Slashdot Mirror
BBC To Dispose of Douglas Adams Website
An anonymous reader writes "The BBC has announced their intention to dispose of the H2G2 website, originally founded by Douglas Adams. This comes as part of an initiative by the BBC to cut their online spending by 25%. 'BBC Online will be reorganised into five portfolios of "products." All parts of BBC Online have to fit with these. Over the past year all areas of the site have been reviewed to see where, and if, they fit. Sadly ... H2G2 does not fit in the new shape of BBC Online. However, H2G2 is unusual. It is a pre-existing community that the BBC brought into its fold, not a community that the BBC set up from scratch. So rather than closing it, we've decided to explore another option. This process has been referred to elsewhere as the "disposal" of H2G2. I'll admit this is not a great choice of words, but what is means is that we'll be looking for proposals from others to take on the running of H2G2.' One option under discussion is a community buyout."
I will stand here and wait for the TARDIS to arrive and for The Doctor to save it.
They need to build a bypass. It's gotta be built, and it's gonna be built.
From TFA: However, H2G2 is unusual. It is a pre-existing community that the BBC brought into its fold, not a community that the BBC set up from scratch. So rather than closing it, we've decided to explore another option.
Now wait and see how many comments about deleting the site are posted here, and marvel at the number of people who don't read TFA...
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H2g2
Clearly, they needed to form a giant board of chairmen like Wikipedia, since it was essentially a take on Wikipedia, anyway. They needed to get all of the content to be created for free by the community. And moderated for free by the community. And edited for free by the community. And promoted for free by Google and other places that contribute to them and serve their content. And then have all that expensive primarily-text-based bandwidth to serve that apparently costs more than gold. Then hire on a ton of board members so they could justify a $20,000,000.00/yr non-profit expense to keep it running.
is it any good?
"The ability to delude yourself may be an important survival tool" - Jane Wagner -
How about just giving it to the man's family instead of trying to milk ahem I mean monetise it or "dispose" of it?
Copyright seriously needs to be amended to disallow shelving and destruction of a work.
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
I'll be happy so long as they don't just write over all copies of it like they did all those Classic Doctor Who episodes.
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DON'T PANIC
I don't know much about hosting costs, but that website seems to be mostly static content, and not a whole lot of it. Surely the costs to maintain that website are minimal?
Thing is, Adam's vision was fully implemented with Wikipedia + smartphones. Or Google, or some other combination of teh tubes . But any way you cut it H2G2 is a site for fan boys and not a really useful Guide - such Guides exist elsewhere. I'm all for fanboydom, but everyone's cutting budgets (my department has lost a prof and lots of grad student support); this seems a fairly inconsequential thing to lose.
And the search? Curiously, the article titled "Earth" is the tenth result for the search term "Earth".
The BBC erased their archive of great black and white 60's show videos "to save money" by reusing old tapes.
Those boys are wizards, that's for sure!
I suppose it depends on how hot is your cup of tea.
Unfortunately, all I can seem to manage is something almost, but not quite, entirely unlike tea.
I guess government funding has its advantages, eh? It didn't even occur to them to cut crap like this until it was extreme budget tightening time.
Sounds like a respectable set of priorities. But perhaps they forgot they were even paying for it until they found it behind an enormous mental block one day...
pfft you guys obviously don't have a copy of the guide
See the .42 registry
This is the current website: http://www.bbc.co.uk/h2g2/
Pretty good is actually pretty bad.
Seeing as the BBC is primarily funded by the license fee and other taxes
1: The license fee is an excise..
2: Other taxes? Please specify as I'm not aware of them.
a towel, and hope for the best.
-- Another senseless waste of fine bytes.
All I know is, if I ever get an iPad, I'm getting this case for it.
Be who you are...and be it in style!
The BBC also incinerated film copies of the episodes. My understanding is that this was done in order to save space in their archive. (I remember something about a leaking roof.)
When foreign stations licensed the show, they were sent copies of the episodes with instructions to return them or destroy them after broadcast. A number of episodes that survived did so because those stations failed to follow through. They violated the BBC's copyright (presumably unintentionally due to poor license compliance). Ironically, such episodes survived because of copyright infringement.
Beyond the loss of Web material like the Hitchhiker's Guide site, or of software for no longe obtainable platforms, I fear we may face a similar situation in the future due to DRM. The Doctor Who case demonstrates that the copyright holder cannot always be trusted with preservation of significant works[1], and copying is the best insurance against destruction.
[1] I emphasize significant works, by which I particularly mean those that are distributed widely. (Not personal journal articles as mentioned by another poster.) When works are distributed to the public, the public gains an interest in them. This interest is not reflected in law, but it does exist. (Indeed, I would argue that this interest arises because the public, through its activities of interpretation and evangelism, creates much of the value of such works. Think Star Wars or Rocky Horror.)
I just tried it for the first time and it's quite, ahem, rustic.
And the search? Curiously, the article titled "Earth" is the tenth result for the search term "Earth".
It can be old fashioned, not up to Google quality of search, no web 2 trickery but really, what kind of harm it does?
Fsck the Godwin law, it really started to look like nazis burning last copy books without return or the famous Alexandria library fire.
People have built the content so it should stay. Perhaps donated to a organization like Archive.org or its British equivalent.
I am pissed about the Geocities rm -rf as well, I guess I am one of rare people who really knows the consequences of rm -rf of personal/organic data.
Today, data can be compressed to amazing levels, especially html/image data and very cheaply.
I can bet there are thousands of "P2P downloaders" in Britain who does consume the data/space the poor old site uses, in a month.
They could have excuse for tape as tape is a really expensive medium, some idiot may really have come up with the idea of saving money like that. For digital data, even idiocy isn't an explanation.
Recently, I have read this article at The Register which itself is British.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/01/21/computer_history_museum_revolution/
There were some whining in article and the comments about British computers not being featured. It really seems to me that UK has lost their respect to old things even founded by legendary figures like Douglas Adams. So that was basically the reason, nobody really bothered to participate in that multi million project which even entities like BillG spared time and money.
Funny is, only organization I can come up for "saving" the site is American, Archive.org. Hope they fired up downloading already.
Sell iPlayer subscriptions to non UK citizens, even for a higher price. Start with Apple universe if you don't trust to people having "more open" devices.
There are people who will happily buy "access right" to BBC TV starting with Americans.
Deleting sites of historical significance or making your top 10 site look like a tabloid newspaper with gigantic fonts and 3rd party spying "share this" buttons won't save you. Selling content will. Believe or not, not all "foreigners" are pirates and some are already paying similar amounts of money for VPN services in UK, for iPlayer.
From TFA: However, H2G2 is unusual. It is a pre-existing community that the BBC brought into its fold, not a community that the BBC set up from scratch. So rather than closing it, we've decided to explore another option.
Now wait and see how many comments about deleting the site are posted here, and marvel at the number of people who don't read TFA...
Recently, BBC started to do really dumb things like disabling poor old "wap" site which may be still needed by some people (right, 1%) and wouldn't cost them anything. Some poor African having only access to a wap device may have been ended up out of BBC news for this reason.
They also messed up the entire news.bbc.co.uk making it like a tabloid newspaper site (they call it red top I heard) and even changed the domain to www.bbc.co.uk/news forcing millions of browser redirects.
A year earlier, we also saw Yahoo who also tries to save itself from doom with childish tricks rather than real fixes to rm -rf entire Geocities. The reason? How much money it would save? Nothing. They just swept entire 1990s web personal/general public culture without return and trendy IDIOTS here, on this very same /. site, cheered about it.
So, even if you know how Slashdot works, you can easily believe the headline and the scoop since these days, facebook/twitter bound idiots have no respect to web history.
Couldn't they just convert the whole site and upload it to Wikia or something?
I spent most of yesterday afternoon face-down on the sofa crying a little. I joined h2g2 on May 12th 1999, and have spent a significant amount of time there almost every day since. That's almost 12 years of memories. Good friends I have met, (really - it's not just an "online community", people would get together in "real life" too.) tremendous info and insights. They were doing blogging in the form of "Journals" before the word "Blog" was coined. They had a crowdsourced encyclopaedia years before Wikipedia was launched. I hope that someone takes the site over, but I can foresee huge legal problems when the time comes to split it away from the BBC site, as it will have the same usernames and passwords as thousands of BBCi accounts.
Yeah, we should just scrap the BBC and let Rupert cunting Murdoch take over everything instead.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
No, we shouldn't. We should improve the BBC.
I like Wikipedia, and I like h2g2, but I think merging the Guide into the hive-mind would be one step above throwing the server into a hole and pooping on it.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
The password issue is easy to solve: Set all passwords to random values and ask everyone to request a new password via the usual "forgot your password?" option (surely h2g2 has something like that?).
Don't you mean; Auntie believes so?
Relax Mon Ami, I am led to believe R2D2 made an offer, Says he wants to keep it in the family.
A closed mouth gathers no foot.
Perhaps they had the good fortune to find an edition of the Wikipedia that fell through a time warp from a thousand years in the future.
they all can kiss my arse.
FTFY.
Maybe, but so long as you all keep that ridiculous monarchy, however constitutional it might be, those who live in republics are going to keep making fun of you.
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That's what he said.
But don't all the other channels already cater for the common white people? Broadcasting to the people who don't get covered by the mainstream media seems an obvious purposes for a public TV station.
If there's something I dislike about our public TV is that it's too similar to private channels.
Personally, I love plenty of BBC's comedy shows.
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They are unquestionably racist, patronising various minorities via national policy [bbc.co.uk] intended to display the range of fashionable backgrounds rather than be nationally and regionally representative
Criticising the (largely based in London) BBC for not having an employee ethnic demography that follows the national average is remarkably uniformed. In London, 31% of people are non-white. The majority of BBC staff are based in London, because that is where the BBC is based. Therefore, it stands to reason that the ethnic distribution of BBC employees is going to tend towards the ethnic distribution of London (or Manchester, their second largest base). The BBC's "target" for non-white staff is only 12.5%, which isn't that high.
still better than Fox News
A wise man once said, "Where is my other quotation mark?
The problem is that, at the moment, h2g2 has *no* separate password system - it was integrated into the BBC's "Single Sign-on" initiative, then rolled forward into the BBCi Global Login. We *used* to have a separate username and password, but that wasn't good enough for the BBC who wanted every "web property" to be rolled up under the same system. So, you can't do a "forgot your password" without also resetting your password for all other BBC services. I've been talking to one of the original lead developers, and he has a couple of ideas that would involve sending out "tokens" that can be used to reclaim your account, then migrating to a different login/id system. So, it may not be as bad as I feared.
I thought it was in a disused lavatory down broken stairs in a locked room with a sign on the door that said "beware of the leopard?"
Free Martian Whores!
Yes, you experienced what most of us experienced with the transition from local BBSes to the Internet in the mid 90s.
Communities vanish sadly. On the Internet is happens in less than a generation fairly often, which is abnormal since in the normal world communities typically take generations for form and disappear barring a catastrophe or war.
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You may want to seek counseling.
Or a doctor with better drugs.
Ironically, for the past 12 years, if I felt depressed the first place I would go for support was h2g2.
It's just spending a year dead for tax reasons.