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

Forgive me if this has been brought up in one of these forums already - there are just too many posts to trawl through, but it's always been my experience that as soon as an election is called, 95% of the population groans in anticipation of the forthcoming blanket news coverage and the domination of all news media by politicians spouting their dogma and decrying the other parties. Added to the reports I've been reading recently about 'election fatigue' (before the damn thing has even begun), I find the outpourings here a little hard to understand. Is h2g2 the place where that other 5% resides - the people who don't dread the coming weeks, but actually look forward to it?

Well, that's not entirely true - I do understand the ire of people who have just been told that they don't have the luxury (some may say right) of free speech, especially in the light of the recent moderation of h2g2. I don't want to talk about the election, so having that prospect taken away doesn't affect me in the least, in fact, I'm very happy about it.

Now I'm going to have to do a really bad thing by stopping before I've fully explained my argument, which is something which will most often generate an unneccesary discussion, or one which is wide of the mark, but I have to go to work. Apologies for that.

I think I agree. There are better things to talk about on h2g2.

Peta - you agree because it is very easy for you to talk about elections wherever and whenever you want...
In the majority of countries in the world it is quite possible to get locked up for talking about the current government. I have had first hand experience of this as have others on this site. Do you think we aren't upset when you tell us that you have arbitrarily decided to ban discussion of the election?
I'm really sorry you can't see why this is offensive. Was the fall of the Berlin wall a real estate issue? Was Emily Pankhurst throwing herself under the kings horse an unsporting gesture? You may well think these are bigger things than being banned from a topic of discussion, things but the chains that bind us are made form a million little links....

I could understand being upset if any individual was being prohibited from ever talking about politics anywhere.

I could even (probably) understand being upset if we were all kept from talking about politics anywhere on the bbc.

But as h2g2 is now simply a little bit piece of the bbc website, I really can't seem to understand why it's so awful that those who want to talk politics need to jump and click over to another part of the bbc site to do so.

And yes, Duncan, I've read your comments on the other threads about why posting on the "Great Debate" is still not "acceptable". And frankly, I couldn't see where your arguments held water. There's going to be an h2g2 section, people will still use their h2g2 log-in names, it's still under the same domain name, you can still talk to the same people.

For example, there's a bar I like. During presidential election years, everyone and every place is flooded with election and political talk. The rule at the bar is that if you want to talk election or politics, you do so in a room they have set aside specially for that. That way everyone else had the opportunity to enjoy their bubblies without having every conversation on every non-political topic interrupted by someone who felt the need to work Bush and Gore into every conversation. I can't remember anyone having a problem with it -- the people who wanted to talk politics had the opportunity to do so, in the company of other people who wanted to hear it.

And when it comes down to it, I can understand why they're doing it. During the US election last year, there were message boards I was on that were completely destroyed by political spam. Amazingly enough, there are people out there who are *paid* to do this kind of thing. They insert similar political messages, over and over again, under every thread in every topic, using different login names and IP addresses so that they couldn't simply be blocked. One message board that normally averaged 50 posts a week started averaging closer to 1,050. There was no easy way for a reader to actually sift through and find the posts worth reading, so most people gave up. The politcal spammers kept at it, though, and the site eventually had to be shut down due to the massive increase in volume.

Mikey

Mikey, I've seen the political and current events message boards on delphi log 1000 posts in one night. They're probably getting double that right now with all this flap about the spy-plane in China.

Those message boards are constantly running at a level where it would be impossible to read all the new entries every day. People who frequent the "US Politics" board there have to weed through junk entries every day, look for subject headings that interest them, ignore many others by raving lunatics who write dozens of entries a day. It would be difficult to tell the difference between a paid "shrill" and some of the plain citizens who enthusiastically spend six or eight hours every day ranting on the message boards.

How do readers on delphi survive all the turmoil? They act like adults. They judge for themselves which messages are worth listening to and which to ignore. They don't need to be spoonfed information.

"During the US election last year, there were message boards I was on that were completely destroyed by political spam. Amazingly enough, there are people out there who are *paid* to do this kind of thing. They insert similar political messages, over and over again, under every thread in every topic, using different login names and IP addresses so that they couldn't simply be blocked."

This could happen to h2g2 right now, whether the rest of us were prohibited from discussing the election or not. Any idiot could type out a pornographic story, copy and paste it over and over and over into guide entries and forum posts. The same thing could be done right now with political messages. How does the rule against reasonable people discussing the election prevent the kind of overwhelming attack you describe?

It doesn't. It just forces the rest of us to go use Great Debate. (Have you seen that thing? Did someone have an old BBS lying around that they sold to BBC? The friggin thing "closes" at night while no moderators are there, and your messages are queued for the next day. Let's all take a leap backwards out of the Twenty-first Century so the BBC can treat us like idiots.)

No, the arguments that don't hold water are those excuses we have been given for the "General-Election-free-zone." I don't believe those arguments as much as I believe that h2g2 contains content that is generated by visitors to the site, and the contents of this page may contain personal views which are not the views of the BBC, unless specifically stated. Please note that the BBC is not responsible for the content of any external sites listed. Please believe these disclaimers, even if the actions of the BBC prove that they don't.

Mikey - the whole ethos of this site is that it is the "Hitchikers Guide to the Galaxy". That's all of the galaxy..even the bits that only decide the future of about 56 million people.
If you ban a subject from the guide it is incomplete. Now don't get me wrong, I'm not stupid enough to think that we can actually write a guide to everything but I don't see why we should be prevented from trying. It is a good idea - a place where you can get reasonable articles on everything in the galaxy..that's probably why it is so popular. It is a bad idea to undermine the raison d'etre of this site in such an unthinking manner.
People come here looking for knowledge. Some people from around the world might well be curious as to how the mother of parliaments works and how the population of one of the longest established democracies chooses its government. And what - you have the right to turn them away saying "I'm sorry - go elsewhere...we don't talk about that kind of thing here."
The researchers on this site are amongst the most intelligent and considered online acquaintances I have ever 'met' and I think that my own political position could well be improved by discussing the various issues with them. It might give me a less self centred outlook on these issues and it would therefore make me a better voter.
The subscribers on the BBC chat board are not people that I know - many of them seem to be quite juvenile in their thinking. If I want to discuss the issues in soundbites and chest thumping there are thousands of places where I can do so. If I want to examine the issues in depth with civilised correspondents there are veryt few. Now, thanks to this rule, there is one less.