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Posted Feb 22, 2005 by Mrs Zen - has added Google Wave to her thumbnails in Chrome
I'm going to ask a question I've been pondering for some time: What is h2g2's place in Internet-Land?
What do we do that no other site does?
What do we do better than any other site?
Are we a cult site?
Should we be a cult site?
Have we dropped the ball for being a popularly created on-line Encyclopaedia? (Wikkipaedia gets the Google hits that we don't, and it is Wikkipaedia that Trillian links to, not h2g2).
Does it matter that Wikkipaedia has that on-line high ground?
How can we be ambasadors for BBCi online within the Internet at large?
Does it matter that all of the researchers for whom English is a second laanguage joined before the site became part of the BBC?
Should we be trying for greater internationalism?
Is the site about the Edited Guide or about writing including the Edited Guide?
Is there an overall strategic view for where we should be in Internet-Land and what we should be doing there?
What should we be doing as Hootizens to improve the site?
I mean, when you get down to it, what's it all about?
Ben
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Posted Feb 22, 2005 by Mina - Older on the outside, inside still 14
I don't think that we can compete, or should imagine we are competing, with Wikipedia, because they have different objectives.
The thing that brings me back to h2g2 time and time again is the tools. The ability to have a journal, so I can start threads that the majority of the community aren't going to be interested in without having to watch them be ignored for more general threads.
I like it that I can track my conversations easily and all in one place, and that I can see what my friends are chatting about, and find conversations I might otherwise have missed. I like it because I can see info about the people that I talk to, which helps to make friends, or not hate annoying people so much because their PS says that they've just had a bereavement, or they've posted about their divorce in their own journal.
That's what bring me back to the site. And I write entries while I'm here - in my first 18 months I wrote 2. Then the site went down for weeks, and I realised that if I wanted the site to keep going, then I'd better contribute to it.
That is what h2g2 does so much better than anywhere else. I've never seen this combination anywhere outside of a DNA site.
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Posted Feb 22, 2005 by Gnomon [See A60420098 for details of new sign-in system]
We're working on getting our Google hits back to the way they used to be.
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Posted Feb 22, 2005 by Traveller in Times >42 )^( _
Traveller in Time  giving 
"It must be indeed the right combination of tools.
Including the ability to find nearly every conversation over the past six years.
There is a fine tuned balance between confusion and astonishment when you are new to the site, creating just enough curiosity to find out more.
And more, and more  "
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Posted Feb 22, 2005 by Dr Zen now with PhD Funding.
Is it just the technology?
What's useful about the Edited Guide is, well 'Kokki-ness' each article we read will have a totally individual and unique take on things. It's unqiue, it's special and it's 
But what I want to know is the long term aim to be a unquie on-line resoure, with an identity separate from the BBC's, a more interesting version of Wikipedia, or are we going to contine in a 'cult' niche?
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Posted Feb 22, 2005 by RFJS__ - trying to write an unreadable book, finding proofreading tricky
I'm not sure anyone has any firm long-term goals for h2g2.
But wherever we're going, the journey's interesting.
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Posted Feb 22, 2005 by Gnomon [See A60420098 for details of new sign-in system]
Wikipedia tells you stuff. h2g2 explains it. At least, that's my aim when writing entries for the Edited Guide.
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Posted Feb 23, 2005 by Woodpigeon
I thought "a question" usually meant *one* question!
Whazzit all about? Well, from a user-written encyclopaedia point of view, Wikipedia <spit> has definitely stolen our thunder. We are not in the same league as them, and because of how we operate with a limited number of Edited Entries per day and loooong delays getting anything through PR and subediting, it's impossible to pretend otherwise.
I think we are something different: maybe something more personal and slightly more idiosyncratic. A guide with a human face. A guide with a community. A community of bloggers and writers who share certain things in common.
I think that one way to look at this would be to imagine how we would get on if H2G2 was still in the big bad world, depending on advertising links. The original experiment failed, as we know, and unless we were getting a huge number of new hits and new members each day, it would probably fail again if we were left to fend for ourselves.
So from that point of view, I think we are hanging on here in the BBC. H2G2 has useful technologies, a vibrant enough community, interesting articles, plenty to discuss, but in the end it's just another community with a twist.
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Posted Feb 23, 2005 by Woodpigeon
Further reflection on this: these articles currently in Peer Review, or just recently selected, give an idea of some of the best things that this community offers to the world. It's this kind of stuff that helps us to establish our own unique brand...
A3687735 Learning to Walk in Extremely High Heels
A3621638 Dorando's Marathon
A3635428 I've Never Met a Nice South African - the Song
A3625571 The Company of Capteyn Frans Banning Cocq, Nightwatch
A3491291 Green Eggs and Ham - Children's Book.
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Posted Feb 23, 2005 by GreyDesk
There was one advantage of the recent invisibility of h2g2 to search engines, and that was that a google search which included the term "h2g2" would throw up the links out there which reference back to h2g2. And there are a lot of them, which kind of indicates that what we write does have a use and a purpose
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Posted Feb 23, 2005 by Gnomon [See A60420098 for details of new sign-in system]
Hopefully, the change to the indexing metatags which Jim Lynn did recently at my request will result in h2g2 being visible on Google soon. But it could be a few weeks, as Google has a lot on its plate.
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Posted Feb 23, 2005 by Mina - Older on the outside, inside still 14
You've no idea how stupidly proud I was to read my article in a list of entries that make h2g2 what it is.
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Posted Feb 23, 2005 by Dr Zen now with PhD Funding.
I'm awfully tempted to compose a list of my favourite Edited Guide entries. In fact that could be a regular colum for 
'The Edited Edited Guide.. each week Z picks some of his favourite entries in the Guide'
<runs> off to e mail Shazz.
I'm on Study leave, can you tell?
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Posted Feb 23, 2005 by GreyDesk
Well Mina, you should be proud. You write bloody good entries 
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Posted Feb 23, 2005 by RFJS__ - trying to write an unreadable book, finding proofreading tricky
'Well, from a user-written encyclopaedia point of view, Wikipedia <spit> has definitely stolen our thunder. We are not in the same league as them, and because of how we operate with a limited number of Edited Entries per day and loooong delays getting anything through PR and subediting, it's impossible to pretend otherwise.
I think we are something different: maybe something more personal and slightly more idiosyncratic. A guide with a human face. A guide with a community. A community of bloggers and writers who share certain things in common.'
Linking to both the h2g2 vs. Wikipedia debate and the 'has the EG become too serious/encyclopaedic?' debate.
Having recently looked at Wikipedia's Final Fantasy VII article, comparing it to an Entry on the subject I once had to withdraw from PR on grounds of excessive detail , I concluded that given time and effort it is possible to out-detail Wikipedia _and_ write in a less 'grey' style. But non-dry styles stand a better chance in PR than reams of info.
One thing that has struck me before about h2g2 is that the 'house style', inasmuch as there is one, is somewhere between encyclopaedia and magazine, and I'm not sure that's explicitly recognised. For example, when I was told that an Edited Entry's length had to be kept reasonably short in order to accommodate readers' attention spans, there seemed to be an implicit assumption that readers were always going to read the entire thing. That's how I read magazine articles, but frequently not encyclopaedia articles.
Wikipedia is useful, but pretty dull. However, people who want to be entertained are going to opt for that other  Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy . So we have to be interesting _and_ useful; and argubly PR these days can emphsise utility, which is a lot easier to deal with objectively.
The unedited Guide, of course, can be quite fascinating. A complete jungle, mind.
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Posted Feb 23, 2005 by GreyDesk
You wanna know who is using h2g2? Well the BBC is for one thing
On the BBC's front page right now is 'A Salute to Stan Laurel'.
The second link takes you right here - A733763
The first link takes you to the same place in the end, after a nice visit to the Cumbrian BBC site - http://www.bbc.co.uk/cumbria/enjoy_...ria/famous_people/stan_laurel.shtml
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Posted Feb 23, 2005 by Traveller in Times >42 )^( _
Traveller in Time using the BBC search on default
"Do they have any clue there is such thing as an Edited Guide? Last time I surfed round most of the internal BBC links were to unedited entries.
No wait, this is off topic, let us continue this discussion on < F55683?thread=582344&latest=1#latest >"
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