Rescue mission begins for Hitchhiker's Real Guide Members of the h2g2 community consortium are in the market for someone to buy the site or donate some cash to the cause, after the BBC confirmed earlier this week that it was ending its 10-year hosting of Douglas Adams’ Real Guide to the Galaxy. The portal, a forerunner to Jimbo Wales’s runaway train Wikipedia, was unleashed …
I put a lot of time and effort into h2g2 in the early days, until it was bought by the BBC and promptly neglected; also, of course, until it became apparent that Wikipedia was the winner in terms of 'serious guide to everything'.
In the early days there was a lot more emphasis on humour and creativity... until the beeb decided that it should be a serious guide. It's a small hope, but I'm still hoping it'll return to the Douglas Adams ethos.
H2G2 was full of stupid but interesting articles, such as how to make a jam sandwich, the best sex positions etc. Things which are highly subjective, weird, esoteric or otherwise completely unsuitable for any reference publication.
That was it's charm. But it's fairly draconion submission policy combined with Wikipedia meant it did lose mindshare.
I think the best thing that could happen to it is if someone indexed & crosslinked the archives and dumped the lot into a Wiki. Let the thing live with a more modern framework and a more liberal contribution policy. Maybe contributors need to be registered and there were appointed mods, but really it's little different from most forums in that regard. maintain or run.
I thought the BBC simply took ownership of it based on the H2G2 copyright and then promptly ruined it by making it safe for work, kids and what have you. I remember reading and contributing to this site in the 90s before the BBC took it over. Another great site, ruined by a big souless corporation which completey fails to understand why the site is so successfull...
I might even return to it if they manage to put it back out there amongst the community. Maybe Google could take it over and rank it up there with Wikipedia. That might even make for meaningful search results!
in terms of both storage and traffic?
This might just help any potential provider (maybe a large co-location centre, or a commercial enterprise with a significant data facility) know if a bit of spare capacity that it might have available to donate for some PR would suffice
of both.
There's a truly vast quantity of data on there, and it's still a popular community site with incredible user retention. It'll cost real money to run, even with zero maintenance; and provide no return.
Somebody might take a shot at running it with advertising, but I think the best hope is charity.
...Just bung the content onto Wikipedia and be done with it? It's past time teh BBC stopped pissing the licence payer's money up the wall on niche things like this, and actually made more decent programmes, rather than the new dumbed-down special-effects fest Dr Who, or tripe like 'stenders.
Yeah, yeah, flame on...
the content isn't suited to Wikipedia, it'd all be deleted for not being 'factual' and referenced enough.
It's more a community site than anything. The beeb bought it for the excellent community/forum technology behind it, more than for the content. The tech now powers all the forum activity on the BBC website.
Wikia is the organisation created to host wikipedia and it hosts free wikis for anyone who wants. h2g2 could have their own wiki, to which the wikipedia guidelines would not apply.
In theory it should be as simple as getting an sql dump from the beeb, running a script to mung it into a new shape for the wiki's db, and uploading it. No need to raise funds or anything.
It's likely the whole lot of h2g2's content is going down a black hole anyway. The licensing terms mean that every single contributor would have to be contacted in order to relicense their work as creative commons before it could be moved anywhere like wikipedia.
This is why licensing for the unthinkable future is so damn important.
we don't know much.
We do know that the BBC is definitely disposing of h2g2. They've assured us that doesn't mean they're closing it down. They've also assured us that they'll try and make sure they do the best by the community.
That's about as much as we know at the moment.
They've got some internal meetings lined up of the next couple of weeks to sort things out before we do know anything more and they have promised to keep us informed, which they have been doing as much as they can.
Hold on: the BBC is a Corporation wholly owned by the British taxpayers...I pay my tax and therefore I already own the H2g2 site and wouldn't have to buy it from the BBC!
Granted, we should /sell/ it (at maximum profit) if we're letting a non-tax payer take ownership but if it stays in the UK, it should be a non-profit transfer of domain management.
Footnote:
Okay, okay. Anyone who remembers British Gas' 'if you see Sid, tell him', the days before *Water PLC and so on will recognise that Government take a very..err..specialist view of 'ownership'.
Where's my Wealth of Nations when I need it?
"...I pay my tax and therefore I already own the H2g2..."
No, you own approximately one 30 millionth* of it. If you really want to take your share, fine. Here you go:
"<p"
Have a nice day.
*1/30 700 000 figure based on http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/stats/tax_receipts/table1-4.pdf assuming taxes other than income tax are considered fee taxes rather than stakeholder taxes and that your income tax is roughly average. So you're probably getting more than your fair share here, but I'm feeling nice.
Indeed - I think the same thing every time I walk past the local "BBC Shop", and see a bog-standard DVD of some old series on sale for 35 quid *when I have already coughed up the extortionate licence fee for it to be made*.
Again, I ask - Register, bring on the "No BBC tax" post icon, please.
If there are sufficient people interested in providing sufficient money to take over the hosting and running of the site, it survives; if there are not enough people prepared so to do then we know it was not worth maintaining anyway.
Given the number of people talking about how it shoudl be saved, I'm sure they'd raise more than enough money to make a go of it.
What better example do we need to show just how out of touch the BBC Trust members are completely out of touch with the listening public's demands of the BBC are.
This is as empty headed as people can get. They most likely think Melvyn Bragg satisfies the audience!
[TITLE]not trying to deceive [sic] you → #
* Submitted at Wednesday 26th January 2011 15:42 GMT
* Rejected by moderator at Wednesday 26th January 2011 16:06 GMT why?
Headmaster
Can't see what's "[sic]" about that.
Did I lose my " 'i' before 'e' except after 'c' " mantra?
Must be my age. The age of the pedant.
I can't think of a better home for Douglas' Adams living memorial than The Register... If DA wasn't a frequent visitor, well he should have been, I think he'd feel at home with the vultures style...
What do you say El Reg? Are you up to the challenge of hosting a site that did social media before it was cool?
I pay a small amount of UK tax, although I'm not allowed to do anything as controversial as vote, or even voluntarily pay for the streaming of BBC programmes.
I'd love to get involved, HTF do I email these guys? Messages posted on a forum rarely lead to anything serious, in my experience, although I'm going to give it a try.
I had a BBC employee on the doorstep two nights ago. He had a clipboard and ask in a roundabout way if I would be interested in a free sky box as part of a special deal to entice people away from virgin. I told him that we dont have a TV so a sky box would be useless to us.
I had had one hell of a day at work and should have
1) asked for ID
2) photographed him and his ID
3) reported the deception.
We *were* considering getting a sattelite dish and TV just after xmas (in the sales) but your most recent offensive, threatening letter made me feel that I would only be giving in so we missed our chance of a lovely sattelite system for 35UKP :-(
FYI we decided to try life without a TV for one year (about five years ago) to see how much more we could get done without a gogglebox, but soon after the threats, demands, attempted breakins and abusive calls started and I just cannot see how I can buy a TV and licence without feeling I am giving in to such abuse.
We've been overwhelmed by the good will and helpful offers from people whov'e read about our plight here and elsewhere.
The H2G2 Continutiy Consortium's formed and busy in Google Groups (link from here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/A80173361 - or go directly - http://tinyurl.com/h2g2c2 )and yes we do reply to all posts). We've been visited by journalists wanting to tell our story, by people offering us server space and yet more server space (which is amazing) and by folks who've been where we are. One saw his community backed up to tape and locked in a vault - ye gods! - but another successfully did what we may have to do.
We don't want to buy the site from the BBC, we want whatever is best for the Guide and the Community, and reluctantly accept that it may come to that. We hope it doesn't though.
Right now, I'm hopeful. We have the skilz. We've been offered temporary hosting. We're making contingency plans around cash. I do believe we can put the show on right here in barn. Er. That would be in the server farm.
Thanks all for your good wishes
Mrs Zen (on h2g2 on and off since June 2000)
Just found out about h2g2 through this article.
Never knew it existed.
Wonderful site.
Apparently it has just been re-vamped to a "Brand New H2G2" standard.
On first impression, it needed it.
It has many great articles that are "Approved" by a panel.
"Which are checked and sanctioned by the H2G2 Editors".
I have no idea of what I want, so I need someone else to tell me.
It also has a feature that tells of the weather around the country that is a mere four days out of date.
Updated by people who stick their heads out the window to see if it's raining.
Wow, I'm so impressed, it's like they've never heard of the Internet. Or something.
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