There is talk that the BBC is looking to shut down h2g2, a site that the BBC acquired A few months before the death of the late Douglas Adams. Originally known as the "HitchHikers Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition" or h2g2 for short.
The idea is that a consortium of users of h2g2 come together to donate money into a not for profit organization to buy the domain and trademark from the BBC. Now I am all for this idea, except I don't want to see h2g2 become some two bit poorer version than what was originally available when DNA was alive.
On a google mailing list that was setup for this consortium, there is mention that some shared hosting could be paid for. My thought to that was, "are you serious?". Seems like this idea is going to be almost like the disaster that became webring after they went independent from Yahoo!
My thoughts on the matter is that the Wikimedia Foundation should buy this domain and trademark. Why? It seems to fit their business model. H2g2 was like the original Wikipedia of it's time, so why not? At least they have the resources to ensure the site remains somewhat professional, as well as benefitting and complementing Wikipedia.
I hope that the site doesn't disappear into obscurity with a history of pages (including some rare pages edited by DNA himself) lost to future generations of net users.
2 comments:
Yes, we're serious.
Strange as it may seem, shared hosting was and is an idea. Not an ideal, just an idea. Since that was mentioned we've had offers from several hosting companies to give us free servers, either vps or dedicated.
But you have to initially plan for all contingencies, the worst case scenario being no cash whatsoever.
Glad to see you're helping us get the news out though.
Oh, and h2g2 preceded wikipedia by a couple of years.
Steve,
Thanks for your comment. Glad to know the plan is greater than just shared hosting. As I said, I'd like to see h2g2 continue much like it did preBBC and much bigger and better.
As I said, it was the original Wikipedia of it's time, and I actually think DNA had an idea that was ahead of it's time. Had it been given the right owner (instead of BBC) it probably could have been where Wikipedia is today.
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