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

On h2g2, as with any other group, cliques develop. It's human nature I suppose.

In h2g2 there aren't just cliques, there are generation gaps, marked not by years but traumatic events. The first was probably Rupert, a hand-off so amazingly clumsy as to have left the community without connectivity.

The institutionalized chasm between the Guides testifies to traumatic events caused by bureaucratic decisions designed to squeeze creativity into a corporate mold. Pity the poor Editor who had to relay Corporate's bad news! "I'm sorry, but Corporate asked me to tell you ..." Some community members drifted away to find creative freedom elsewhere.

The h2g2 community suffered a series of humiliations as wikipedia, facebook, and blogging became popular elsewhere online. h2g2ers watched helplessly as their numbers dwindled.

Everything was good once, say the oldest ones, some of whom are young enough to be my children. The BBC let us down, say the next generation.

And well after the damage had been done and the dust settled, I came the other way through cyberspace. Making me one of the younger ones, despite my actual age.

Folks, I know I wasn't here back in the good old days. I'm here now, and I'm writing as fast as I can. When I say the overuse of lingo makes h2g2 look like another silly fan site, please don't take it as an insult. When I say we ought to use the word editor to mean an editor, please don't pretend it is only because I don't know what a curator is and am too dense to learn.

I try to remember we are all on the same side.

... I remember when It was all ... pretty much the same around here.... the same only differnt

That* thread, on the nomenclature was quite as an outsider, just reading it... a rose by any other name etc... I mean... really... its just*a name, and the logic of using a name which as large an amount of people (some of whom do not have English as their first language), can understand is just... well I'd have thought pretty obvious... or maybe not
I'm so old now I cna't even remember what Icame in here for

*ponders*

Y'know, our relative RL ages (just talking HN, 2legs, and myself, here, in case there's a ) hold an exactly opposite relationship to our h2g2 ages... 2legs and I aren't that far apart, while there's a larger gap between HN and I...

OK, so that has absolutely nothing to do with anything

Yep I'm the middle-aged johnny-come-lately.

Does that make me the middle aged old timer then? surely I can't be middle aged yet... I'm too childish to be middle aged. *has a temper tantrum*
*throws himself onto the ground*
'I want cookies!'
*flaps about on the ground having a temper tantrum*

You'll know you're middle-aged when you skip past the tantrum, bake them yourself, eat a couple, decide you shouldn't finish the rest, and spend the rest of the afternoon leaving a paper plate of cookies with each of your neighbors.

I actually did that, except with muffins and sandwich bags, but same principle.
Though does that make me middle aged? I suppose I have acted that way for half my natural life, but I suspect its a lot shorter than others would have me believe. Have I reached 30? Ha!

For hootoo (rolls off the keyboard that), I am certainly a middle aged fogey complaining about the younguns, certainly bordering on senility anyway.
However.
I was reborn this year, in a dreadfully messy circumstance, meaning that my previous pearls of wisdom are unattainble in the ether to me.
So, my current age is pretty much 'baby' which I have no qualms with as I can still and all comers, young and old to the dust.

However, once more. Does that make me old-school or new-school? Well neither really. I dont indulge in much cliqueism, though I am (quite proudly) the only remaining thursdayite, and still working to banish nighthoover. But, hootoo is the unseen carbuncle on the bottom of the cruise liner that threatens to capsize it when they realise exactly how ridiculously large the thing actually is.

Theres plenty of hiding and lurking and learning space in here for old and new. Pants to the nomenclature! h2g2 is delicious.

Also, stick this on Ask, Im curious as to the results.

I too try to avoid cliques but sometimes they are thrust upon me. A couple of individuals suggested that since I wasn't here for Rupert or the events leading up to the birth of the UnderGuide, I don't really know what it was like.

*cue comedic sound*

Of course, in my 30 years as an adult, I have never once trained the person who would be taking over my job. I couldn't possibly know what it is like to be part of the business division that was sold by one corporation to another, only to be 'downsized' or 'realigned with new strategy' or 'right-sized' or whatever the current corporate-speak was that time around.

But I do know how to survive when it happens.

What is the actual question that you would Ask of h2g2, bunnyfrog?
Q. Do you perceive a generational divide?
Q. Or how can we avoid behaving cliquish toward future post-BBC researchers?
Q. Or how can we best keep our online society intact during this period of change?
Q. Or how can we ensure that no researcher is abandoned in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable, and soon to be deserted, end of BBC Online?

Or?

*Emerges head from under sand*
I suspect the forth one would be apt as it would cause the most contention, but by the same token, the most tendancy towards self-preservation. Researchers claiming they dont need to be saved and researchers who bemoan their lot joining forces and taking on the forces of forced progression.
I have had to train my replacement once. I was then told to go find a job at McD's. On an unrelated note, the boss who said that to me suffered an industrial accident (quite true, karma I suspect).