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

Marv, I don't think your rant was at all out of place on that thread which was quite interesting. Several rebarbative comments were made in the course of the discussion, such as "American=Idiot" by some hit-and-run poster whose name has escaped me now.

My nephew was angry when he saw what was in the gents and the ladies at the cafe. He wanted to know why these "respected citizens" could carry on like that when he was punished for his bad language. I have had to explain to him the difference between obscenity and invective, the latter having been his crime of rudeness. His father and I agree that Nephew has preternatural ability with language, but right now he has to be weaned off the idea of using it indiscriminately as a weapon. You know how lads look for power at that age. This is the part that can be hard to understand: Nephew was cursing people with the same "gaity" that you see on the walls of the gents and ladies. Quite inappropriate of course, and I don't mean to quarrel with what's been done by the PTB. But when you have these age groups, you're going to have these events.

Babel, I'm not even going to talk about that other fellow here. He frightens me.

Thanks, Lil for starting a new thread on this discussion.

I agree Marv that your rant was fine, particularly since you identified it as a rant (helpful device, that), and tempered it. Of course, in the US, we do similar things internally... North vs South, New York vs. L.A., Boston/Chicago resident pronunciations, etc. The trick is differentiating between good-natured ribbing and intolerance. And don't even get started on Mac vs. PC vs. Linux

It was an interesting thread. When my entry on Normal, Illinois, USA reached the editing process, a lot of word spellings were changed to British, and it suddenly seemed like my town had moved to Enland! Made me realize (realise?) that I needed to know more about the differences in spelling and usage. Hope the person who started that thread puts up a page with the results.

That one person with the journal entries reminded me of an assosiate I had while I lived up North. The thing that freaked me out is that they both had the same name.

On the matter of the spellings, I think that I'll want to have popcorn by the last thread. Seems like the kind of reading I've been writing most recently.

Marv - your "rant" was pretty mild. It was far less objectionable than some of the anit-american comments earlier in the thread. You reasonably stated an objection in a rational way, with no rancour. If everyone could only be so reasonable, especially when they are tired, discussions such as this would be unnecessary

BTW, I posted a quote from Twain to that thread, on a plan he had for improving spelling. Check it out.

I thought your "rant" was totally in place, marv, and deserved to be said. Tyler, I'm afraid, is a sociopath, no matter his age.

What got me about Tyler was that an ACE (Lucas Panoulias I think it is)is one of his friends and was encouraging Tyler in his actions, therefore something like this, if action was required cannot be passed to the ACE's for action. It needs to go direct to Mark Moxon or Peta. This really annoys me in the light of QMike's recent demotion, coupled with the fact that since I have applied to become an ACE, I got a list of 'Things ACE's do' one of which was:

"Everyone who participates at h2g2 is bound by the terms and conditions of the site. It is particularly important that the Aces are seen to do so because they represent the public face of h2g2.

The same terms and conditions apply to Ace participation in egroups and email. It is very easy for emailed messages to be misinterpreted, so it is important that everyone participating in the group takes great care not to offend or annoy other members."

So as I have said before the Terms & Conditions of h2g2 are quite clear on their views on profanity and obscenity, basically it should not be encouraged in any form.

As the population grows, it's not going to get any easier for the PTB. Because they have a lot more on their hands than an association of entities who want to write articles for the Guide or who want to do things that support the community.

This is WAY out of scope for discussions of continuity, but we fell off-track of that when we uncovered Tyler and boberette. In the aftermath of QMike's demotion, I went exploring round young peoples' threads and fora, and it's an unmistakeable fact that there are whole FLOCKS of entities registered to this site who will never write a guide entry, who have no interest whatever in writing guide entries, and who have arrived like a horde of starlings because of the free space. Perhaps there were one or two who had read DNA and registered here ... but then they whistled up their friends.

As Babel pointed out above, many of them know each other IRL, and their threads on this site are part of a continuum of cellphones, ICQ, and school.

Now, there are adults on this site who know each other IRL, especially the London researchers, them at the centre of the universe, but they didn't encourage each other to join h2g2 so they'd have a place to share a giggle, I'd bet money on it.

Agreed! Admittedly I have not written many articles yet (ok one and it hasn't been submitted) but I still feel that despite posting to many fora, I want to be involved in DNA's 'dream' for h2g2 not a huge bitching session. There is freedom of speech and then there is outright defamation of character!
Before this thread gets way off track again, (and I know I am to blame for it, so apologies) can we either dedicate a new thread to this topic or go and hunt for some continuity errors?
I will leave this up to the Venerable One and the Loremaster to decide.

I think we should stay on topic here, quite right Babel. Otherwise we'll become the thing we're disparaging. Let's confie the gossip to the Atelier or the cafe.

There's a fine line between constructive observation and gossip, yah? Although I'm rather proud of what happened to bobberette's offending page. Maybe we are city-sized, Spork, but that was a classic village action.

I'm kind of iffy on the h2g2 dream, right now. I don't think there's anything wrong with people using h2g2 as a community- which it is- and not as a living guide (which it also is).

The only people I have problems with are routine offenders, routine spammers, routine hehehe-ers (you know, they just go or lol or I know what you mean! or ~I love you~ or some other nonesense), and wildly abbrassive researchers. I like the fact that there are people out there who are here merely for the conversation (which I like to think I am, even though I love writing guide entries- one of which was accepted today).

But I go LOL or .....

Yes, but that's not all you go on about, as I also go about using (well, not so often... it is usually ) and going LOL

It's a matter of balance, yes?

Yes, we all intersperse our posts with the classic tty acronyms and emoticons, but sometimes that is all the times require. If I ALWAYS spoke in "Venerable" mode I would drive people away from me.

I also find that I use *stage directions* more than a lot of others. Sporky seems not to need them at all. But I feel responsible for the action -- the continuity, if you will -- in those fora I moderate, like the cafe, and providing a pseudo-visual context seems to make the place more welcoming somehow. Does that make sense?

Do you know how difficult it is to write when a large dog is standing six feet away, staring at you and trying to bend your will to the idea of more milk bones?

No, but Fiver (my rabbit, for those of you who weren't in the ending scenes of TDANE) can sometimes make me feel like he's trying to hypnotize me. OF course, generally he just runs around in a circle over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over, until I pay some attention to him. I have never had a dog try to bend my will, to my knowledge.

It's a gamble: dog either gets a bone or told to GO, always gets attention. But we digress.

I don't think people should be persecuted just because they don't intend to write Guide articles. The site has its Guide side and its Community side, and I think in many cases they compliment each other. For instance, I made a post to an article on Ska, which was eventually incorporated into that person's article. The writer wasn't entirely happy with the article, and decided that the two of us could collaborate on something much better. From earlier conversations, I knew of another young ska lover, and I invited her into the process as well. The article is now in its third revision, and between the three of us, we're keeping everyone responsible for accuracy and stuff. If we ever completely finish it (he's taken to calling it the Forth Bridge edition. Apparently, when one paints the bridge over the Forth of Firth, by the time it is finished, one must go back to the beginning and paint it again), it's going to be an outstanding article.

I'm sure some of you researchers around here have also received an incidental researcher credit... something you posted conversationally to a forum, and an editor came along and said "hey, I can use this." Interaction leads to better articles, and it also gives you a way to practice your writing during periods of writer's block.

Well, I'm not in the persecution business. I agree that substantive material can come out of discussions, but I do think that in some quarters the odds are rather low.

Just a quick point GB, it's actually the 'Firth of Forth' ie the mouth opening of the River Forth. (you probably knew that and just got mixed up, easily done). As for the painting thing, it is true, that used to be the case. However recently, since Railtrack took over the East Coast route between London and Aberdeen via Edinburgh, the FRB has fallen into disrepair. They have had to embark on a massive restoration and repair program that has been running for the last 5 years. Basically they are having to strip back the years of accumulated paint, apply a new anti corrosive and then repaint. Nowadays, with the advent of new paints, it doesn't need painted continuously, which is just as well because it would never get done!
This link will take you to a webcam, for those of you who have never seen I K Brunnel's famous 'Iron Bridge':

[Broken link removed by Moderator]

That was fun. It's been a while since I've seen one of those webcam things.