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."

Re:First I heard of it

[Seumas]

Not particularly. It was a flash in the pan that everyone thought was cool and you never heard about, again. It was sort of an early Wikipedia; more like Everything (which in itself was a concept that was exciting and fun for about 48hrs and then you never thought about, again).

1999: http://slashdot.org/story/99/04/28/1821246/Web-Based-Hitchhikers-Guide-to-the-Galaxy [slashdot.org]

Re:It must have been expensive.

[bipbop]

It's two years older than Wikipedia, so if by "a take on Wikipedia" you meant they decided to do their own version of Wikipedia, then that's false. If you meant that they're quite similar, then I have no argument, so carry on :-)

Re:How expensive can it be?

[Knuckles]

A bit of background for what's so costly: http://doctormo.org/2011/01/24/bbc-to-shutter-h2g2/ [doctormo.org]

Re:A History of Brilliant Behavior

[lxt]

Exactly - it wasn't unusual. It happens in almost every new piece of media - for a time its cultural value is under appreciated, and much material is lost. The same things happened in the 1910s-20s with film. Film stock *was* volatile, but with the right storage could have been preserved. Today, less than 10% of films made during that time period exist, mainly because the rest got thrown out.

The same thing happened in the 60s/70s with video tape (the stuff cost a fortune, and nobody thought people were going to care about the programs they were erasing 50 years in the future), and again with websites until crawling and archiving became commonplace.

Re:I think I know where it'll end up...

[Gordonjcp]

No, Peter Jones. Why do you ask?

Re:Sickening!

[shrykk]

You seem to be under the impression that the H2G2 site is the work of Douglas Adams or a site about his work.

Instead it is a big community-wiki sort of thing inspired by the eponymous Guide itself, about Life, the Universe and Everything.

It's not really clear that shipping the server to Adams' family would achieve anything. In a sense the H2G2 site belongs to its many contributors, who presumably will be happy with it being sold off so long as their site stays live and their community can persist.

Re:It must have been expensive.

[Spad]

The BBC is not a government programme, they are a publicly funded independent organization.