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

An interesting analogy. I think it falls down in a number of places, most obviously because while you may well own the property in your house, you don't own h2g2.

In my experience with law, I have come to have a few opinions which I suspect might apply here, or at least give you something to violently disagree with .

- Property rights are never only about giving rights to someone, they are also about taking them away from someone else, (if you are a member of the liberal right and find that difficult to comprehend, think what change is implied the first time someone put a fence around a peice of land and said 'mine, you can't come here'). This is not to say they are bad per se, but just to point out the duality.

- If one or two people don't follow the rules, it's usually their fault. If a significant proportion of people don't follow the rules, the rules are at fault. For example, where I come from, there is a law that says who gives way at intersections. Virtually everyone follows this rule. There used to be a law aimed at saving fuel, which arbitrarily divided up all cars into seven groups, one of which couldn't drive on a given day of the week. Virtually everyone ignored this rule.

- When made by experts in the feild rules, and perhaps more importantly customs, tend to exclude non-experts, even when this is less efficient. For example where I come from, there is nothing particularly complex about registering change of ownership a peice of land - I could teach you the basics in half an hour. Lawyers typically charge 300-400 dollars to to this, when people are theoritically allowed do it for free. However the Land Transfer Office says it only accepts forms which are made by lawyers and sold only to lawyers and are full of lawyers expressions, like estate in fee simple and so on, instead of slightly longer plain English expressions. When I asked the LTO about this, they said they made exceptions if someone made a fuss - and about a dozen people a year do - but they prefer dealing with law firms who know what they are doing, because it saves them time. If we have to explain it all each time to a member of the public, it'll take me 10 minutes for each transfer, said a person who was paid $30 an hour. ($30/6 = $5, $5/$300 = 1/60th the cost to society of employing lawyers to do the work). Okay, things aren't quite always that neart and tidy but you get my point.

I think most people who visit h2g2 are going to want to write something. I think they're going to want to write something not after a month of surfing other people's entries in different catergories, or working out what the edited guide, peer review, writing workshops alternative writing workshops and under guide. You can label that instant gratification, if you like, but I'd stick the same label on expecting anything else, and a less polite one on writing abrasive messages to discourage new people who don't do thing just as you like them. Having read your messages to Bugar the (self confessedly) confused I don't think Bugar was the one who acted inappropriately.

I must admit if I hadn't happened to read enough of the rather lengthy set of rules to work out the first peice should go in the under guide - where a very freindly lot made a whole lot of nice comments - my response to this sort of thing would be to go back to Wikipedia.

Anyway, not meaning to grump too much, especially as having written all of this I see Phred's been flogging the dead cat already. Pax, exeunt,