Conversation:

I stumbled across the old h2g2 site today. I was looking for Malabarista's wonderful picture of angels, just out of curiosity, and Google led me to this:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/dna/mbarchers/A39805941

It's an entry from h2g2, and it is clearly on the BBC site. Note that (for me, anyway) the skin looks like Brunel, but the text is white letters on a black background. At the top, and in the Edited By field of the entry, it has my user name, but it is my old name from before we left the BBC - "Towels at the ready".

Clicking on any link in this brings me to the new h2g2 on the Noesis servers (h2g2.com), but clearly this page itself is still on the BBC.

I wonder how long they'll leave it there.

Odd. If I cut and past that link into the address bar, it works. But if I click on the link, it doesn't.

The link works fine for me

I seem to recall that it was TRiG who came across this white on black version of Brunel. It happened during one of the BBC's infamous glitches... I think


lil xx

Isn't it a bit like wandering through a ruined Greek temple and wondering how long it will be before the lot falls down?

What a wonderful simile, Icy

The link works for me too, Gnomon, but I didn't know about the glitch.

I have noticed that when the h2g2.com servers are playing up, I get an option to "browse the BBC" along with the apology. I had thought that was a glitch but never thought to report it as such.

Some bits of the real h2g2, on our servers, have links to the BBC in them, which we're trying to eliminate. For example, in the Plain Skin, it says Copyright BBC 2002 at the bottom of every page.

But the Greek Temple is the BBC's copy of h2g2. They've put redirects in there to steer people away from it and to our site, but if you fiddle with it and go in through "mbarchers" (which I presume is something to do with "The Archers"), the redirect doesn't work and you can go exploring.

I wonder whether it's coming out of a cache on the News web server rather than from the DNA servers?

Isn't the situation that as long as they maintain the Archers message board on DNA, they will have the old hootoo in stasis?

Old collective and old 360 was like that for a long time, haven't checked recently.

I think you could probably post in the archers from your old BBC single sign on account, if you tried hard enough...

sprout

I click on that link. I got the white-on-black version.

Then I clicked on 'sign in'. I got the old BBC sign-in. I signed in.

The page turned to black-on-white (I use Brunel), and my regular username, with current tagline, appeared at the top. I was back on our site, with no BBC logo.

I dunno what that means, just thought I'd throw it in.

Funny you should say this, Dmitri. I checked the sign in link but didn't sign in because I didn't want to sign in to the BBC (which I thought would happen).

Gnomon, it looks like a html version - if I save a website in Firefox and open it from my folder, it looks exactly like that.

All websites use html, Bel.

Yes, but if you save a website in firefox and then open it, it looks like your example (and I seem to remember that it has html as part of the filename). I just tried, but it says it can't save the websites because it cannot read the source code.

This is what I was talking about, I got this message when I couldn't load h2g2 when I got up this morning:

<<Accessibility Help
Text only


BBC Homepage





--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Contact Us


Like this page?
Send it to a friend!


Sorry! We're unable to bring you the page you're looking for right now. This is probably because our site has suddenly got very busy. Please do try again in a few minutes.




About the BBC | Help | Terms of Use | Privacy & Cookies Policy
>>

Just wondering if anyone else gets that, or if it's just me. I am on IE, on my notepad laptop.

I got something along those lines this morning... Looks like there was a server error and it through up an old (and very broken) BBC error message.

You have to remember that the DNA that we got from the BBC is like a big box with wires hanging out of it. We can put stuff in, and it spits stuff out, but we can't change anything in there, nor can we see what's in there. So if there are broken bits, we can't find them or fix them. We're stuck with what we've got. And it will self-destruct five years from the day we got it, because we don't own it - it still belongs to the BBC and we can use it for five years.

We also got the other system, let's call it Pliny. We have the manuals, we can open it up and change it any way we want. If it is broken we can fix it, it looks great and although it has a large number of faults, we can track them all down and fix them. And it belongs to us. This is why Pastey is so gung ho about getting Pliny up and running. We'll be able to add Editor Tools and Moderator Tools instead of doing it all by hand. We'll be able to change that note on the Front Page which says "Recently Updated", which we can't touch at the moment. We'll be able to add extra features, such as researchers uploading their own photos.

>>>>We also got the other system, let's call it Pliny. We have the manuals, we can open it up and change it any way we want. If it is broken we can fix it, it looks great and although it has a large number of faults, we can track them all down and fix them. And it belongs to us. This is why Pastey is so gung ho about getting Pliny up and running. We'll be able to add Editor Tools and Moderator Tools instead of doing it all by hand. We'll be able to change that note on the Front Page which says "Recently Updated", which we can't touch at the moment. We'll be able to add extra features, such as researchers uploading their own photos.<<<<


Speaking personally, reading the above precis of the future fills me with hope. We've been waiting a long time for this to happen, due to all sorts of things. I shall just be so relieved when we actually get onto the new system.

Ooo, didn't know about the 5-year timebomb. All sounds very promising though

Maybe it's like the time bomb in Starship Titanic. If you disturb it, it gets confused and has to start counting down all over again.


This occurred to me as merely a joke, but there may be a bit of truth to it. If we get close to the deadline and there are still serious issues regarding this "box with wires hanging out" I don't think it would be out of the question for an extension.

Of course, I'd hope that Pliny will be up and self sufficient and the "box with wires hanging out" will be stuffed in a closet somewhere underneath a bunch of old sweaters.

I didn't know about the 5-year timebomb eitherI wonder where I put those old goggles & gas mask

I doubt there's an actual timer in there, as they would have had to modify the code to do that. It's more likely that we just don't have permission to use it after the 5-year mark, and the BBC will start frowning at us, if anyone remembers.

But Pliny is already working, although it has bugs. So it shouldn't be too long now before we'll be free to run this site the way it should be run, with:

- users uploading pictures for approval;

- short entries such as restaurant reviews being published with a minimum of reviewing/editing in a couple of minutes;

- new entries on the Front Page a few times a week, possibly even matching the original 5 times a week that we managed in 2000;

These are of course all suggestions, not promises.