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

Hi, Jim.

Forgive me for posting this query on your PS, but it doesn't really qualify as a bug report, feature suggestion or... well anything classifyable really.

I've been helping a small cluster of people from Mustardland (Archers Board on Howerd2; don't ask. ) to have a wander around h2g2 and see what facilities a DNA board offers. Due to the wonders of Single Sign-On, however, some of these people already have accounts with, for example, the Points of View DNA board, and the system recognised them. It logged them in with their existing account, but that didn't seem to be a problem... Till they went to their PS.

Apparently, if you don't have an h2g2 account, you get a link to post a Journal entry, but it breaks if you follow it when the DNA site you originally signed up with doesn't support Journals. I get the feeling that something simply hasn't been initialised.

Anyhow, this may just be a moot point, if PS and Journal are enabled on the upcoming DNA-based Mustardland, as Peta said she'd be willing to migrate users over from other DNA boards. But, it seems just odd enough that I thought I'd bring it to your attention.


If somebody really wants to keep their existing account with PoV, The Hub etc., yet wants to post to their Journal, is there any simple way of enabling it? Just logging into h2g2 doesn't seem to do the trick.

In order to post to a journal, they would have to have signed up their original site *and* the site they're trying to post to their journal - h2g2 for example. We don't 'disable' journals internally on any site, it's just the skins which do or do not support journals.

There *are* bugs related to journals and personal spaces almost being site-independent but not quite - people trying to post a message, being told they're not signed in to h2g2, signing in again, but still not being able to post (because the message is wrong and it's another site they need to sign up with). We want to fix these, but there are some 'editorial policy' issues with things like personal spaces that need to be worked out before we can do that. But I'm sure we will fix them eventually.

Thanks, Jim. Those are exactly the kind of error messages I've been told about.

For the moment, I'll tell anybody from PoV etc. that they'll need to open a new account with h2g2 if they want to start a journal.

Has anyone ever thought about "merging" accounts? I.e. taking two U-names, attaching all the threads from both onto a single one and "retiring" the other? Just a thought, but it would mean that a kludge like this would be undo-able in the future.

No, they *don't* need to open a new account. As long as the single account is 'activated' for each DNA site that it wishes to post to, then everything will work properly, I believe.

Okay... (Phew, lucky I was too busy to advise anyone!)

How, for example, does someone from PoV activate their account for h2g2?

(And the "combining accounts" question still stands; two people have told me they have different DNA accounts for PoV and h2g2 already...)

Jim, just a quick note to say "Thanks! " for sorting out Le Phantom. Much appreciated.