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

Hypatia.

Have I told you lately that I still love you?

Does it mean we can't quote Officer Crabtree from Allo Allo when he says "It was a dick night when the bummers pissed overhead"

Good Moaning

More to the point perhaps BH, why are there suddenly so many muppets posting to this site?

Probably because the BBC keep closing down message boards and advising them to use Collective and h2g2, although I'll be proved wrong no doubt

Why would the Beeb steer people to Hootoo from message boards when they discourage *chat room* type threads here?

MFL- I can't remember the first time you told me.

Firstly, apologies to Radox for not noticing the simulpost with GD, and in answer to your subsequent question Radox - this isn't a recent or sudden thing. It's been building up for three or four years. I expect I'll get some flak for saying this, but I don't mean anything disrespectful by it - I'm simply stating a little bit of h2g2 history. It pretty much took off in earnest with the influx of people from Leisure District. LD was a very different place and the majority of LDers didn't get that this isn't a chat site. A handful of them did and have since become highly respected h2g2 Researchers.

The more popular and well known that h2g2 becomes, the more people come to it not knowing what the original plan was and the direction in which original members steered the site. The way that h2g2 is today is largely down to the people who were here for the first year or two of h2g2's existence and is a result of their creativity and values. They shaped this place to a very large extent.

Since h2g2 has been here, other community sites such as MySpace and Suicide Girls have sprung up and these are pretty much proving to be the model for online communities now. They are far more chat-oriented than h2g2, and since more people are used to that sort of community than our model, they come here with certain expectations and assumptions. A lot of them don't notice that this isn't the same kind of place as the one(s) they're used to, and that they can't do or say the same sort of things. People come here already used to other sites, chatrooms, messageboards, bulletin boards, IRC etc, and find that this place is very different indeed. It's becoming apparent that a lot of these people don't seem to want to abide by h2g2's rules and are giving the moderators and the Eds a great deal of time-consuming grief because they don't modify their behaviour to fit this place and the way we do things here.

Peet - I did read your posts and your fears may be well founded. I'm not going to start complaining about it though until I see it happening and have some direct experience of it. Yes, if it prevents me from writing an entry about Spotted Dick, I'll be at the front of the queue waving my copy of the Daily Mail in a 'This is political correctness gone mad' stylee

Well said BH!

I would only add that there were more than *a handful* of LDers who *got it* but that isn't really important. I was on the edge of the whole digibox thing (and I did my best to provide alternate access to those who were *caught out*) but I really believe that part of the push to move people to PCs was to change their mindset. Instead of being able to labouriously type out chat on a digibox, a keyboard opened up the whole possibility of contributing in a more meaningful and fuller way. IMO, anyway.

Perhaps it's time for a mission statement to be more actively promoted on Hootoo then?

Bangs head on wall in desperation!
.
Mission statement, the worst of the worst of management speak, sounds like should be an armed forces thing.
.......soz, has to be said!

Phew I'm so glad I didn't recommend this site to any of my grown up friends who watch TV - not to mention who hold ordinary grown up conversations in real life, or go to work on a bus!! Or h**vens above attend football matches, or even tiddley wink grand finals in this neck of the woods!


I wonder what sort of person earns their daily bread designing 'profanity filters'?

What would you call it instead then?

A "Cunning plan"...?

If you use profanity on a bus around these parts you'll be made to understand by the bus driver that you should watch your mouth, and if you don't, you'll be invited to leave the bus.

There's a time and a place for everything, and while we don't always agree on what the times and places are, most people draw the line at swearing in public, particularly when kids are (or are likely to be) around.

That's turning out to be only one of the two main issues here though - there's also a worry that the filter is going to be too sensitive, based on Peet's reports from the messageboards. I'm gonna cross that bridge when I come to it.

<>

I don't want my kiddiwinks seeing any word beginning 'cun'!


Could there not be a separate hootoo for UK bus users?

Reefgirl, yes actually you are wrong, sorry. In fact it's a bit of a one-hundred and eighty from that!

There have been cases of football users from 606 discovering h2g2 and using it as their own private little chat room. When one got spotted a couple of months back by an ACE and was reported back to the staff. The message from the italics was to go after these people with both barrels! All of those accounts have been put either on pre-mod or have been suspended.

The reason being that they've come to h2g2 *purely* to avoid the editorial strictures placed upon them at another BBC board. They are not here to contribute in any way to the project the h2g2 has set out, so on that basis they will not be granted the privelidges that we've got here.

It's kind of a case that we pick up friendly hitchhikers who stick a thumb out and say hi. But stowaways get cast overboard at the first opportunity

evening all, i wish to try out this profaninityyy thingy



FART

By 'around these parts', I mean 'where I live'. Austin. Texas. A very progressive town and definitely not typical of the Lone Star state, but they still have standards of behaviour which, from my recollection of the 43 years I spent travelling on public transport in London) are hardly different from those you expected to abide by if you travel on London Transport.

And by 'they', I mean 'Capital Metro'.

Anything really, apart from "Mission Statement".
Perhaps it could just be called their "Aims for the future".
Mission Statement has always struck me as one of the worst of the new buzz phrasses.
I did ask once, at the start of a meeting, if we could just use plain English, and particularly not use Mission Statement.