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

You can please some of the people some of the time...

One of the most useful things about the Internet is the ability of anyone with access to make their views and opinions known to an audience that would not normally be available. There will always be someone who will find an opinion offensive, derogatory or narrow minded.

One man's meat is another man's murder...

There is alot of discussion concerning censorship of the Internet mostly by government bodies, interested in "protecting" the welfare of it's citizens. By it's very nature, censorship of the net is doomed to failure. I believe that the rules of common decency will generally prevail and that what is most important is a full and frank discussion, with the participation of all interested parties. Never before have people from different cultures, countries and political leanings had such an open forum. This seems to be something that world leaders have not yet caught onto considering the amount of old fashioned propaganda in some of the more mainstream media, (present company generally excepted). The parallels with the Vietnam conflict have already been drawn and from a more personal perspective from what was presented before, during and after the Falkland's conflict. (Why is it not called War anymore?). The differance between the English tabloid press and the Scottish tabloid's was quite striking. Who was the least biased is, and will always be, purely subjective.

Guidelines for the War in Afganistan? I say B****r the guidelines and lets talk about it.

You'll find many conversations about the war in Afghanistan on the h2g2 Talking Point 'September 11'. You can find the discussions here:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/h2g2/guide/A630163

You'll find more conversations about h2g2 censorship in the Feedback and Community Soapbox fora. See especially the conversation titled "My flippant remark is your blasphemy" at http://www.bbc.co.uk/h2g2/guide/F55683?thread=130342 Also check out Douglas Adams' Welcome message at http://www.bbc.co.uk/h2g2/guide/welcome-dna in which he wrote, "You can create your own Guide Entries containing anything you want, from your opinions of world events to a description of your home town..." When similar "guidelines" for censoring political discussion were instituted for the duration of the UK General Election, I was given an Official Warning for my anti-social behavior of pointing out this inconsistency in a discussion thread on DNA's welcome page. We've been over this topic many times with the h2g2 staff. The upshot is that they feel protecting BBC money is more important than making h2g2 an open forum, even to the norm of your typical online community or message boards. They haven't censored as much political discussion about Afghanistan as I had thought they would (in fact, I don't know of any, though it's hard to tell). But if you want to have an open, serious discussion about the war, without interference, it would be best to do so at any other website besides h2g2.

Hi Robmack,

We hope you found the Afghan War discussions on h2g2; the debate is lively and varied.

We've only had to remove a handful of postings out of the tens of thousands made on the subject of the Afghan war, so *censorship* of the subject isn't a big issue on h2g2.

The main guidelines for discussion are: do not be inflammatory; be aware of the sensitivities of others; avoid racial or cultural abuse; and do not put others at risk. We feel that most people wouldn't have a problem following these Guidelines, and that does indeed seem to be the case. They're just following common sense after all.