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

Just to say that this has been invaluable recently to the h2g2 Interim Committee work as we try to save the site.

I've been working away on this on my own for years now; while the (old) people and (new) content gradually vanished.

(SEF)

Hi SEF,

My renewed thanks are long overdue, too.

Now we're in control of our destiny, is there anything you would like to see happen? Is there anything we as Guide Editors can do which would make your archiving task easier, for example?

Icy

I'll answer those in reverse order.

It's handy that you kept the same basic software/directory structure because it meant it wasn't as much trouble as I initially thought it was going to be to view the front pages (eg as test pages) once I'd sorted out which bits *had* changed. The most helpful thing you could do is both the simplest and the hardest - get it right first time!

If you can manage to generate the weekly(?) front page correctly and not keep having to amend it with revision pages, then I won't have to keep checking for those new pages and for whether the changes affect the sections in which people had expressed an archival interest (viz the blurb on their articles and the quote/question of the day/week/month). I try to keep the most correct incarnation of the various iterations (which has sometimes meant correcting errors in the supposed quote myself).

. . .

What I would have liked to see, were the new management to be a significant improvement on the old one (and its insufficiently high regard for the truth), is for those of us who were unfairly banned to be unbanned again. Ditto whatever premod people/accounts there might be who were the victims of prejudiced staff. I haven't yet bothered to go around checking on all the examples I know about though.

Thanks SEF (it *is* SEF, isn't it?)

It's been a voyage of discovery for me - having access to the previously unavailable areas of the site, and learning how articles are stored. We haven't had any training or formal documentation - just a few scribbled notes from an outgoing italic who has now left for good.

There is a tool to edit the Front Page, and one to queue Front Page articles for publishing, but the latter doesn't work. Many of the tools the editors once used have fallen into disrepair and disuse, so we're having to devise some cumbersome manual processes to get things going. Even the Scout Recommendation and Sub-editor Allocation pages aren't working at the moment (where they were last week), so we currently have a whole new set of problems to deal with. We also have to wait for volunteers on the old site to transfer to the new site before we have the ability to contact them (i.e. e-mail them) to get the writing queue moving.

The point you make about 'getting it right first time' is a good one. As the site management function is now being devolved to a number of groups, it's important that the new Guide Editors wrest control of the content back from the other groups (Comms, Business Team, etc) who all have their own ideas about what they want to see there.

Can I ask how you are gathering the information for your archive? Is it automated? I guess you're aware that all previous Front Pages are stored in the database in a hidden status, so if you have any missing information we should be able to retrieve it.

The whole site will be completely rewritten in a new technical platform over the next year or two, and not before time. The 'Barlesque' redesign may well be used, but the new powers that be are keen to allow people to use customisable skins. I think all that's in the future, but feel free to contact someone like Z (Dr Zen) if you'd like more information.

There is a Front Page structural redesign imminent, though, as the feeling is that the current one looks out of date and not really suitable for a re-launch. I haven't seen the new one yet. We are still discussing whether to have a daily quote of the day, but we will probably edit the Front Page daily in order to encourage Google to index the site.

As to previously banned users, I think they will be able to transfer their accounts and use the site once again, but some privileged volunteer positions won't be available to them. The House Rules haven't changed substantially, but moderation should be much more relevant as it is being managed by community members. Bear with us for a few weeks, though, as we grow into our new roles

I hope this helps. I'll be happy to discuss any of these things with you in more detail - feel free to e-mail [email protected]

Icy (Guide Editor)

Yes, it's still SEF.

============

Re: staff tools:

It had previously seemed to me that the not-workingness was the other way around. The staff could replace front pages with new ones but never actually edit the original ones (with that tool); whereas the time queueing did work - albeit intermittently.

============

Re filling the archive:

I get the data in various ways. Obviously one can look at a front page the normal way while it's up. However, with the A-number for it one can use test view (as per any other page) to get the code. There's also a way of looking at the underlying code. Meanwhile, for past front pages (which is what I'm currently guessing you mean by "hidden"), I have had a lot of success with simply guessing the missing FrontPage A-numbers and also eventually wrote some software of my own to search for them. I manually copy and edit what I find though.

The actual hidden pages in which I (on behalf of the FP archive) would have an interest are all the ones which were automatically "moderated" (ie really set to hidden status) during the Rupert(?) outage and, because they didn't have anyone campaigning on their behalf like normal pages did, were never reinstated afterwards. Although I could find many of the A-numbers (through the rhythm method of guessing) and reconstruct a minimalist form of their content (from the release time of various articles), the blurbs of that era are currently lost from view. See the vicinity of January 2001 for examples: A1072504

In h2g2 database terms these pages all have status type = 10 (unlike normal pages) and hidden set to 1 (ie true). An example would be A502831 (or see test version of it).

Getting those unfairly banished front pages back would be the single best thing the new management could do for the FP archive. I'm not sure if you'd have to do it on an individual A-number basis, though, or could simply write a script to search for all status type 10 and clear the hidden status.

============

Re site redesign:

I'm currently not liking this.

You've moved to HTML from GuideML with your tags (eg to use IMG SRC ALIGN rather than PICTURE EMBED H2G2IMG) - which brings its own set of problems. Eg link outlines showing on pictures unless one adds extra code to turn that off.

You've also separated the new guide entries from each other code-wise by putting them in cells in rows against other stuff which I don't need (eg rather than in columns). But that's your prerogative.

The quote has the in situ link from the name text (a new feature) rather than from quote to quote in situ and, potentially, from name to user. I get offended by inconsistencies. Probably no-one much else cares.

============

Re banned users:

Nope - still banned.

PS:

"we will probably edit the Front Page daily in order to encourage Google to index the site"

You shouldn't have to do that solely for that reason. The content of the viewable version of the front page should be changing slightly on a daily basis (or more often?) anyway as the activity-monitoring stuff on the right hand side changes - eg the most popular conversations. Incidentally, those annoyingly just link to the forums rather than to the threads to which they purport to link.

Hi Sef,

Are you having problems getting into your old accounts?

Contact the [email protected] - Or click the link on your latest email from Not Panicking Ltd. They will try to help you get back into your old accounts.

ALL Researchers are starting with a new slate in h2g2.com


lil x
Community Editor.

There's no difficulty (beyond the usual page glitches!) in getting accounts transferred. Indeed, banned accounts seem to be better invited than non-banned ones (from my limited sample). But you are(/were?) wrong about their operability afterwards.

(SEF)

Hi SEF,

Have you problems been sorted now?


lil x

A question I kept forgetting to ask:

Does the new h2g2 notional week still begin on a Monday? I've been noticing a lot of front page changes happening on a Sunday (including of course the scramble to get the new site running at all) and wondered if this was just the continuing inability to delay display of them.

Meanwhile, the quote of the whatever seems to have morphed from weekly to daily - which does mean a lot more front pages to check.

(SEF)

The answer is yes, we still can't schedule front pages, so we try to do them some time between late Sunday and early Monday (as we're all volunteers and can't guarantee to be around at 10am on a Monday).

Yes, we're trying to do Quote of the Week now. I've heard it improves our Google rating.

Hello

Quote of the week will I hope be daily now. Some of that is managed by email at present. I was thinking of ways to make the archiving easier for you with respect to qotd, but hadn't arrived at any conclusions.

Ben

I doubt that's something which can be sensibly automated. Given the low competence of the former staff, I had to check (and often fix after some considerable searching) the quote link every single time.

At least with the new h2g2 being on its own (not mixed up with other dna system sub-sites), there are fewer pages overall to check through. I would guess that even h2g2 is a lot quieter generally since the move away from the BBC (apart from those already regular posters who were able to move with it).

(SEF)

I meant "Quote of the Day" above, of course

Hi SEF,

I found my first 'idle moment' since November, so started to look at those missing blurbs.

Oddly, those entries say 'hidden', but when I edit them the 'hidden' box isn't checked. Must be some sort of data corruption?

Anyway, the first two I found are (briefly):

***
A501913: 4 jan 2001


The Guide is packed with thousands of entries - click here for loads of great things that you can read in the Guide.

Editor's Selection for Thursday:
Sequential art is truly a global phenomenon and today's entry on Anime and Manga explores Japan's contribution to this increasingly popular art form. Read on to find out more... Today's other new Edited Entries:Chimes Cider Bar/Restaurant, Churton Street, London, UK, Missoula, Montana, USA, The Gentle Art of Screwing and How to Start your Car When it is Really Cold.
This Week's University Project
looks at Baroque Music - even if you're more into rock than Baroque music, it's well worth a read.



***
A502831: 5 jan 2001



The Guide is packed with thousands of entries - click here for loads of great things that you can read in the Guide.

Editor's Selection for the Weekend:
Bacteriophages are viruses that infect bacteria. They also have great potential to help cure human disease. Read on... Today's other new Edited Entries: The Golden Horseshoe, Ontario, Canada,
Guppy,
Ipswich, Suffolk, UK and
Albert-System Clarinets.
This Week's University Project
looks at Baroque Music - even if you're more into rock than Baroque music, it's well worth a read.



***

Now is this the level of information you need? There are Talking Points too, if you're interested in those. Let me know and I'll dig up more examples in my next idle moment.

Icy

"I found my first 'idle moment' since November"

I know how that is. I'm temporarily emerging from an extremely hectic patch myself.

"the 'hidden' box isn't checked"

It could be because the front page entries are a different type of entry from normal or edited ones and the software hasn't been written to handle them properly. They were pretty obviously made hidden (moderation pending) by default and then never made it onto a manned moderation queue to get cleared.

"is this the level of information you need?"

That was the sort of thing I was working from, yes.

"There are Talking Points too"

Back then in the archive I think I was mostly interleaving talking points and community conspiracies as they appeared alongside the edited entries. Though I did also create separate lists of them later.

"I'll dig up more examples in my next idle moment."

It will be a lot of work. The ideal solution would be writing some software to reverse the damage done by the original badly written moderation software - viz setting anything with a STATUS TYPE="10" (ie affecting only front pages) back to not being HIDDEN. Then it would just take the one of me to slowly go through all of the missing ones instead of the pair of us in tandem.

PS These front page articles are far older than the current moderation system and hence haven't necessarily got the correct settings on the new fields which were added later and which the more recently written software is expecting.

PPS I'm going to have a lot of trouble maintaining the front pages from now on since the move to Pliny(?) has broken a huge number of links/addresses - making it hard to get the data in the first place (one of the previously useful skins has gone) and to present it (in a way which will work across skins).

My immediate reaction (when I gave up even trying to get onto the site to update pages):



A couple of months on, are we now stuck with the current situation or is there still some scope for fixing things or reinstating them?

I'm not sure, and I no longer have editorial access in any case (I handed in my badge a month or two ago). It's a question for Gnomon and Pastey, really.