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

Well, I'm really p****d off that the BBC felt the need to moderate two extremely mild expletives in Spike's quotes. A***holes.

Hmmm... I think I probably did that following the guidelines

Sorry Peet!

shazz

np, Shazz, but I thought you might have slipped them through under the <./>HouseRules</.> clause "Some swearing - such as quotes from poems or plays in reviews, for example - may be editorially acceptable"...

No mention of Milligan's most faous fan, though.

Peet... I'll see if Ashley will amend it then

JtG... you mean the PoW, Charles?
Perhaps you could start a new thread off here and pop the quotes in again? I asked Lòòny if he wanted anything adding/amending but he declined, so a perfect ooportunity for you do do it!

shazz

HRH Chazza indeed. Bad news about his granny, too

Republicans, such as Spike and me, don't rate British royalty as famous or more important than other hard-working mortals

I agree that it is absurb for an organisation that shows the pain and suffering of War in it's daytime news broadcasts to censure a few mild expletives. Surely, showing pictures of bleeding woman and children is a bigger obscenity?

I know the moderation is annoying, but it really didn't bother me "that" much as I still really enjoyed your article and thanks for writing it Loony. I will sorely miss young Spike.

However, you make a valid point in that if the Beeb can broadcast other types of media such as the examples you gave, or even television and radio shows that contain bad language where it's appropriate, then why not allow similarly appropriate swearing in this Guide entry? I would have thought that Guide entries could possibly be treated differently to postings in forums...

Count me in as a fellow Republican although it's never nice for anyone to loose a member of their family.

My husband and I beg to differ on the topic as he's a devout Royalist and I've had to keep my opinions to myself over the past few days. Oh the joys of a mixed marriage!

Another bl**dy good y**n, Loony, old mate.

Spike may be right about death being the end of it all, but life would be dismal without at least a slim chance of encountering that great spirit again somewhere.

Altogether now,

"I-I-I-I'm walking back-wards for Christ-mas..."


JTG

Right

I'll ask TPTB to restore the quotes to their former glory and trust that a mention of a funny... albeit Royalist... remark is addended somewhere appropriate

shazz

What about Spike's best poem - for me;



The boy stood on the burning deck.

Twit.








Cheers,
Myriad.

Hi all,

Swearing is all about context. We do not allow swearing on h2g2 unless it is editorially justified. Quoting other people swearing is not necessarily editorially justified.

H2g2 is read by people of all ages, and is a completely different medium to television or radio. Words and images are seen or heard and then they are gone. This entry is permanent, and visible to people of all ages and sensibilities - ‘mild expletives’ to one person can be strong language to another, especially young children and their parents.

Spike has produced plenty of good quotes where he doesn't swear - I don't see the point of picking ones for the article that the BBC aren't going to show unaltered. An altered quote is no longer a quote.

As for small children, I'm pretty sure a transcript of five minutes of playground conversation would be moderated away in its entirety for excessive profanity under the current guidelines...

"Words and images are seen or heard and then they are gone" - oh, I must have missed the episode of Tomorrow's World when the BBC introduced technology to stop swear words registering on video recorders...

I'm sorry if this just seems like awkwardness for the sake of it, but I really find messing about with his quotes offensive to Spike's memory, and strings of asterisks are the sort of offensive content we have no official mechanism to complain about.

> "strings of asterisks are the sort of offensive content we have no official mechanism to complain about"

Sure we do - the yikes button. If it genuinely offends you that Spike has been moderated, then use the yikes button to say so. I'll be doing that right after this post...

Personally, I can kind of understand the second quote being moderated, but moderating the first seems over-zealous, and unnecessarilly so. And yes, just a touch disrespectful. So it goes.

Fair point. As far as we're concerned, it's OK to say things like this:

"I'm really pissed off with you"
"I got really pissed last night"

but if you say the following, they will be starred out:

"Oh p**s off, will you?"
"I went for a p**s against the wall"
"I p****d against the wall"

So, in this example, we shouldn't have starred out the first quote, and we've changed it back. Apologies - it's a subtle difference, and one that we obviously hadn't communicated to the whole editorial team, but it's a subtle point.

The second word, though, is starred out correctly, so we'll leave that one be.

Sorry for the mistake - hope you're not too pissed off with us.

Hooray. I think I'll celebrate by going out on the piss.

It just occurred to me, why do you star out the "P" word for the act uf urination? It's not a swear word in that context. It may be a little crude, but it's in common usage and far from offensive. It's just a derivative of the old French term "p*****r".

'Cos it's on the BBC's list of words to star out... presumably because it's slightly rude. Just doin' our jobs, Peet.

(BTW, the list of banned words has shrunk considerably since this time last year - so there's hope!)

oh? Can you say what you're now allowed to say?