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

Thanks for visiting my pimping your PS page. It's part of a project for noohootoo. I've included your comment in the piece now and I'd like to link to your page so that people can come to you if they get stuck with the advice. Plus, your page is vey wizzy!

If you'd rather not have people drop round, do say.

The actual page is going to be somewhere else, btw. This is just an account for me to play around with.

Thanks again!

Solnushka

I am happy to help if I can.

My knowledge of fixing computers is limited to saying "have you tried turning it on and off at the wall?" but I know the h2g2 Guideml as it hasn't changed for so long. I did panic a bit at the new Barlesque as things seemed to have stopped working for no obvious reason. But they still work while we have the old skins.

People having their own userpages seems to have gone out of fashion in general not just h2g2. When I first got online at the turn of the century the internet seemed full of ordinary peoples own little pages but perhaps it was just the bits I happened to see.

h2g2 seemed very busy with userpages back in the old "digibox" days, most of them all had very elaborate pages and for people using that technology (e.g. they could not copy and paste had to write it down on a bit of paper and re type) it was an achievement I thought.

I suppose these days there is so much more you can do using pre built templates and turning out professional looking webpages but I prefer building it a bit at a time and (sort of) knowing what it is doing. It is mine then.

I never really got into it but I am starting to find it more interesting now. It was all a bit overwhelming at first, and I counted myself very proud just to be able to do the basics in GuideML.

Anyway, you are in! We should be ging live with it weekendish.

Hi there again!

That project I was asking you about is now up and announced and there'll be a link on the FP on Monday. A87679859

Brace yourself!

(I keep posting to you in alias!) Hi! It's Solnushka

Hello Solnushka.

My ideas about the Guideml are to try things out, change a few words and numbers here and there and if it works great and if it doesn't forget that idea before it overwhelms me. I don't really know exactly how it all works and another researcher long ago helped me with the more elaborate boxes (I am still in awe of how clever the realistic mondrian is) , but I did the more simple boxes all by myself.

I hope that can help people though, i.e. you don't have to know what you are doing and can still have pretty pages. You can even use smileys and spaces as a quick way to do a nice page without bothering with code at first.

My other tip is to set up a "test article" to try things out then your personal space doesn't look too terrible while you mess around. People could still see it if they are very nosey but not just if they click on your name so it is less obvious you don't know what you are doing. You can re use the one test page over and over.

If I am to be mentioned on the "official" Create page, I suppose I should mention I am Ms Furby not Mr Furby.

All good tips and I shall be using them!

I don't know why I assumed you were Mr. Actually, I do. It's because for some eason BrownFurby has got fixed in my head as as a sort of BrownTrilby (Sam Spadeesque hat. Spelling?). I've been imagining you in a trnchcoat looking world weary.

Of course, I can still do that. What is a Furby?

People before have assumed I am Mr and if it is just in a posting I don't bother mentioning it as it has no relevance to anything, but as that page says "his page" etc it would be wrong unless it is reworded not to say his or hers.

A Furby is a children's toy popular at the turn of the century, a small furry creature which looks a bit like an owl.

So it is, it's on your page. And now you mention it, I knew that too. Probably because I read your page. I must have Humphrey Bogart on the brain or something.

And of course it needed changing!

About the commenting on entries thing, I too have noticed mostly new users commenting on entries and thought it rather sad over the years.

My idea at the time was to have a dummy user (by that I mean an account like Create so it doesn't rely on individual people being here forever) subscribed to all edited entries so we could see the extent of it and monitor the replies by looking at that user accounts conversation list. This could be set up by going through the Front Page Archive and subscribing each edited article. It would take a long while to set up but then only be a few new entries each week to add. There might even be a techncial wizard way to mass subscribe but I don't know it.

I also thought that maybe instead of asking people to comment on edited entries as such (although anyone who wants to can do so) , perhaps we could match some likely conversations in Ask up with the entries they could have been started on and post links back to Ask on those entries.

e.g. the Ask question on square knitting needles could be on the Hand Knitting entry.

Does that make any sense? When you say to people "hey you think of something" they say "err umm can't think of anything you are confusing me with someone who wants to do actual work", but you can't shut them up in Ask and so those conversations happen anyway but aren't where the guide needs them.

I remember your dummy entry idea. In fact I linked to it in (another!) discussion on the topic just the other day. I think there must be a tech way to do something like that, and I wholeheartedly support it.

You are right about there being no point in trying to insist on not having the convo in Ask, and I really like your solution. Plus, if we could get people to start doing that, and so actively looking for an entry on a relevant topic first (which is part of the problem, in my case not least!) the, who knows, if we get the publicity thing soted too perhaps people will start the convos on the entries instead.

A great idea. I shall pass it on.

Or, I may also try to work it into a challenge for Create. Something to do with seeing how many links you can make to entries from convos in Ask? What do you think? (I shall make you help out on it!)

hi

i was thinking maybe there could be some coding done
like playing around with the programming for the infinite improbability drive..

so the Infinite improbability drive must look at all the edited guide entries
but not the help pages or the ask, misc, feedback or etc type utility pages
just the Entries... right?

does the Infinite Improbability Drive draw the entry from a data base of all the Edited Guide Entries or does it just generate a random Anumber and then slide over to the closest valid Edited Guide Entry if the number it generated is not one for a valid Edited Guide Entry?

yes i know... i just cant seem to say it clearly

aaaaanyway...

Or...? maybe the Infinite Improbability Drive program could be tweaked to run from the earliest entry to the latest... chronologically instead of randomly... if thats how it works?

tired now brain hurts

I think there will almost certainly be a way to code the subscriptions maybe by copying the iid cunning plans BUT that there won't be the resources available to do any luxury enhancements like that as all the effort is needed with the essentials of keeping the site stable.

The idea of using a dummy user to subscribe to conversations wasn't mine originally. I remembered what the h2g2 staff did for the feedback forums in the olden days and then I thought that same idea could be used to monitor the edited entries conversations when that became an issue.

I think the way to monitor the conversations needs to be in place before encouraging the conversations really. Perhaps we should start it manually and see how long it is likely to take.

The idea of putting a link on the edited entry to a thread in ask wasn't mine originally either. I first saw that idea when someone said no one is talking about Eurovision and there had been an ongoing conversation in ask for several years so a link was put in to the entry. But then I thought about other conversations going to waste in Ask.

I had a look on Ask today and about half the most recent conversations are actually meant for Feedback.

>>> I think the way to monitor the conversations needs to be in place before encouraging the conversations really. Perhaps we should start it manually and see how long it is likely to take. <<<

that makes sense to me
the reason i mentioned the iid was to get a dependable list of all edited entries
but what other ways are there?
going thru the search engine and then hitting that alphabetical listing thing at the bottom?

http://h2g2.com/dna/h2g2/brunel/Index?let=A&official=on&show=400&skip=0 is for edited entries starting with A... there are under 800 of them altogether...
this could be doable

do you have the dummy account?
whats a good name for it?

It seems as if the suggestion to have a 'bot account automatically subscribed to all Entries has been floated in various arenas for quite a while.

This is just to confirm that this idea is being currently considered, both by the technical experts and by the Editorial Team.

It's good to see enthusiasm for an initiative such as this.

Thanks!


h2g2 Guide Editors

Thank you Dear Guide Editors.

I hope it would be just Edited Entries at first because we already have the info page for All Entries but with ACE messages and Games and Pantomimes and Wars and such things genuine comments on Edited Entries do get missed.

All comments could be getting missed where ever they are of course and sometimes that is for the best but it matters more on Edited Entries. My favourite was the one where someone noticed that the book keeping entry said debits instead of credits and that sort of thing really does matter.

It is hard sometimes after all the years at the BBC when we got used to the idea that nothing was ever happening ever again to again think along the lines thatsome things might be possible. It will probably take everyone a while to adjust to that.