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

You know what? I hadn't thought of the most blatant party political smiley of all! After all, what is the symbol of the Labour Party? Why, it's a !
So there you go. I think that in this thread we have conclusively proven that h2g2 is biased in favour of all three major UK parties!

I think it's safe to say that everyone at h2g2 Towers has always been in favour of as many parties as possible.

That's *definitely* good to know. Roll on July 7th....

You meen that on July 7th there´s an h2g2 meetup partying with the MP`s???

How many 'political' parties can we have (just getting primed)

Let's start now! I vote for a . What's yours?

"Mark one, Thatch nil".

That looks like
a) political comment
b) a benchmark for what might be "acceptable"

Voting for a would be a political statement. The black are the konservativ about here...

I vote for a purely out of taste...

It was a political comment, but political comments are fine - it's heavy political barracking or hijacking that's not allowed. Read dem rules at http://www.bbc.co.uk/h2g2/guide/HouseRules-Election

Besides, Thatch lost power ten years ago, so it's not exactly a UK General Election 2001 comment, is it?

'Mark 1, Thatch Nil'
...and I thought you were talking about your latest haircut

Mark, I respect your approach. I understand the constraints you are working under, whether I like all of them or not. Heavy barracking is boring - I'm just listening to Any Questions on Radio 4 and wanting to kick walls and spit at people. I'd be interested in contributing to a forum which attempts to tease apart the ideas which sit behind the political arguments. I wouldn't avoid argument, but I would attempt to respect a) people and b) truth.

Thanks Mund. The h2g2 board on the Election 2001 page at http://www.bbc.co.uk/cgi-perl/h2/h2.cgi?&board=election2001 is proving a good outlet for the more heavy debate, so things should be fine. Not that long until it's all over, anyway...

Mark - I love the h2g2 Election message board, and I've just made my first contribution there. It's great to be able to discuss the election with my h2g2 chums, something that I thought was going to be forbidden!
In fact, I like the idea of the message board so much that I've been trying to add a link to it from my homepage - but I keep getting the "Illegal use of ampersand" message because of the ampersands in the board's URL.
Can you suggest a way round that problem?

Sure Ormy. Simply replace *all* occurrences of & with & in the URL you want to link to, and it will get through. It's an XML thing - &'s on their own are illegal.

There's more in the FAQ at http://www.bbc.co.uk/h2g2/guide/DontPanic-GuideML#9 or look at http://www.bbc.co.uk/h2g2/guide/Test533468 to see now I did it in the Election page. It wasn't right before, but it is now... whoops!

Hope this helps.

Thanks Mark - that's fixed it!

Hi Ormie

I'm really pleased that you like it. It's a good solution for everyone, and hopefully it'll draw even more people over to h2g2. And all the h2g2-ers can still talk to their friends ... Whew!

Hi Ormie

I'm really pleased that you like it. It's a good solution for everyone, and hopefully it'll draw even more people over to h2g2. And all the h2g2-ers can still talk to their friends ... Whew!

I agree completely. I have now successfully linked to the message board from my Personal Space, and I'll give the board a further plug in my "Post" column this week.

My bbc username (the one I use for h2g2) won't work, do you need to reregister?

In a word, yes! But you can then use the same login in name and password if you want to.