h2g2 is a UK
-based collaborative online encyclopedia project
engaged in the construction of, in its own words, "an
unconventional guide to life, the universe, and everything", in the spirit of the fictional publication The Hitchhiker's Guide to the
Galaxy from the science
fiction comedy series of the same name by
Douglas Adams. It was founded
by Adams in 1999 and has been run by the
BBC
since 2001. It is often compared to
Wikipedia but there are differences between the
sites.
The intent was to create an
Earth-focused
guide that would allow members to share information about their
geographic area and the local sites, activities and businesses, to
help people decide where they want to go and what they may find
when they get there. It has grown to contain subjects from
restaurants and recipes, to
quantum
theory and
history. Explicit advertising
of businesses is forbidden by the site owners, the BBC, but
customer reviews are permitted.
The content of the project is written by registered "Researchers"
on its website. Articles written by Researchers form the "Guide" as
a whole, with an "Edited Guide" being steadily created out of
factual articles that have been
peer
reviewed via the aptly-named "Peer Review". The Edited Guide
includes both traditional encyclopaedic subjects and more
idiosyncratic offerings, and while articles in
the Edited Guide sometimes aim for a slightly humorous style, most
are correct and well-written treatment of their subject matter by
virtue of the Peer Review process. Every article has an associated
discussion area which allows for multiple
threads, called "Conversations".
History
h2g2 was founded on 28 April 1999 as the
Earth
edition of the
The
Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by the author of the
series,
Douglas Adams, and his friends
and colleagues at
The Digital
Village. "h2g2" serves as a handy
abbreviation for that rather lengthy title,
with the advantage that most people are able to spell it. The site
was a runner-up for Best Community Site in the
Yell.com awards in 2000.
Like other
dot-com companies,
Adams' company
TDV ran into
financial difficulties towards the end of 2000 and eventually
ceased operations. In January 2001, the management of the site was
taken over by the
BBC, and moved to
bbc.co.uk (then known as BBCi). During this
takeover there was a lengthy intermission during which the site was
unavailable, which the community refers to as "Rupert" — a
reference to the serendipitous naming of the fictional
tenth planet in Adams' novel
Mostly Harmless. Members created an
alternative site, "n2g2", standing for "Nowhere To Go To", to
maintain their community while the site was down, and to complain
about changes implemented by the BBC.
21 April 2005 marked the launch of h2g2 Mobile, an edition of the
guide produced specifically for
PDA (Personal Digital Assistants)
and some
mobile phones that could
access the internet, so that people could read h2g2 entries while
on the move. This was done because people wanted h2g2 to be much
like the
Hitchhiker's Guide described in the books — a
mobile, electronic device that anyone could read from anywhere. An
earlier attempt at a
WAP phone based version of
h2g2 started in December 2000 only to end when the BBC took over
the site in January 2001.
Edited Guide
Any h2g2 Researcher may write an article (known as an 'Entry') and
then submit it to Peer Review for inclusion in the Edited Guide.
Other users will review the Entry and suggest improvements, with
the author making changes to their work as necessary. Following at
least seven days'
reviewing, Entries in
Peer Review may be recommended by a
volunteer Scout (see below) and accepted by the
in-house team. When this happens, a copy of the Entry is passed to
a volunteer Sub-editor (see below) for fact checking and general
tidying, followed by a brief check by the in-house team. Entries
appear on the site's home page on the day that they enter the
Edited Guide.
As of July 21, 2009, there were 9,773 Entries in h2g2's Edited
Guide. For comparison,
Wikipedia had 2,565
and 7,050 on that day.
Peer Review
On h2g2, entries are
peer reviewed by
members of the community who feel like spending the time to read
and comment. Reviewers may be specialists on the topic, but most
are not and it soon becomes obvious whether the average Researcher
can understand an Entry. While this has the advantage that Entries
are generally written in terms that the
layman can understand, it also means that mistakes
can occasionally slip into the Edited Guide.
Once an Entry has been picked by a volunteer Scout (see below) and
leaves Peer Review, a copy is made and editing rights are handed to
a Sub-editor. After the Entry has its day on the Front Page of h2g2
and becomes part of the Edited Guide it can be modified or updated
by its author either by requesting minor changes through the
Editorial Feedback section of h2g2, or by following the Update
Forum process if larger changes or a rewrite are needed. However,
the author can still update the original, unedited version, which
remains in the wider unedited guide. Alternatively, they may choose
to delete the unedited version, so that it does not show up in
search results.
Sub-editing
Sub-editors, likewise, are not generally
experts on the material they are editing. While it involves a
degree of
fact checking, sub-editing
mainly involves ensuring that articles are
readable and conform to the h2g2
house style.
Sub-editors may discuss changes with the Researcher who wrote the
Entry to make sure that they are correct in their information and
written in the right manner, but this is generally at the
individual sub-editor's discretion. h2g2 lacks an effective change
control system, and this occasionally leads to errors creeping in
at this stage.
Update Forum
To keep Edited Entries up-to-date, h2g2 has a formal update system.
This consists of the Update Forum process, which allows for a new
version of an existing Entry to be submitted to Peer Review. Once
the update has been reviewed to a sufficient extent, the updater
removes the update from Peer Review and uses the Editorial Feedback
system (see below) to notify the Editors. Newly-updated Edited
Entries commonly gain a further appearance on the Front Page and
appear in a list of recently-updated Entries.
Editorial Feedback
Smaller changes to Edited Entries can be made by posting to the
Editorial Feedback page, where the Editors and the Curators (a
volunteer group) will attend to them. This can include typos, minor
errors, and other small changes. It can also include the addition
of extra information:
- If the information is more than a few paragraphs, but less
than a full reworking, the information can be submitted via
Editorial Feedback. For us to accept the update, however,
it must be presented with explicit directions as to why the update
is required, as well as directions as to what goes where/replaces
what and it should be in full GuideML,
including links.
Edited Guide Writing Workshop
If an article is not yet ready for submission to Peer Review, there
exists an Edited Guide Writing Workshop (EGWW), where other
researchers can post suggestions and corrections, so that the
author can improve their work and bring it up to the standard
required of the Edited Guide. Researchers may also use the EGWW to
arrange
collaboration on an
Entry.
Flea Market
Another review forum, the Flea Market, exists as a home for
abandoned Entries. This allows other
researchers to adopt
wp:orphaned Entries
and submit them to Peer Review, with the original author taking
partial
credit. Typically, an
Entry is moved from Peer Review after its author leaves h2g2 (known
as 'Elvising' after
Elvis
Presley).
Other content
The Edited Guide forms only a small part of h2g2 as a whole. Most
of the site's 'cultural life' takes place in the far larger
Unedited Guide, which contains, amongst other things, various clubs
and societies, discussion areas, Researchers' h2g2 user pages
(known as 'Personal Spaces'), and writing workshops. The Unedited
Guide can also contain fiction, which as mentioned below may be
submitted to the Alternative Writing Workshop.
If an article does not make it through the Peer Review process, the
original (unedited) Entry can still be viewed, as before, in the
Unedited Guide. It can, of course, also be rewritten and submitted
again at a later date.
UnderGuide
There is also an Alternative Writing Workshop, where entries that
do not adhere to the Writing Guidelines can be worked on. Entries
from this workshop are candidates for the UnderGuide, and may also
be accepted for publication in the h2g2 Post (see below).
The UnderGuide is h2g2's most ambitious attempt to bring the
attention of the community to the best entries that fall outside of
the Edited Guide's Writing Guidelines. The UnderGuide volunteers
have a similar structure to the Edited Guide's volunteers - Miners
have an equivalent role to Scouts, and Gem Polishers perform a
similar task to Sub-editors (see below). Miners inhabit the
Alternative Writing Workshop to comment on entries and pick them
for the UnderGuide.
Volunteers
There are twelve different kinds of volunteer on the site, with
varying responsibilities. Any researcher can apply to become a
volunteer; if accepted, they gain a badge for their Personal Space,
advertising their status as a member of that particular group. They
are traditionally described in alphabetical order:
- Aces are responsible for welcoming new users
and assisting them in becoming active and experienced members of
h2g2 (ACE is an acronym for Assistant
Community Editor). No statistics are publicly available, but this
approach ensures that a large proportion of initially active
Researchers continue to contribute. Aces are also expected to take
a responsible role within the community, encouraging discussion and
debate.
- Aviators create audiovisual (AV) content for
h2g2. Video clips have been produced to accompany Edited Guide
entries, and both video and audio content have been produced to
accompany articles in The Post. The Aviators host their material on
an external site, h2g2aviators.com.
- Community Artists contribute the art that
illustrates entries. The volunteer group provides graphics
frequently to meet the requirement for a photo or illustration for
one new Edited Entry each weekday. Artists are always credited on
the pages they have illustrated.
- Curators are responsible Researchers who have
demonstrated a long-term commitment to the Edited Guide. They have
been granted the power to edit Entries in the Edited Guide. They
work with the Italics to keep the Edited Guide tidy and up-to-date.
Their duties include correcting typos which have slipped through
the editing process, cross-linking newer Entries to older ones and
removing broken links, and taking care of requests for minor
changes which have been posted to the Editorial Feedback
forum.
- Gurus help Researchers with technical issues,
such as with GuideML, a custom markup
language designed to allow additional features (such as formatting
for headings and subheadings, and graphical emoticons), whilst removing unwanted HTML tags (such as JavaScript
and embedded images and sounds).
- Photographers work to provide photographs for
older Edited Entries, which must be entirely their own work.
- Post Reporters are those Researchers who have
contributed regularly to h2g2's The Post (see
below).
- Scavengers are those Researchers who have
'rescued' at least five entries from the Flea Market (see above)
and used them to produce Edited Entries.
- Scouts are responsible for the running of Peer
Review, and make sure that quality work does not languish there for
too long. They keep an eye open for entries that have received a
favourable response from other Researchers, and recommend two or
three entries each month for inclusion in the Edited Guide. The
picks are reviewed by the in-house team and then forwarded to a
Sub-editor.
- Sub-editors check and edit Entries to be added
to the Edited Guide. Once they have finished working on an entry,
they submit it for a final check by the in-house team, following
which the Edited Entry is posted to the front page for a day. The
Sub-editors were h2g2's first volunteers, were originally hand
picked, and used to do the jobs of scouts as well as sub-editing
prior to the creation of Peer Review.
- University Field Researchers are Researcher
who write groups of entries based around a common theme, aiming to
provide a comprehensive guide to a specific subject. These projects
often become quite involved and may take months to complete. Once
finished, they are usually featured on the h2g2 home page for a
whole weekend.
- UnderGuide volunteers are responsible for the
running of the UnderGuide, and include Miners and Gem Polishers.
Miners are analogous to Scouts in that they recommend material from
the Alternative Writing Workshop (see above); Gem Polishers are
analogous to Sub-editors and are responsible for sub-editing
material for inclusion in the UnderGuide.
Community
The bulk
of site activity takes place in the United Kingdom
(GMT/BST) daytime, which is when the in-house
London
based team (known as 'The Italics', see below), is
there. But at other times, the US
, Canadian
and Australian researchers are also very
active.
Italics
The Italics (technically 'the Editors'), the in-house
editors of h2g2, are the only people who are paid (by
the
BBC) to work on the site. They monitor the
content of the Edited Guide and oversee the general development of
community life. They are named for the way their names appear in
conversation threads, in
bold italics, to
keep people from
impersonating them.
There are
other informal nicknames for the editors such as 'The Powers That
Be', 'The Towers', 'The Powers in the Towers' and 'Pisa
People' (again, after the slanting nature of their
on-screen nicknames).
The core personnel have changed considerably since h2g2 started in
1999. Of the original
TDV team,
only Technical Lead Jim Lynn remains working on the site., although
much of his time is spent developing the DNA software base for
other uses within the BBC; the first full-time editor, Mark Moxon,
left in 2002. -
[Mark Moxon] was previously the editor of BBC's
groundbreaking community website h2g2 for the first three years of
its being (h2g2 being the Earth Edition of The Hitchhiker's Guide
to the Galaxy).
Clubs and societies
h2g2 is large enough to have numerous unofficial
clubs and societies, set up and maintained by
Researchers. Examples include:
- The Musicians' Guild - a place for musicians
to gather and discuss musical topics.
- The Zaphodistas - Loosely
based on Mexico
's Zapatista rebels, but
named after Zaphod Beeblebrox, the
Zaphodistas campaigned for researcher rights, for example, to
include external images on h2g2 pages.
- The Freedom from Faith Foundation - An
organization of free-thinkers, the FFFF
is a forum for non-dogmatic discussion of
philosophical and religious issues.
- The Society for the Addition of a Towel Smiley
- This is a group that campaigned successfully to have a graphic
representing a towel added to the extensive
list of h2g2 smileys.
- The Thingites - a group that began as a
campaign for Thursday, a day that they find particularly woeful, to
be renamed 'Thing'. They have since broadened their scope and now
aim to have the days of the week renamed in their entirety. One of
the group's threads, 'No no no!!', reached 95,900 posts during June
2009.
- United Friends of h2g2space - One of the
largest clubs at the site, United Friends is simply a celebration
of the friendliness of h2g2.
Talk forums
Among the most popular Talk Forums on the site are:
- Ask the h2g2 Community - usually abbreviated
to Ask. This is a general forum where Researchers
can ask members of the community questions on various subjects. It
also contains long-running conversations such as "My penis and I -
what do women think of penises?", "What Films have you seen
recently?" and "(The Return of) What book are you reading at this
time?".
- The Forum - The Forum contains similar
conversations to Ask, but they tend to be of a more serious
nature.
- SEx - Science Explained Forum - an area for
Researchers to discuss scientific matters. Researchers are often
experts in particular fields and are able to provide explanations
on a broad range of subjects.
- The Quite Interesting Society - an area where
Researchers can ask questions after the style of the TV quiz show, QI.
- Miscellaneous Chat - an area devoted to
conversations about anything and everything, including the odd
'last post wins' thread.
- Lil's Atelier - often home to h2g2's busiest
conversation, the Atelier features both polite discussion and a
degree of role-play.
The Post
The Post is h2g2's own virtual
broadsheet newspaper, published fortnightly by a
team of community members. It includes cartoons, regular columns,
fiction, poetry and feature stories written and submitted by the
h2g2 Researchers. It is edited by dedicated h2g2 Researchers, not
paid in-house editors. The Post provides an outlet for comment and
for sharing experiences, and often features content that is not
intended to form a part of the Edited Guide.
Skins
Image:H2g2Classicskin.PNG|h2g2's Classic Goo
skinImage:H2g2Alabasterskin.PNG|h2g2's Alabaster
skinImage:H2g2Brunelskin.PNG|h2g2's Brunel
skinImage:H2g2Plainskin.PNG|h2g2's Plain skin
h2g2 has different
skins that may
be used to view the site. Users can set a preference to view the
site in one or other of the skins when they are logged in.
- Classic Goo was the first skin. It has large
white text on a blue background.
- Alabaster was the second skin. It features
small black text on a white background with chunks of orange and
green.
- Brunel is the newest official skin, and
consequently it is the default format for visitors who are not
logged in. It has black text on white backgrounds. The border
colours vary depending on what type of Entry is being viewed, and
can be determined by creators of Entries by using special GuideML tags; the h2g2 Front Page in Brunel changes
its colour scheme with its content.
- Plain was designed for Digibox, Palm and Pocket PC users
who cannot load the graphic-laden alabaster, brunel or classic
skins. It consists of a white background with minimal
graphics.
- pda is intended for mobile phones and pda on the mobile internet. This skin contains the
Edited Guide, the Search function and a page noting that the BBC
does not charge for use of the mobile site, but phone companies may do. The skin is
graphic-light and articles are cut into sections at headers so that
only the desired content may be downloaded. The pda skin does not
allow registration with the site, and does not contain unedited
entries or conversation fora.
Site redesign
The site is currently looking forward to a major
redesign to bring it in line with the general
appearance of
BBC sites, while maintaining a
degree of the site's old character. The current
skins (see above), the newest of which was
created in 2002, will be retired.
Terms and conditions
To contribute to the site it is necessary to register and to agree
to the h2g2 "House Rules" and the general BBC Terms and Conditions.
Registered users are called
Researchers. Researchers
retain the
copyright to their articles,
but grant the BBC a non-exclusive license to reproduce their work
in all formats.
The House Rules prohibit various things, including
racism, "hard-core"
swearing,
spamming,
flooding, "otherwise objectionable" material, and spitting.
Codes and
languages
other than
English may only be used
sparingly and with an accompanying
translation. The Terms and Conditions are more
legalistic, and prohibit breach of copyright and
defamatory material.
When the site became part of BBCi, the BBC insisted on
moderating contributions to the site soon after
they were made. However, they were eventually persuaded that the
h2g2 Community could be trusted to a system of "reactive
moderation", in which posts are not checked by moderators unless a
complaint is made. Individual user accounts are sometimes put on
"pre-moderation", meaning that posts they make are not displayed
until they have been reviewed by a moderator.
Particularly contentious major issues may lead to discussion being
moderated differently. For example:
- Political Discussions during Elections in the United
Kingdom are restricted to specific forums. These forums have
posts read by moderators to ensure that the BBC cannot be seen to
break the tight rules that govern the UK media during such
elections.
- During the 2001 invasion of
Afghanistan, extra rules were put in place.
- On 17 March 2003, h2g2 issued guidelines for discussions during
the 2003 Iraq war, including a
statement that "All new postings and articles relating to the
conflict in Iraq posted to h2g2 will now be failed". This policy
was lifted on 24 April 2003.
Occasionally, more contentious Entries submitted for review are
hidden pending moderation, with two articles about the
Nestlé boycott having been pulled in the
past.
DNA
The
software for h2g2 - and of its related
'sister' communities in the BBC, such as "606", "Film Network",
"Action Network", "Comedy Soup", "Memoryshare" and "Collective" –
is affectionately known as DNA, after the initials of author and
site founder
Douglas Noel Adams. The
DNA technology was introduced a few months after the BBC takeover.
Before this technology, there was "Ripley", which was named after
the
character from the film
Aliens, in homage to the
quote "I say we take off and nuke the entire site from orbit. It's
the only way to be sure." Before that there was a technology with
no particular name, which subsequently gained the
retronym Llama, due to the code holding the site
together being written mostly in
Perl, the
handbook for which had a picture of a
llama on
the front cover.
Adams himself was rather involved in the website in its early days.
His account name was DNA, and his user number was 42, a reference
to the famous joke in
The Hitchhiker's Guide to
the Galaxy that
the Answer to the
Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe and Everything is 42.
When Adams died in May 2001, his personal space was the focus for a
huge reaction from the community. Adams' legacy is still felt on
h2g2, and naturally the site is peppered with references to the
Hitchhiker books; it is, however, not a fan site, and was never
intended as such.
See also
References
- - We've never allowed Researchers to advertise on h2g2, but
being a part of the BBC makes it even more important that the
editorial independence of the Guide is not threatened by people
filling the Guide with adverts. Writing entries that review or
criticise commercial products are obviously fine, as long as
they're balanced, but adverts aren't.
- - Another site, created by Douglas Adams, comes at the
encyclopedia idea from a different, funnier angle.
- - At the bottom of most pages on h2g2 you'll find a
conversation area.
- Bird is a word we use quite often, which is why it's such
an easy word to say ... If birds were called "migratories" rather
than "birds," we probably wouldn't talk about them nearly so much.
We'd all say, "Look, there's a dog!" or "There's a cat!" but if a
migratory went by, we'd probably just say, "Is it teatime yet?" and
not even mention it, however nifty it looked. — Douglas Adams,
The Salmon of Doubt
- - Here are links to all the h2g2 volunteer schemes... in
alphabetical order, because all our volunteers are equally dear to
us.
- BBC
h2g2 Personal Space: Jim Lynn
- - The most important new feature for h2g2 is the addition
of a new skin, Brunel. [....] Brunel will become the default skin
for h2g2.
- - As we've already mentioned we're now in the process of
redesigning h2g2.
- - The lawyers wanted to know what rules we needed, and we
said 'The usual ones, plus "No spitting" please.' So there you go:
no spitting.
- - An example of a forum created for discussion of the 2009
elections.
- - Now that the frequency and intensity of the military
exchanges have diminished, message board users and DNA Community
members may resume discussion of the issue in their preferred
communities.
- - Conversation thread for first Nestlé boycott Entry.
- - Conversation thread for second Nestlé boycott Entry.
- - Since Ripley was a complete rewrite of h2g2 in C++, we
felt this quote rather summed up what we were doing. It makes a
great slogan, too: Ripley: It's the only way to be sure.
- - The first versions of the h2g2 site were written in Perl,
and the cover of O'Reilly's excellent book Learning Perl has a
llama on the front.
Further reading
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