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

I find myself slowly prying myself out of h2g2. I'm unsubscribing from many of the busier threads I once frequented. I'm not commenting as often as I did on the threads I am still on.

I've grown tired of the banal (and the boring).

I rarely read the daily entries as most of them just don't interest me anymore. The serendipitous nature of h2g2 has been mostly gone since Auntie Beeb pared back the staff and the number of daily entries. It seems there are more and more travelogues, reviews and how-tos on subjects I just can't get interested in. It just doesn't seem as ecclectic as it once did. Maybe it's me.

Anyhoo, I'm not gone but I'm not as invested here as I once was. I'm still subscribed to several journals and many of the quieter threads. I mostly had to pull myself out of the inordinately busy but pointless threads (no disparagement intended, I once reveled in "Boring and Banal" for BoB's sake). I needed some of my time back. It was getting to he point that I had to skip pages of backlog every monday morning or I'd lose hours. I needed some time back.


So, if you don't see me around as often, I'm still here... just not as much.

Gradient gone and you cutting back on your visits... I suppose it's inevitable in the world of the Internet and websites like this that as a site becomes more popular it attracts increasing numbers of the kind of people who would have given it a wide berth in its first few years because no-one around here finished every sentence with 'lol' and people discussed interesting topics and ideas. But their growing presence here now has quality Researchers leaving by all available exits, apparently.

Forums where that happens are becoming harder to find, unfortunately. I'm doing my best to keep it alive but new and updated threads on my conversation page have been few and far between for the past few days. Since I unsubbed from both Ask and PR I was still getting a good selection of new conversations and new posts in existing conversations each morning when I switched the PC on, but yesterday and the day before have been pretty quiet. Maybe two or three conversations. Perhaps it's just one of those things, the way that a road can be jammed with traffic one day and then empty the next, at the same time of day and for no apparent reason.

It's disheartening, to say the least.

It just dawned on me that I missed my (and many others') seventh hootooversary (9.9.1999 was the busiest day for new accounts on h2g2 ever).

7 years. That's a pretty long time to do anything.

Like I said, I'm not gone. Things change. This placed has changed and I have as well. I've found other places to hang out (http://www.kingdomofloathing.com chief among them) and other interests to take up my time.

I'll still stick my head into ask every once in a while probably. I never was much into PR if I didn't have an entry working at the time. I never got into the forum much... to volatile.


Wow... seriously... Has it been 7 years?

Tis indeed a sad state of affairs when I have to agree with much of that which you speak. Lettuce spray that nighthoover one day returneth and maketh all well again I'd not logged on all day today, and then I come on ... and its not like I feel I've missed anything by not having been on in nearly 24 hours, long gone it seems are the days when I was doing my Masters, when coming back on after a two hour absence and there would be dozens of conversations newly created or with many many new posts that one had to quickly read t through to 'get back up to speed' on what was going down I hardly seem to ahve missed much in fact after being away for a week until yesterday... unheard of a few years back me thinks I dunno... I just dunno.... I'm getting fed up with the meets too hardly anyone cept a few 'regulars' seems to bother thesedays and it seems just as hard to try get an italic along, sure htat ain't so easy now there is hardly any Italics left on site, but that itself is a cause perhaps of the sites seeming malase, when did we last have a community focused Italic? think I'll go read a book

That's too bad, CZ... but I'm glad you're not leaving completely.

I understand all too well.

There was a time, in the beginning, that to miss an hour here was to lose track of many important and interesting conversations with dear friends. Now, I drop in every three or four weeks and nothing much exciting has happened(well..there was the great "Shazz overthrow"..hate I missed that. Hate it happened.).

When I first joined, at least a third of the Researchers on were "italics"...there weren't many of us "regular troops" around.

But LORD it was fun! It actually remained a central part of my daily routine until shortly after the Beeb took over.

Rules tightened, requirements for journalistic excellence strengthened, membership skyrocketed and the quality of the general discussion went down the toilet.

I look at the "Who's on Line" page and am usually amazed. Always between one and two thousand. I know its' profitable for the beeb, but it shore wuz mo' fun back when a high number was 70.

Ah well, all things must change or die,I suppose.

NM

"Shazz Overthrow"?

I guess I missed it. Oh, well.

Me too. There's supposedly a war going on now as well. *shrug*

If you search the halls, there is ALWAYS a war going on here.

Darn shame, actually. Sadly, with the population here I think it's unavoidable.

NM

Well, some of the wars are fun. Sporks ablazing, pedantitry[sp?] running amok.

There's a war? I seem strangely not to know quite what's whappening in the community these days like I used to, with the exception of those few people on here who I now know pretty well in RL Seems some of the stickyness isn't here any more, used to be times when one would log on first thing in the morning and Have* to check what'd gone on since when you'd fallen asleep at HooToo the early hours that morning just doesn't seem to captivate one as completely it once did still... whilst we're still waiting for nighthoover to reenter the building theres hope

This is an old thread to dust off, but I just got to mention that I was just strongly discouraged by the site. I spent about 30 minutes or more composing a post for Ask h2g2 and saw it disappear into the ether when I hit preview (database err0r).

I thought about spending another 30 minutes recomposing it, but gave up. I was just too frustrated.

And it feels that in the last couple of months that the activity on this site has dropped below some threshold that I just don't feel it will ever rise above again. Even some of the most stalwart voices are barely posting anymore.

I can't help but consider a day may come soon where I also just stop logging in.

I was starting to get quite used to the new skin, err... pliny? - but the past quite a number of months, its been so slow I've gone back to alabaster on riply, as it loads so much faster... I fail to see how anything can ever get any better, or back to a small percentage of what it ever was, unless there is a working website... Plus, its so quiet now If I had anything else at all to do to occupy my time more fully I doubt I'd bother checking in much anymore either, and really nowdays, its only checking on a few people I know who are still here, and yes, a few of the older threads now running for so long that occasionally pop back up; although having just written that, I'm reeminded, how few new sticky convos like that seem to have actually appeared since.... since... dunno.... 2004? 2006? 208? something like that things seemed to just... slow to a near hault...

Ok... I've given it further consideration. I'll keep logging in here as long as here is here.

I'm just prematurely morning the day when it isn't.

Just for the love of round numbers, I hope some of us are still here 9.9.2019.

Someone should be here to celebrate my 20th hootooversary, damn it!



Which reminds me, my 50th birthday is coming up soon. Anyone want to meet me in New Orleans at Christmas Eve eve?

I'm now so skittish about losing posts I made sure to copy the above text, but I didn't perview it so I missed *morning* for mourning.

~ BG ~ I'll be there in Spirit ~ ~ ~ ~ ................................................................... . . . . . . . . . . and in 9.9.2019 .... . . . . . .. .. . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . Marking my calandar right now. ... .. . . .. ...

well... I plan to still be here... even if my health keeps trying to say otterwise.... I just ignore it now and eventually it'll go away 2019.... isn't that the date of the long-predicted second coming of the hoovering one?

He's going to be angry when he finds his user space has been erased.

Oh.... s......... things... could... therefore get... explosively interesting.... or succtionally so I guess

Wait, what? The Hoovering One's space? Gone? It's an outrage! I'm outraged!!!