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

Hi Jim

Just thought you would like to know where all the parents go when up at night, try

http://www.babyup.com

and maybe get advice HeHe

Back to h2g2 - I and a few other reseachers are planning to make a community Newspaper thingy, perhaps called "The ReseachersPOST" or "h2g2 POST" Either on h2g2 with your help or from another site - I would prefer to keep it in the family and stay on h2g2.

Techniprobs = Can more than one reseacher be on line using the same email address (ie one home page that all taking part can use) as there could be up to 6 at any one time - Would this confuse your programing or your server.

With the use of Forum text editors now available to use on pages (Thanks) This allows a posting to be made without having to wait for a forum to download (Great). Will a future option be available not to return to that forum once the messaage is sent - after all it will only be the same as already read with the addition of your posting. This could speed up the process and cause less hair to be pulled out. Both options should be available, cos some will want to read a forum before posting, but returning to that forum seems nonsensicle (Good word that, if a real word)

Your comments would be appreciated
Don't forget babyup.com - I hear it is quite a useful site for newbie parents.
vegiman

This is the longest I have had to wait for an answer from you - either I have given you something to think about - or your page is so full of congrats about baby that you tend to ignore them - too much of a good thing and the like.

The forum sugestion to speed up h2g2 I think is quite valid _ I am loyal to the things I support and being a small business man I see a few things that others may not.

You are most likely getting a fairish income from the amount of hits this site gets - so if you lose hits you lose income. Although the forum messaging is novel to start with, the novelty can soon wear off when (because of the links and databases needed to be updated on just one hit) it becomes so slow that people cannot wait around whilst their hard earned money is waisted by the time it takes to:

1) wait for a forum to load before being able to write to it.
Perhaps an option to only download the last three or four messages could speed thing up?????

2) wait for a forum to reload again before being able to leave it.

Hitting the stop button is no good as it disables the next page you wish to load. Perhaps an option to return to the call up page would be better.

When many h2g2 fans are forced to leave h2g2 to get more of an instantaneous response, it saddens me not to be able to contact a number of Reseachers cos they are talking away on another site like ICQ.com. I know you were against a chat room and I am not instigating another campaign to get one but writers do like to talk as you have found. It makes good business £ense (to me) to give people what they want and still achieving your original goal.

Could be the answer is staring us in the face - an instant post method to a researchers page - just another item in the goo where you enter the reseacher or page number - a texted editor appears on the screen and a forum is created on that page number that not only appears on the foot of the page but also on the reseachers home page (on the left hand column).

Whenever I have had a good sale on a certain produce and the following week sales tumble on that produce - I ask myself WHY? - fads do not change that quickly without a reason - I then work to correct the problem, which could be I sold a bad or tasteless batch without realising. I then have to work out a method to get confidence back on that produce. If it happens again, I know I will lose customers.

You are losing customers - now that the server problems are not as bad - there has to be another reason - I think faster posting could be one problem that should be solved. shorter forums that you can roll back on (should you wish to read earlier posts) could help. The ability of older researchers being able to introduce themselves to newbies would help - I have often visited a newbies page to welcome them, only to find I cant cos they have not written their intro. I come away frustrated and rarely return.

Oh well I think I have done enough teaching grandmother to suck eggs - Sorry, You are most likely working on similar lines (I hope).

Still like an answer to the newspaper Idea and if it is Techno possible to have more than one reseacher working under one nickname on the same home page. This will enable the workload to be spread - because when and if it starts, I believe it will be a great asset to h2g2 and help further its end goal.

Thank you for your attention
vegiman

Ps sorry for any typo's - its late and I have had a long day.

OK, several points here:

1: Multiple people using the same identity - as an interim measure, this will work and not confuse our system - we're reasonably stateless so we don't get confused if two people are using the same identity. However, if two people start trying to edit the same page, problems will inevitably arise, because there's no 'locking' on articles. You get the edit page up, start making changes, someone else does the same, and you both submit your changes. This will result in *only* the changes from the last person to submit being stored - they will overwrite the changes the first person made because they both started from the same page. There's no way round that unless we implement locking while editing, which leads us into a whole host of technical issues which we'd rather not have to worry about.

This doesn't mean you can't do what you want to do, it just means that this is a problem that you will probably come across, so be careful.

2: Forums, speed and usefulness of. We're very aware of the speed of the forums and how clunky it can get, and we intend to offer different ways of using them. A single page view is one, and a 'chat' view is another, where a thread will only show the most recent handful of posts in order, making chatting easier. The thing that's stopping us putting these features right now is that it needs extensions to the system to allow users to specify 'preferences' so that we remember how you prefer your forums. This isn't something I want to knock together in an afternoon, as it's a system that will grow in use, and it has to be designed properly. There's also time and manpower issues which have held us back, but we've just hired two new programmers, so I'm hoping things will start happening more quickly.

3: As you know, I've been rather preoccupied with things outside of work, which is why I haven't been able to respond to all messages as quickly as I usually do. And I don't like giving replies that say 'no' so I put this one off.

I should say that we're going to be doing a lot of work improving the site, some of which will take time, some of which will appear more quickly, but we always listen to what people are saying - after all, if the people on the site don't like it, what chance have we got attracting new researchers?

Thanks for the info - I may put some of it in our first editorial - I know you are working on improvement all the time and I can see you are thinking along similar lines. As I pointed out I want to see h2g2 grow - so if you do see anything that goes against the grain, do let me know quickly and I assure you, if in my power, it will be rectified. Also remember the h2g2POST will be able to say things you cannot, it will hopefully become the reseachers mouthpiece and sounding ground for any new ideas.

The updating of pages by several researchers at the same time is most unlikely but fore warned is fore armed.

I will soon be contacting Mark, Anna and Peta about the project and the ideas that have been floating between the POSTresearchers.
thanks again
vegiman