h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

so what is H2G2?

What do you think it is?

it's a thing.

I'd say it was a dictatorship.

However, I would say it was a benign one (or at least I have not felt considerably oppressed yet, despite my gripes about moderators!)

h2g2 *should* have been a theocracy, but Douglas didn't like that idea.

I still wish we had left in the 'Smite' button.

http://www.h2g2.com/h2g2/skins/Classic/images/f_smite.gif

what did it do?

It would add people to a 'bozo list' and you'd never see any of their posts in conversations again. When we had to start caching, we couldn't then implement that feature (which required a custom SQL database call for each view on the forum).

It was basically a simple 'killfile' feature. We didn't put it in initially because we ran out of time to sort out UI for it, and the forum displays were already quite complicated. But before Ripley 1.0 it was actually possible (if you know the right URL) to add someone to your 'bozo list'. But since nobody but me knew this feature existed it was never used. Well, it was actually used once, but I can't tell you how, or by whom, or against whom.

it sounds so cool! would do away with the need for moderators for ever (yay!) as if anyone got offended by anything, they could smite anyone...

...hmmm, now i start to realise why they did away with it!

...but it would have been cool!

Let us know when you've written a java applet or similar so that all the 'smite' filtering can be done on the client side...

Could be done fairly easily with javascript these days.

TRiG.