 51: F20484619?thread=8156407&post=108020366#p108014955

Yup, as I see it they will start off by 'doing everything the italics do..' but as time goes on they will end up working with the volunteer groups to try and rearrange the workload.

A question (raised by Ben, but posted by me..)

Should the elected editors have been volunteers at some stage? or have at least been involved in the site a minimum amount of time?

They have to have been around long enough to have an idea of how it works and have already invested some time in the site. I don't know about hard-and-fast rules but if I were presented with two candidates, one who had contributed to the site and one who hadn't I know which I'd pick.

We want people who have already proven their dedication to the project and the enthusiasm to take on more responsibility.

Arghhh so much to type! so much to say.

ing PhD. I'll come back to this later...

None of us really understand Paul.

If we have no italics, then we need volunteers from the communitiy who will

1) look after the site from a technical point of view - keep the servers running

2) manage the finances, admin and legal aspects of running the site

3) do the things that the BBC Editors do now in terms of managing the Front Page and Edited Guide

4) do the things that the BBC Editors do now in terms of "hosting" the community - ie handle the moderation and disciplinary issues

The first two - wrongly or rightly - we saw as being in the remit of "the businesss team" either because the community wouldn't actually care about the servers or because things like the banking have to be done by a real person in their real name
.
The second two - again wrongly or rightly - we saw as being the remit of "the editorial and community team" - these are things that the community care a lot about and which people can do using their on-site names.

Does that help?

Ben

I think we should approach the short list of members who currently are keeping the site going, the ones with curator status for instance. These have been diligent workers on all our behalves, probably too busy to take part in these long discussion threads, especially when the outcome of the tender is not known.

I know who I have in mind, but it is not fair to discuss individuals without their agreement or knowledge. But these folk are well versed in the minutiae of keeping the site going. I would not be happy to vote for anyone who had no idea of the work that goes on already.

... while the topic is already at the Curators: does anyone know how many Curators there are at the moment? And also how many Sub-Eds?

There are _lots_ of sub-eds Tav, Really.

I think there are three Curators, well, that I know of anyway. Check out the Curators home page,

http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/alabaster/A7947147

and Editorial Feedback and you may work out who they are They are very unassuming, modest people.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/alabaster/Feedback-Editorial

They *are* long threads, aren't they?

>>> Vip: The big problem is that it automatically excludes the readers and lurkers. While they may not take a hand in creating content, they are who we are creating content *for*. If we ignore them we may go in a direction that loses us our readership.

Our readers vote all the time, with their feet. On another thread, TRiG and I were talking about OpenID, so that Readers could comment without having to create an account. Whether readers comment or not, meaningful site statistics would let us know what they liked and what they ignored. If they love our travel articles, will we write more of them, I wonder? If on the other hand, they like will we write more smut? I hope we can just be ourselves.

This is all very funny, you know. Most of us were probably vaguely aware that a few of our friends read our online essays and even our silly adventures, but with 150,000 unique hits per week obviously other people do so too.

We never thought about our readers before. We wrote because we had it in us and we wanted to share with each other. It's delightful that we have readers, but we didn't even know we had very many readers until recently. It's a bit like thinking you're singing in the shower, when your voice is actually piped out over the PA system.

Maybe our readers like it that way. Maybe they like peeking in on us as we carry on here, whether we are struggling with our writing or campaigning bravely for the noble Thingite cause.

>>> Vip: On the other hand if we create surveys and ask for their opinions regularly we should have an idea about what they think and can take that into account even if they can't vote.

I recommend using three items:
1) Properly thought out site statistics
2) Permitting comments through OpenID
3) Infrequent surveys, like no more than once a year.

>>> Voting for editors
Only researchers who have been published in the (unified) Guide should be permitted to vote for editors. Otherwise it would be like letting everyone in the United States vote for our county supervisor. Only the people in our county are likely to know what is going on here.

>>> Constitution?
Many of the topics we are discussing, such as qualifications for a certain office and who gets to vote for what office, are the sort of things that go in an organization's constitution.

Are we undertaking that task at this point, or just discussing it to get people thinking? I sure hope it is the latter.

>>> Vip: Can I take this very slightly off topic and ask who in this thread would?

I too would consider serving in some capacity in the future.

>>> Spynxxx: There's one thing which should be taken into account as to who's up for the posisitions. While some will step forward, others who would be at the top of any list may not nominate themselves. At the same time it doesn't seem right to nominate others without consent, why put someone through having to turn down something they never had any intention of standing for?

Good question. Simply ask the person, "May I nominate you for the position of [TitleGoesHere]?"

Ok, what about active community members who don't write for the Guide, but do contribute to review forums, and conversations. They will be affected by decisions made on moderation etc, should they be able to vote?

We're just talking and trying to get people thinking HN. This is way too important for us to jump to conclusions. Whatever we do, we'll get it wrong before we get it right.



Let's do some sums. If the site is currently run by two people working, say 35 or 40 hours per week, plus whatever time is taken on tech support.... less whatever time they have to spend in internal BBC stuff... Let's call it 70-80 hours per week ....

That would be, say 8 researchers doing a couple of hours a night... (Actually, that is quite a big ask, isn't it? Hmmmm).

But if you've got 8 folks, then can we afford for them to be a bit specialised, say two of them focused mainly on community issues, and 6 focused on the Guide....? At the moment Bel is focused on the Post, back in the day Spynxx, Jordan, Waz and Pin were focused on the UnderGuide, Gnomon has been focused mainly on the Edited Guide, and son on.



I see it as more of the same, needing more people doing a few more tasks, but in much the same way.



What do you think?

Ben

>> active community members who don't write for the Guide, but do contribute to review forums, and conversations

Some forums say how many posts a person has posted, could we do that?

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Maybe not. So much of what I think is a good idea is something everyone else really hates.

B

What about people who have once been quite active on h2g2 and now just return but have no clue about what's going on at the moment? Should recent activity be a requirement or just general activity, no matter whether that was in 2002 or a few weeks ago?