h2g2

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

h2g2 is an English-language web community dedicated to the development of a handbook on the life , the universe and all the rest busy.

history

The website was established in April 1999 as the earthly issue of English The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (Dt. Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy ) by Douglas Adams and his friends and colleagues at The Digital Village founded. h2g2 serves as a practical abbreviation for the otherwise somewhat elongated Engl. Title ( The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy → HHGG), which has the advantage that most can pronounce it.

Many entries are encyclopedic , treat others fairly unconventional topics such as plastic bag bras ( plastic bags - bras ), teaching your cat to fetch (His cat's retrieving teach), or burying oneself in sand (yourself buried in the sand).

In April 1999 Douglas Adams 'company TDV started the internet service h2g2, with which the idea of ​​the hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy from Adams' book of the same name ( The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy ) was to be realized - this fictional, PDA- like encyclopedia also existed before that Internet-based encyclopedia projects inspired, but only with Douglas Adams' involvement did it become a viable and living system. In a multi-level system, h2g2 differentiates between permanent editors and various levels of volunteer employees. h2g2 works with a peer review system, which checks all articles for correctness and grammar, but also makes contributions outside of them accessible. With regard to the choice of topics, h2g2 is characterized by a generally more casual attitude.

In 2001, h2g2 was taken over by the BBC and continued as part of the BBC internet service BBC.co.uk until 2011.

Shortly after the site had been completely redesigned to match the new web design of the rest of the BBC's website, the broadcaster announced in January 2011 that it wanted to part with h2g2 due to the austerity measures. They said they were trying to get h2g2 outside of the BBC.

This company succeeded. In autumn 2011, h2g2 was formed from a merger of the 3 parties of the Community Consortium, Robbie Stamp (co-founder of TDV) and the social media provider Noesis Systems Ltd. accepted. All work on h2g2 was done by volunteers from the community, as the BBC's paid employees are of course no longer working on h2g2.

DNA

The software on which h2g2 is based and also all related subsidiary web communities such as "360", "Get Writing" and "Peoples War" is called DNA . DNA refers to the initials of D ouglas N oil A dams. DNA technology was introduced a few months after the BBC took over the website. Before that, a software called 'Ripley' was used after the character from the movie Aliens . A software called Llama was used even earlier.

Douglas Adams himself was very involved in the design and expansion of the website , especially in the early days .

Ripley and his old skins are still around today, although with the BBC's redesign of the site, a version of the site built on Zend technology is also in place. 'Barlesque', as it was called by the BBC, was to unite all of the BBC's internet sites. Shortly after the takeover of the site, both the framework and the associated skin were renamed from 'Pliny' (named after Pliny the Elder ) and are now being further developed under this name.

The 'Edited Guide'

The so-called Edited Guide is the heart of h2g2. It contains all of the 'Guide Entries' (articles written by members of the site) that have gone through the peer-reviewed system. If someone has written an entry that they consider suitable for the Edited Guide, they first send it to the peer review forum, where everything else written is read by other members of the site. Suggestions for corrections and problems in understanding the articles are discussed and implemented by the author until the entry is either considered finished or, in rare cases, abandoned. Every entry must be compatible with the House Rules of h2g2, must not infringe any copyrights and should be of good linguistic quality. Style and content are left to the authors, but fictional content is not part of the Edited Guide.

All entries are then corrected once more by volunteers (especially grammar and spelling corrections) and illustrated, unless the author himself provides suitable images.

Completed new guide entries are then presented on the 'Front Page' of h2g2 and are categorized from this point on and can be found in the 'Edited Guide' using the internal search engine. Each author retains the rights to the entries he has written (and is also named on them as the author), but allows the owners of h2g2 to continue using them as well.

The community

The second important mainstay of h2g2 is the community itself. Every member (called 'Researcher') receives a personal page for free design when registering on h2g2, as well as the possibility of sending 'journals' (diary entries) to friends on h2g2 send, a system similar to blogs, only older. Any researcher can send messages to others and participate in conversations, but there are no non-public private messages.

Some large forums are the meeting point for all researchers. The main forum of h2g2 is 'Ask h2g2', where questions can be asked of the community. These have complex topics from trivial to complicated, from meaningless to very serious. In 'SEx - Science Explained', scientific questions are asked and mostly answered. In other forums, games are played or there is simply gossip about various topics.

Each Guide Entry also has a small forum in which this entry can be discussed. This has led to a huge number of club sites and other associations (which of course are not part of the Edited Guide). Here, fixed groups of members usually talk about their favorite topics.

Although h2g2 is a purely English-language site, the community is made up of members from various origins, native languages ​​and social backgrounds.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Paul Goodenough: H2G2 Refresh: design and technical challenges . BBC Internet Blog, January 20, 2011. Retrieved January 28, 2011.
  2. ↑ The H2G2 Editors: The future of H2G2 - Latest official news. (No longer available online.) January 24, 2011, formerly in the original ; accessed on January 28, 2011 .  ( Page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Dead Link / www.bbc.co.uk   .
  3. ↑ BBC News: BBC to cut online budget by 25% . January 24, 2011. Accessed on January 28, 2011: “Community site h2g2 will also be disposed of. ... The spin-off from Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy could find a new home outside the BBC. "
  4. ↑ Kelly Fiveash: Rescue mission begins for Hitchhiker's Real Guide . In: The Register. January 26, 2011. Retrieved January 28, 2011: "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. "
  5. ↑ Ask h2g2. In: h2g2. Retrieved April 20, 2017 .
  6. ↑ SEx - Science Explained. In: h2g2. Retrieved April 30, 2017 (English).
  7. ^ The Lounge. In: h2g2. Retrieved April 30, 2017 (English).