Online Hitchhiker's Guide Thriving

An anonymous reader writes "A company bought the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy website (h2g2.com) back in 2011 after the BBC decided to dispose of it as part of a cost saving measure. Although it still isn't a complete guide to to Life, The Universe and Everything, it has just celebrated its 14th birthday as a constantly expanding, user-generated work."

Comments

Wikipedia

[pipatron]

I thought that was what wikipedia was for.

Re:Wikipedia

[AaronLS]

I thought that was what the giant computer Earth was for. There's a Metalicca song that goes "I don't know the answer. I don't even know the question." I doubt they were g2tg fans though.

Re:Wikipedia

[Anonymous Coward]

h2g2 started in 1999, a few years before wiki :p

Re:Wikipedia

[Anonymous Coward]

Metalicca? Watch out for those Chinese knock-offs!

Re:Wikipedia

[pezpunk]

The Vogons are beside the point. they are simply slug-brained bureaucrats. Ultimately, they were merely pawns, manipulated by a shadowy cabal of psychiatrists, who wanted the Earth eliminated in all possible parallel dimensions because they wanted all possible Questions to the answer of Life the Universe, and Everything completely eliminated forever. (since they'd subsequently be out of a job -- it's a concern as old as Deep Thought itself)

The following paragraph is offered for the confused (who may rest assured that it is unlikely to alter said state).

It is of course well known that the Ultimate Answer to Life, the Universe, and Everything is "42". Unfortunately, Arthur Dent's brainwave patterns are the closest the Universe ever gets to figuring out what the Question actually is. He was present on the Earth (which was, in fact, a computer built for the specific purpose of sussing out the Question, running a multi-million year program so complex that lifeforms living upon it formed part of its operational matrix), moments before its program was about to reach completion and spit out the Ultimate Question (and indeed moments before it was blown to smithereens by the Vogons ostensibly to make way for a Hyperspace Bypass). As a result, imprinted upon Arthur's subconscious is the final result of the Earth's program: "what do you get if you multiply six by nine?" This is no doubt some kind of perversion of the real Question, due to the fact that a few million years prior, the pre-human natives of Earth were wiped out by the useless castoffs of another civilization, which had cruelly shipped off all their moronic middle-men, telephone cleaners, and advertising agents to exile on Earth. Arthur Dent and every other human on Earth ended up descended from these idiots instead of the Neanderthals that had evolved on Earth as part of its program, and as a result its program had become corrupt.

Even in its corrupted form, Arthur's answer hints that the true Question may indeed be just as inane as the Answer. At the risk of editorializing, this supposition seems in no way inconsistent with my personal experiences within the Universe in question.

Re:Wikipedia

[magic maverick]

Did you write this for /. ? 'cause if so, that's awesome. If not, where'd you get it from?

Re:Wikipedia

[K. S. Kyosuke]

h2g2 started in 1999, a few years before wiki :p

Except that wiki was born in 1995, a few years before h2g2, on c2.com. Every R2D2 can tell you that.

Re:Wikipedia

[Samantha Wright]

The psychologist Gag Halfrunt was established as being responsible for ordering the destruction of Earth in the radio series, which was broadcast in 1978; Battlefield Earth wasn't published until 1982. Scepticism of psychology was quite popular at the time because of the misuse of Behaviorism, and the tendency of such misuses to foster the kind of dysfunction normally only found in supremely awful bureaucracies.

Encyclopedia

[Anonymous Coward]

"It is said that despite its many glaring (and occasionally fatal) inaccuracies, the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy itself has outsold the Encyclopedia Galactica because it is slightly cheaper, and because it has the words "DON'T PANIC" in large, friendly letters on the cover."

Thanks

[OhSoLaMeow]

for the phish.

Where's the humour? The irreverence? The sarcasm?

[myvirtualid]

The Guide is sprinkled liberally with editorial license, and, if sprinkled with pepper and Altarian rhino snot, can be used as a survival bar, indefinitely. There are also side helpings of sarcasm, off the wall humour, black humour, mauve humour, and the humour of a hyperintelligent yet bilious shade of blue.

Whatever h2g2.com is, it isn't the guide, lacks license, and, much like this post, lacks humour of any description, and wouldn't sustain you if served on toast.

Re:Where's the humour? The irreverence? The sarcas

[VortexCortex]

When compared to the other leading online guide to everything... It's a riot.

Joined it back when it started...

[Krokus]

...and it was a lot of fun. I met many interesting, smart and funny people there. Then the BBC bought it and instigated this absurd censorship where anything deemed offensive by the BBC was removed, including words in non-English languages. That's right, if you posted something in a language other than English, your post got removed. The blatant censorship was so ham-fisted, I left the site a couple of weeks later and have never been back.