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FrankieRoberto

Listed below are comments made by FrankieRoberto between Friday, 5th December 2008 and Thursday, 13th August 2009.

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MOTs: Putting h2g2 through its paces 9:58pm on 13 Aug 2009 Well, this has been a very interesting discussion hasn't it! Nice to see some familiar names (hello Natalie, Whoami?, Jim, Peet and others...)

I just thought I should add one last comment. Firstly, a couple of people wondered what my "motivation" was in suggesting that h2g2 might fail its BBC MOT. Well, it was first and foremost more of an observation (and perhaps a prediction) rather than a personal desire. As I've mentioned, I have a lot of love for h2g2 still and would much prefer to see it blossom.

However, over the years I've watched many of the BBC's other community websites, such as "Get Writing", "Collective", "Action Network", "Comedy Soup", "A Sense of Place", etc (all based on the same 'DNA' platform as h2g2) close down - and some of those had a much clearer purpose, target audience and obvious 'BBC fit' than h2g2. I have no idea how the audience figures of these websites compared to h2g2, but some of them had substantial communities - and their closures seem to signal that perhaps the BBC isn't as interested in fostering online communities as it once was (indeed the original '15 web principles' compiled by Tom Loosemore - http://www.tomski.com/archive/new_archive/000063.html - suggested "Link to discussions on the web, don’t host them: Only host web-based discussions where there is a clear rationale"). Furthermore, many new BBC websites and web 'products' now have to pass a "Public Value Test" (see http://www.bbc.co.uk/bbctrust/framework/public_value_test/index.html), which includes a "market impact assessment" - if h2g2 were to face this now (which it thankfully doesn't), I don't think anybody could be confident that it'd pass (again, given that much more obviously public service websites like education site 'BBC Jam' have failed the process).

So it's this background that made me wonder whether the 'MOT Test' was the BBC's way of closing h2g2, or at least substantially reviewing its purpose. Since then, I've discovered that there's a redesign process taking place for h2g2, and Nick Reynolds' "Don't Panic" post (http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/bbcinternet/2009/08/pic_of_the_day_h2g2_mot.html) suggests that maybe h2g2's future is a bit more secure.

That said, I do still think it's valid to compare h2g2 to Wikipedia (something I've been doing since 2005, see http://www.frankieroberto.com/weblog/384), and to observe that by most metrics (audience, breadth and up-to-dateness of content, scale of community, Google rank, awareness), Wikipedia is the outright winner.

A few people have pointed out that h2g2 is a "guide" rather than an encyclopaedia. Whilst this is true, there's a lot of overlap between the two. There are even other community-edited travel guides out there (I've found http://wikitravel.org to be pretty good recently - used it when on holiday).

This doesn't mean I think the BBC should suddenly close down and archive h2g2 though (as happened with some of the other community sites) - that'd be terrible. I do think it's entirely valid for the BBC to evaluate the site though, and to work out how h2g2 can be made a stronger part of the BBC's web offering.

For what it's worth, here's what I think the BBC should do with h2g2:

1) Immediately release all the Edited Guide content under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike licence so that anyone (including h2g2 members) can re-used it and re-publish it elsewhere.

2) Learn from the successes of h2g2's community, and investigate which topic areas could be spun-out into more specialised BBC community sites that have a greater "strategic fit". Obvious candidates might be travel, creative writing, foreign-language learning, science, and so on.

3) Work with the community to hand over greater control of the site, and eventually transition to a point where the site can be managed completely independently of the BBC. (I truly believe that the community could run the site on its own without the BBC, if it so wished. There are plenty of examples of this having happened successfully elsewhere. One obvious advantage would be that the community wouldn't have to wait for the BBC to develop new features.)

4) Keep a permanent archive of h2g2 on the BBC's website, maintaining all of the URLs (you wouldn't believe how often old BBC websites simply disappear).

Those are just my thoughts... I'd be really interested to hear what other people think should happen with h2g2 (aside from "keep it as it is" and "fix the search"). Particularly from people who aren't current members of the community, or who have never even seen the website before.
MOTs: Putting h2g2 through its paces 2:07pm on 08 Aug 2009 ST. MKII

You suggested not comparing it to Wikipedia, but then did just that!

Whilst Wikipedia does contain some mistakes, as you've pointed out, overall it has been found to be pretty accurate, and just as importantly, pretty up-to-date and incredibly comprehensive. By contrast, h2g2's peer review process dramatically limits the rate at which it can grow, and makes it much harder for articles to stay up-to-date. Plus I bet there are still mistakes that make it through anyway. Wikipedia's model still has "peer review", it's just that this review happens after an article has been published, rather than before - a model which has proved to be highly successful.

Others have pointed out that h2g2 isn't just an encyclopaedia, it's a community (3Dots suggested that it had even evolved into something different). If that's the case, then perhaps it's time to drop the focus on building an encyclopaedia to Life, the Universe and Everything, and instead concentrate on just being a supportive community. There's no shame in doing this at all (it's arguably a harder this to achieve) - however there's also no reason why this can't be done outside of the BBC.

P.S I think it's a little disingenuous to suggest that there's no community on Wikipedia. There is in fact a highly developed community on Wikipedia, with mailing lists, roles and responsibilities, a community newspaper, meetups, and even an annual international conference (see http://wikimania2009.wikimedia.org). It's just that the community is different from h2g2's (perhaps less full of humour, and more focused on encyclopaedia-building).
MOTs: Putting h2g2 through its paces 10:49am on 08 Aug 2009 Wow, the length and passion of this thread shows that h2g2 still has an active and engaged community - probably the biggest thing it has going for it.

However, I'd still fear for it in passing a MOT (in the same way you might for a dear old car, which is much loved, but clearly no longer fit for the road).

The best thing for h2g2 might be for the BBC to hand it over to the community completely, so that it can run as a completely independent external community site. It'd probably be need to move onto a different technical platform, but I'm sure the community could handle this (and the BBC could give the community the rights to the content, so that articles and the Edited Guide could be copied over too).

This outcome would, I think, work best for everyone - even if some initial pain was involved.

If you compare h2g2 against the BBC's 10 Publishing Principles (http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/bbcinternet/2009/03/ten_publishing_principles_for.html), it's clear that h2g2 doesn't meet "a clearly-defined audience need" (it meets peoples' needs, sure, but there's none that are clearly-defined), it doesn't do "one thing, really well" (it does lots of different things: a community, an encyclopaedia, fiction, advice, etc). Finally, and perhaps most damningly, it ends up "attempting to do everything", rather than linking out and belonging to the wider web.

I was part of the h2g2 community for many years, and I reach this conclusion with nothing but fondness for the site and what it's achieved (not least 9787 peer-reviewed encyclopaedia articles). I'd love if it the BBC were able to truly put the resources and thought into making it the community-driven mass encyclopaedia that was always envisaged. However, with the presence of a more successful alternative (Wikipedia), the BBC being resource-constrained, and needing a clear public purpose behind each of its websites, I think you can only conclude that it'd be best for all round if h2g2 was able to go forward independently of the BBC.

P.S It was commented on Twitter that the fact that this blog post links to Wikipedia from 'MOT' rather than h2g2 (which does have an entry - http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/A12921581) shows how h2g2 has failed. However, I think it only shows that h2g2 itself failed to become the mass-marked community-edited online encyclopaedia. The presence of Wikipedia in some ways is a massive success for h2g2. The internet has achieved the vision that h2g2 originally set out (remember that h2g2 pre-dates Wikipedia by some years), and we should celebrate that. I think Douglas Adams would be proud.
MOTs: Putting h2g2 through its paces 2:27pm on 07 Aug 2009 Given the existence of the much more comprehensive (although less quirky) Wikipedia, I can't see h2g2 passing the 'place in the market' test.

There will probably be a few failings within the 'Quality' category too. The site hasn't exactly had much design love over the past few years. And whilst there are some great articles in there, they're pretty hard to find or browse.

Strategic fit: the best hope h2g2 ever had within the BBC was fulfilling a public service to encourage and support young, new and emerging writers. However, given that the BBC saw fit to close its "Get Writing" community (see http://writersguild.blogspot.com/2004/12/bbc-get-writing-site-to-close.html), this educational remit is perhaps not such a high priority.

Audience: This was always an odd one. Whilst the site has lots of aspiring writers, it's also full of Douglas Adams fans. And perhaps that's just too specific (or generic) and audience for a BBC service?

So sadly, after 10 years (of which I was part of for the first five), maybe it's time to close the door on h2g2?
BBC Archive takes a trip to the moon 2:17pm on 24 Jun 2009 Wow, this is great. I'm loving the Panorama programme. How did they get the footage at the beginning though (of the lunar lander taking off from the moon). That must be a model, surely?

I love the way he picks up the phone at the beginning too. :-)

A great collection. Pity the videos aren't externally-editable (or re-mixable).
It begins 11:08pm on 04 Mar 2009 every weekday? you're behind already... :-)
What is PIPs? 3:43pm on 19 Feb 2009 Where does the Freeview/Satellite/cable EPG data come from? Direct from Red Bee or downstream from PIPs?
In Search of Cultural Identifiers 2:44pm on 14 Jan 2009 Agree, this is a big problem! (Which, as you say, Tom Coates identified a while back).

You could consider using Wikipedia/DBPedia identifiers - they do identify the 'cultural artefacts' (eg http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rubber_Soul and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crash_(1973_novel) ). Unfortunately, their coverage isn't that great (the notability thing means that not every book or album can be included) and the identifiers aren't necessarily that persistent (pages can be moved).

Incidentally, as I understand it, ISBNs have a 1:1 relationship with barcodes (EANs)... Bookshops have to use simple text searching or proprietary databases to identify different versions of the same book. It's a real pain!

LibraryThing might fit your needs though - see http://www.librarything.com/work/7140 - it's not quite clear how they model the data though.
Panorama Online: The next phase 7:49pm on 06 Jan 2009 Wow, I didn't realise you could watch them for a year after broadcast either. Way to go! Is this the only programme on iPlayer available for longer than 7 days/series stacked?
Patterns in radio listening - visualising Radio Pop 1:49pm on 05 Dec 2008 I reckon I'm about 20 pixels down from the top, mostly listening to 6Music and occasionally Radio 4 (when George Lamb is on 6Music).

I wish my bedside radio 'popped' (Radio Pop's word for scrobbling?) though - then I'd get a broader range of listening.

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