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

Lucinda,

I read posts #1-61 before replying to 61, knowing that there were many posts left in the thread. Does the term "backlog" refer to the posts before 61, or the whole thread?

Deidzoeb -> It refers to the entire thread. See http://www.bbc.co.uk/h2g2/guide/F58629?thread=120746 for details.

> "I don't care what anyone else said"

You should do.

What was said later doesn't have any bearing on whether what you said was logically valid. It has a bearing on whether it was necessary, whether it was helpful, and whether it will have any beneficial effect, or whether it will just make things worse. It also has a bearing on *how* you are able to say the identical thing. One might simply say "I agree with X on this one", or "I'd like to support Y", and perhaps add a few minor comments of ones own.

Xanthia - "It's called having a conversation"

Very well, sir. You are crossed off.

Barton

You're right. I'm really trying to come to my senses and drop out of this thread. Last night I wrote a long ranty response, nothing that will likely help the situation, but which felt good to write. Giving in to the Dark Side. When I clicked "Post Message," it never seemed to finish loading or saving or transfering the information. I couldn't get through to h2g2 again for an hour and went to bed. This morning I thought about how useless and inflamed the thread had become (maybe more than half my fault right now) and decided not to post that one from last night. But it had unfortunately gone up last night, and I foolishly read more from Barton, and couldn't let it drop without responding, etc etc.

Bowing out of the flamewar.

Deidzoeb has left, but I should like to post this anyway, since it has bearing on the nature of peer review. The first part is disagreement with one of Deidzoeb's interpretations, so can be skipped by anyone who also disagrees.

> "It seems to me that Playboy Reporter was trying to incorporate the suggestions of some people but *disagreed* with the suggestions of others."

That's one interpretation, but I can't see where you got it from.

Playboy said things like: "If I was writing for college or a journal I'd probably work on it like you say but I'm just writing for fun ok?" - this is not disagreement, this is agreement - but tempered with a comment that making the suggested changes would not be fun. The only thing I can see which remotely sounds like disagreement is "Holy cow, Arpeggio, what a political rant!" - and even that is an insult rather than a disagreement.

I am not telepathic, I'm not going to attempt to read people's minds. If somebody wants to tell me that they disagree with something I said, they're going to have to tell me. Like, in words, in English, somewhere I can read them. Or they could email me, if they don't want to do it in public. Or get the Hermes Messenger Service to tell me, if they want to be anonymous. What they can't do is think it really hard and hope I'll absorb it via osmosis.



> "A writer should reserve the right to ignore all suggestions people give him and proclaim that he still has a good enough article, maybe one that he believes ready for the Edited Guide"

Writers do not have the right to /ignore/ suggestions. That is just pure rudeness. They also do not have the right to disagree with suggestions without giving some indication as to why - even if that indication is just "it doesn't feel right". They do have the right to disagree with any suggestions, and say why. They do have the right to ask for a second or third opinion.

Writers who disagree with all suggestions may well end up in the Writing Workshop, in the highly likely case that they are wrong, or rather, that the Scouts think that they are wrong, that their entry is ready for the Edited Guide. Alternatively they may end up ignored and unpicked at the bottom of the pile, because nobody wants to try and help someone who is so arrogant.

Writers have obligations as well as rights. So do critics. Yes, this is meant to be *fun*, but that doesn't excuse people from playing rough at musical chairs. Maybe some day I'll draw up a Critic's Charter. After all, if it worked for John Major, it can work for me!

Lucinda - Gray (or Grey)

OK here we go, this time I will try and not go off the deep end. This is the way I see it, I have been here a wee whiley, so hopefully (well theoretically) I know what I am talking about.

Sometimes in Peer Review you will be wasting your time, the Researcher will not take the advice, for whatever reason and that is just the way it is. They do not have to take the advice, maybe they think the Entry is fine the way it is, maybe they think your advice is wrong, maybe RL gets in the way. It is their perogative, it is afterall their Entry. If the info is left in Peer Review, eventually (if it gets through Peer Review) a SubEd should see it and it gets incorperated then. Whatever a Researcher does with their Entry is right. Hounding them doesn't accomplish much at all.

Entries, at this stage of the Guide, shouldn't have to be perfect (now I do not know what TPTB think of this but this is my opinion, at this stage of the guide we should be filling subjects as quickly, and as well as possible. Once someone with a massive personal knowledge of that subject appears then it can be updated to become as perfect as possible, let us just get it in there at the moment). If it gives an idea, or a couple of nuggets of decent information, with nothing too outragously wrong, then I reckon it should probably be allowed through Peer Review. An Entry on a place should not have to be a Pulitzer Prize winning piece of investigative journalism, likewise an Entry on a scientific subject does not have to be only understood by the three finest minds in that field. One aiming at a different level is just as valid.

The SubEd's job is too tidy up an Entry (spelling, grammer), and to check facts etc. Maybe put a bit of something they found in, if relevant. They should get rid of any falsehoods etc. or at least point them out to The Edited Guide reader. If the Entry reaches the Front Page with gross inaccuracies then the SubEd, and TPTB, have failed their jobs. The Researcher who wrote the paper, probably wrote to the best of their ability and knowledge, maybe they even updated it in Peer Review maybe they didn't, doesn't matter, they didn't do anything wrong.

The Scouts have the fun job of choosing Entries to become Edited Guide Entries. Indeed this is mostly arbitrary, any particular Scout can pick anything they reckon could make it into the guide. However TPTB have the final say in what goes through to The Edited Guide, so there are benchmarks to pass, TPTB must agree that it is worthy of becoming an Edited Guide Entry.

Researchers are the lifeblood of the Guide, they are what makes it what it is, they will make it into what it shall be. Researchers who write for the Edited Guide are fairly rare, they should be prized and coddled. They may be flighty, or skittish, or dull, or bright but they cannot be lazy or selfish as they are writing for the Guide, for free.

Now in this particular Entry, as far as I remember, it was about say A-Level, maybe first year at Uni level. For a single Entry covering this subject it was fairly good, a University of Life Project could have gone into huge depth, but this Entry could have been the been the overview of the Project once it had started. As I said before, I would have probably picked it to go on to the SubEds. Now it will not, and any future contributions that PlayboyResearcher might have made to The Guide will not be

Hopefully this is a bit more level headed (at least for me) So, this is my next £0.02, what do you reckon? I am away home now, so my reply will probably be sometime tomorrow, depending on work Until later....
BCNU - Crescent

This forum has degenerated considerably - it looks like Crescent has brought us back to the rational corner...

I do have to disagree with you, Crescent. In my personal opinion, the only way we have to check the accuracy of any given article is through the global community of individuals on this website. If at least two people who appear to be experts say that the article isn't complete, then my vote is to either reduce the focus of the article, or expand it with additional information.

So there needs to be some rules of engagement in Peer Review.

1) If an article is lacking some important information and you have access to this information or know where the researcher can get it, please post the link or the resource to the forum.

2) If you see that the article can be improved just by changing the thesis (for example, instead of Intelligence, the article could have been about On-line Intelligence Tests with a brief history of the nature of intelligence) post the suggestion to the forum.

3) Keep the criticism short and sweet, clear and easy to understand. If the researcher doesn't respond well to criticism, or the suggested changes aren't being made, it becomes a job for the scout. The scout reads the entry, looks at the comments, and has to decide whether the entry would be improved by the comments, or if it's ready to go despite the criticism. If the scout feels like it isn't ready, post to the forum with a note saying so.

4) Scouts that are browsing for articles to recommend should read all comments on the entry. If I'm reading the posts and find another researcher made some useful suggestions that weren't incorporated into the article, I will generally wait and see if the article gets changed before I recommend it. This is another reason why we should be looking at the oldest posts first. That way, anybody that has something to add to the subject will have had their chance.

Okay, what do you guys think? I'm trying to get down to the nut of the problem, without saying anything about the finger-pointing and backbiting that's been going on (oops, now I said it!) No more blame games; we're all adults here. It surprises me how much everybody cares about the quality of this website and how *sensitive* everyone can be. Playboy Reporter is probably the first researcher we've had who was scared off by an overdose of criticism. I'm hoping he'll be the last.

But if we don't establish some rules of critique right now, there'll be more. How many topics of that magnitude are out there? We've had 'God' and 'Intelligence' so far. Do we need to make a list of scary topics to avoid? I don't want to see that, and neither do you.

(As an aside - I would love to see Barton and Arpeggio write an article together on Intelligence. Maybe after all this cools down, they'll confer on an article!)

Deidzoeb~

Although I am addressing this to you, because I quote you, this posting is really to/for/about everyone who has posted to this thread.

*You* deserve credit for having said:

'This morning I thought about how useless and inflamed the thread had become (maybe more than half my fault right now)...

In my opinion, you showed good self-understanding there. I could only wish more people had done so, sooner.

Unfortunately, that self-understanding did not help you avoid:

...gone up last night, and I foolishly read more from Barton, and couldn't let it drop without responding, etc etc.

But, once your reason returned , you had the self-understanding to see what had happened. This is a Good Thing. Again, I wish more people had gone through the same process, sooner.



You, Deidzoeb, (and others) found fault with Barton for his 'rudeness'. Barton is not young, and has reasonably good impulse control, which your self-understanding above is all about. Impulse control is a *learned* skill. Barton is old enough to have had time to learn it, and he knows the extent to which he mouthed off without thinking, and the extent to which he said precisely what he meant.

You, on the other hand, who were astoundingly rude, in both my opinion and your own, did not know how reactive you were until after the effects of your loss of impulse control became obvious, ex post facto. You are not the only person (by any means) to have experienced this. Crescent's apology shows the same delayed-reaction recognition of loss of impulse control.

(It is [sorry , this is a *fact*] younger men who have the most trouble with escalating attacks turning into flame wars. Both age and being female are advantages. So younger men need to be very careful, in order to be as careful as, say, a middle-aged woman who is not being particularly careful.)


General remarks:

I left this discussion thread when things started to turn ugly, because I did not want to risk having any 'buttons' pushed, and saying anything I would later have to eat. I have quite a bit of experience with online message groups and I saw the potential for things to get very out-of-hand, very fast. There are some real dangers in this medium, specifically:

1)Online BBS (h2g2 more than most) keep a permanent written record of everything one says. This makes a later apology or retraction virtually impossible, especially if one said a *lot*. When anyone can scroll back, and see the place(s) where one Lost It, it is not possible to start fresh in quite the same way as it is with words spoken in haste and anger. One can say, 'I take it back', but there it still is. Grudges and hostilities linger. Old words do come back, months later, to haunt one.

2)The immediacy of the Internet (including email, etc) is a real impediment to judgment. You, Deidzoeb, realised after 'sleeping on it' that the thread was inflamed/inflammatory. Nevertheless, once online, you could not manage to exercise the self-restraint you *knew* was preferable to posting. It is *because* it is so easy to Lose It, and say the wrong thing, and have it instantly beamed to the entire planet, that posting to online BBS is so very tricky. Even carefully weighed and considered words can be badly misinterpreted. I had to add a longish explanation to something I said several days ago, after it became obvious that *everyone* misunderstood it.

Combine immediacy, loss of (or lack of) impulse control, permanence, and anger/haste/thoughtlessness/carelessness, and one has a volatile combination. Explosions happen.

My point -- I do have one -- is that escalation such as what occurred here is *normative* for online BBS. That does not make it all right. It does mean:

1) Anybody who has ever said anything s/he later regretted should remember their own mistakes, and not judge others too harshly if they say things that seem rude/excessive/insensitive/etc. The medium itself lends itself to this problem.
(Deidzoeb, if you were to print out Barton's comments to you, and yours to him, and line them up, do you have an opinion as to who would come out looking ruder? This is not meant to chastise, but to suggest -- *not* only to you -- that what one actually said and what one thinks one said are not always the same thing; we tend to distort in our own favour.)

2) There is always a way to look things up, so quoting people out of context, or accusing them of saying/implying/not saying things is a good way to make a fool of oneself. Many people in this thread said things like 'say something positive, along with the negative', and all one needs to do is look, and in fact, I did. This is one of the reasons for the 'netiquette about reading the entire thread before posting. It helps if one knows what one is talking about, and how many repetitions of the same comment are already present.

3) When reading a thread, it is essential to take note of dates. This thread runs back about four weeks. The interactions between Playboy Reporter and myself took place over the course of several days. Reading it all at once is very distorting. Many people have remarked that the individual posts were not the problem, but as a whole, the body of criticism was overwhelming. It certainly would have been, if it had all arrived at the same time, the way it *reads*, in retrospect. As it was, there was a daily dialogue of one post, each, or perhaps two each. The impact is not the same, when you are actually having the dialogue, as it is reading it in the 3rd person, later.
(I do not mean to pick on you, but your self-understanding started me on this track of thought, so I am applying what I say to you, Deidzoeb, as an example. I hope you don't mind too much. For instance, I read all of your posts to Barton all at once. I was, honestly, quite shocked. For a person protesting rudeness, you were stunningly rude yourself. Then I stopped, backtracked, checked dates/times, and got a frame of reference. You did *not* say all those things at the same time. )

If we can *all* (every, each, total, community-wide) remember these elements of BBS communication, we can probably all understand one another, and forgive one another more readily. Humans make mistakes. Their permanence makes them *worse*. The convenience of instantaneous communication makes them *easier* to make. The collapsing of real time into a 'thread' changes its character, and tends to magnify its worst elements.

I just thought I would sieze upon *your* self-understanding, to expand (and expound upon) the How and the Why of What Went Wrong Here.
Thank you for providing the opportunity. I hope this is of some help to everyone, in the process of Getting Over It.

Sincerely,
Arpeggio for LeKZ
who's never made that sort of mistake and wouldn't know a thing about it...

Crescent~

First, thank you for your apology. I did not say anything at the time, because I had decided to stay away (for my own safety and sanity). I was quite upset about your remarks. Perhaps we can talk about this elsewhere, at some future time.

A few items in your post invite comment, so far as I am concerned. Most of it makes good sense. I am primarily concerned with some questions of fact regarding the article on 'Intelligence', and the relationship of some of that to a very serious problem here at h2g2.

Needless to say, I will not be brief.

You said: Now in this particular Entry, as far as I remember, it was about say A-Level, maybe first year at Uni level.
-I'm sorry, but I disagree very strongly. I admit, I have the advantage of an excellent education. In my school, such writing (both style and content) would have embarrassed a 12 year old. Given the way my school compares to 'normal' schools, I might consider a 15 year old writing like that. There was not enough substance (or punctuation) to make it anything like 'A-Level', let alone Uni.

I am going to take the last version but one, the one I reviewed in post #47 (I think) and strip out all my comments and fixes, so there is an objective item for people to re-examine. It seems the only fair way to continue. I'll post the URL here when that is finished.

You said: If it gives an idea, or a couple of nuggets of decent information, with nothing too outragously wrong, then I reckon it should probably be allowed through Peer Review.
-How general is too general, and how bare-bones is too bare-bones?
Would an article on 'Homo Sapiens' which made no reference whatsoever to Charles Darwin's Evolution of Species, but talked about archaeology, the invention of the aeroplane, and the possibilities of cloning be meaningful, useful, or instructive in any way? Would the omission of Darwin, and the origins of 'Homo Sapiens' not seem a gaping hole? With no discussion of human evolution, how much sense would it make to talk about cloning?

The article under discussion never mentioned Jean Piaget, whose theories of cognitive development are the foundation of *everything* that we take for granted in education since the 1950s - literally, absolutely everything. Omitting Piaget from a discussion of 'Intelligence' is like omitting the oceans from a discussion of 'The Earth'.

Likewise Behaviourists (who argue that there is no such thing as 'intelligence', and whose theories dominate everything from prisons systems to the CIA - all over the Western Hemisphere) are fundamental in any discussion of 'Intelligence'. To ignore the school of thought that *does* have a very clear theory of intelligence -- there is none -- is to fail to address the subject.

I did not then, and do not now see how an article so superficial as to omit references to Piaget or Behavioural psychology could possibly have a place in the Edited Guide. Perhaps I am still trying to hold the Guide to standards that are 'too high'. Honestly, as a discussion of 'Intelligence', I would have *failed* (and required a complete do-over) such a superficial and spotty article by any student over the age of 13. There is plenty of research material available. The writer did not avail himself of it. That was his *choice*, because these problems were brought to his attention in the very earliest posts by Bright Blue Shorts, among others, before I even registered at h2g2.

Please, explain what, if any bare-bones minimum standards you would apply to an article on any subject. I realise h2g2 is not a school, and that people here write because we want to. On the other hand, the What the Eds Would Like to See seems fairly clear to me, and quite explicit: Write what you know, be factual, don't try to be funny, do spell and puncuate, be informative. Playboy Reporter did not meet *any* of those criteria, though he *was* adding improvements. How could that possibly have been adequate for the Edited Guide? I want to understand this.

You said: Researchers are the lifeblood of the Guide, they are what makes it what it is, they will make it into what it shall be. Researchers who write for the Edited Guide are fairly rare, they should be prized and coddled. They may be flighty, or skittish, or dull, or bright but they cannot be lazy or selfish as they are writing for the Guide, for free.
- See above. Your comments, among others, very nearly caused *me* to leave, and yet may. In my first three weeks here, I had two entries recommended. I'm not feeling especially like writing for the Guide, just now, because my one Most Serious Concern about that article, which I have mentioned before on several occasions, has *still* not been addressed. I am going to restate it below, and I feel sure that now that everyone has calmed down, you will all turn your attention to this problem.

This problem reflects a deeper, underlying, systemic dysfunction at h2g2. It does not take a rocket scientist to understand it, but I can see how it could go unnoticed. One I have pointed it out, I expect it will become very obvious. The solutions are less obvious. A sociologist with a good grasp of systems-theory would be able to find them. There are some here.

But first: (I am going to get very emotionally heated and sarcastic here, because I am really *hurt*; deal with it. Please do not lash out at me, for saying, once, what *I* feel.)
'prized and coddled'? Ah. That would be what happened to Barton today, when he was asked to *leave* a Forum, because of his association with *this* fiasco. That would be what happened to me this morning, when an ACE, who should know better, left a vicious, emotionally violent piece of caca at my 'space', telling me to siddown and shaddup. Prizing. Right. Coddling. That was what you did to Barton and to me, isn't it? You and so many others. I am not gone only because *some* of the people here made me feel as though this *could* be a really special place. I am not a diva and I am not asking for special treatment. Civil would be a good place to start! I did not sign up to be anybody's scapegoat, and since that boy left here, people have been talking about me behind my back under my nose in a way that would have sent anyone younger, weaker, or less stubborn running the other way screaming for Mommy. The way you lot (I am generalising. I can't remember names right now) have treated Barton, who is a better writer than nearly all of you (because he is a better writer than nearly anyone) is despicable. I find it morally reprehensible in the *extreme*. And as for myself... you'd think, from the tone some people have taken, that I personally *made* Playboy Reporter leave. I could not *make* him put full stops at the ends of his sentences. How could I *make* him take a drastic decision like that? What kind of sense does that make? But you don't have to be coherent if you can be loud; louder and less coherent wins over rational and quiet any time. Prize and coddle me some more, and you'll put me inpatient in a psych unit! I can not *believe* the hypocrisy of that paragraph. Perhaps you did not mean for it to be hypocritical, but it is. How do I get Outside the Asylum from here?
(end of emotionally heated, sarcastic section.)




The Real Problem
That I had with Playboy Reporter's article (I have said this enough times that it might sound dimly familiar to one or two of you) is an issue of *bigotry*. I said as much to him, and his response was that his topic was 'controversial' and 'bound to offend some people'. That was not encouraging, when I was talking about a Justice Issue.

Specifically, I found the article demeaning/insulting to people with mental illnesses. Perhaps it is still considered acceptable to make derisive comments about people with mental illnesses in the UK. I do not know. I said before in these words, that his comments were in poor taste roughly equivalent to 'rapist jokes'. That did not seem to get anyone's attention then, because they were distracted by his departure. Now, maybe, you are all paying attention?

It is not even slightly permissible to make light, let alone make 'jokes' about mental illness. Full stop. If h2g2 do not have this as an explicit part of Policy, I have no doubt the BBC do. If you lot do not have this as part of your basic moral values... let me know now, so I may leave.

Furthermore, as a member of a socially marginalised group about whom nobody *ever* thinks, I took strong exception to his dismissive and trivialising comments about 'genius'. Does this sound familiar? If he had passed 'funny' remarks about a racial minority, he would have been asked to stop, and possibly to leave. If he had trivialised the lives of gay and lesbian people, the same. Because the socially marginalised group at whose expense he was trying to get laughs are 'intellectually advantaged', no one gave his attitude a second thought. Why not?

I did. I have been eating caca since I first stepped foot in a school, at the age of 6. No one likes a 'smart-arse' -- which is a term persons in this thread have used about me. Well, this 'smart-arse' is sick of having to pretend to be stupid for the comfort and convenience of 'everybody else' Remember, Black people had to sit in the back of the bus for the comfort and convenience of 'everybody else'. Bigotry is bigotry. Playboy Reporter's bland 'bound to offend somebody' remark was undistilled bigotry.

Why have I brought this up more than *five* times, and received nothing by way of response? Is this just fine with you, because the 'smart-arses' of the world *deserve* our come-uppance? Because secretly it pleases you to see another one be knocked down? AM I THE ONLY PERSON (besides Barton and Lucinda) who detects a pattern in the witch-hunt that has been going on? You lot had anti-intellectual tirades at one end, and 'this is a place for regular folks' messages at the other, all saying: Barton, Lucinda, Arpeggio, you're *different* and so we're going to find an excuse to make you miserable. This whole charade is a perfect example of how and why we whom God cursed with brains are social oucasts: right here at h2g2, in this 'friendly' place, an article that is insulting to 'intellectually advantaged' people is 'a damn good entry' in one person's words. And the people who have a problem with it, and with the writer, are the objects of unbelievable vituperation.

We know we are hated. We got bashed enough at school, by larger, angry children, who weren't sure why they hated us, but they knew they did. We hang our heads and shut our mouths and still get blamed by other people because *they* are insecure. We say nothing and people get uncomfortable. We talk, and people make remarks about 'experts' coming along and spoiling everything. We do not think we know everything, but we are accused of it all our lives, by other people, whose intuition, or imagination, or whatever is 'normal' - unlike ours.

*Many* of you said things that are clearly bigoted against 'intellectually advantaged' people. You all know what you said and right now you wish I had never said any of this, and are desperate to find some way to blame *me* because you are *really* uncomfortable.

I insist you be accountable. I insist you take resposiblity. I am not only talking about the bigotry which made that article wholly unacceptable for the Edited Guide. I am talking about the bigotry that motivated people to make Barton's, Lucinda's, and my life unpleasant enough that we would go away and quit insisting you be accountable. I said something about some of those anti-intellectual ravings, and how they sounded like a group of Good Ole Boys in the States, not like an international group of writers and would-be writers. No one answered me then. So I ask you again: is bigotry acceptable here at h2g2?

If so, let me know at once, so I may leave.

If not, you have some thinking to do, because there are some systemic problems that are a lot further-reaching than 'the Peer Review'. You have acted (en masse, not that each of you has) in a manner consistent with people who are scared of/hate the 'intellectually advantaged'. I do not believe you were conscious of it, but it happened. Now what are you going to do to make it right?

In an earlier post I mentioned the permanence of your words. Please do not argue that this is not what has been happening. It is as obvious at a bludgeoning. I do not want to go digging for specific quotations and publicly embarrassing *anyone*. I will do it, if anyone maintains that what I am saying is false. Then everyone will be *more* miserable, and the problem will be *worse*.

Playboy Reporter wrote it. I objected to it. This was swiftly swept under the carpet, and an interesting distraction or two were introduced. Peer Review. Finger-pointing. Efforts (which have worked) to blackball Barton, me, and to a lesser extent (I hope) Lucinda. How are you, meaning everyone here at h2g2 going to put this right -- not just for the short run, but for all time?

I am more than grateful Douglas Adams did not live to see anti-intellectualism at h2g2. It is a disgrace to his memory. I am ashamed for/by those of you who gave those bigoted sentiments voice, for the permanent record. So fix this.

I have no more to say. If you want to find me, I have a 'space'. I shall probably be there. I will reply in kind to anything civil. I will report any further abuse. I am done.

I thank you for your time.

Leïlah el Khalil Zendavesta, MAR
(aka Arpeggio)

Arpeggio, thank you for the kind acceptance of the apology. I realised my rant was wrong, and could make you leave, from before I posted the apology, I forgot you were a 3 week newbie, who didn't know any better, and did not deserve it. I was wound up because of what was written to PlayboyR really quite badly trashed him, for spending his time on an Entry he wanted to write. It doesn't make what I did right, or good, but hopefully it makes it understandable.

It was a good Entry, this is because I reckon it was and would have chosen it for the Edited Guide as was. So it didn't mention Piaget, woopee, that is a cue to you - go write an Entry on Piaget. Maybe PlayboyR felt that Piaget, and his child development theories, wasn't important to what he thought his Entry on Intelligence was about (rightly or wrongly). It was his perogative, he is allowed to think that, and not to write it up in his Entry as he saw fit.

On another note humour is humour, one persons joke is another persons bigotory. My mother works in a hospice and some of the jokes she comes away with are so black that light does not escape, and some of them come from the patients. We have several mental illnesses in the family, genetic and enviromental, doesn't mean we do not joke about them. In your world it may not be permissable to make light of mental illnesses, or joke about them, in my world it is a way of dealing with it everyday.

Peer Review is just that, a review by peers. Some of the posts here came off as sounding like a marking down by a superior, or a teacher. Not a way to go about making friends. You do not seem to care that PlayboyR left, indeed you seem to find a kind of joy in it, this does not make it easy for people to like you. This is why it became like a book-burning mob, most who read it saw it as a massive dressing down to PlayboyR, we do not hate the intellectually-advantaged, and a large proportion of the regulars here are intellectually-advantaged, at least compared to me. The thing that grabbed the goat (at least for me) was the lack of community spirit, you seemed to come across as 'he is wrong, I am right, he doesn't see this, I am a superior genius, he is an numbskull idiot, the only way to do it is my way.' I do not reckon this was your intention, but that is the way it came down.

Now fixing it. Again you seem to think this is a deficiency only with us, there IS a problem on our side (for one, we are to quick to start jumping down peoples throats), but there is one on your side too. This is a community, community's have rules, some spoken, some not. If you like a community, and want to stay there, you have to make an effort to fit in. If you do not the community will deal with you, I did not realise the community here had such teeth yet, and we do try to be as open as possible, but one of the rules is 'do not chase people away, please' (and I know you think you didn't, but that is the way it looked from the outside). This, the lack of community spirit that your posts seemed to convey, as well as the appearance that they had of a 'I am superior to all of you no-brains' attitiude (I know this was not your intention, but, again, it was the way it seemed to come out) made friends, to stick up to you, here few and far between. I do not see h2g2 as bigoted, it is one of the friendliest places on the web, you can meet almost anyone here. I have never seen anything like what is happening to you before, I hope I never see it again, but I think if you want your time here bearable then you will have to bend a little.

I do not think I went off the rails there, and I do not think I was abusive, if any of it came out like that, my apologies. Look forward to the replies, but again work calls so it may be some time before I get back, but until later....
BCNU - Crescent

Hi, Lentilla. You made a few suggestions which I'd like to comment on.

1) A great idea. Please remind the italics why it is so important to be able to post URLs to forums... It's a shame - because so much criticism can be replaced by "look at this URL - I think there might be some stuff you could include from it". Except we can't.

2) Again, an excellent suggestion - we did that to some extent in this thread. I can't make up my mind on whether we did it too much or not enough. I think possibly too much in this case - remaking the same point a few times between us maybe wasn't helping.

3) I'll agree with this completely. Mikey said that he had learnt to only post a couple of points in each post - and that's something I've learnt too. I've also learnt that in future I will post long criticism to the entry, rather than the thread.

As a Scout, it is very difficult to post that note that the entry isn't ready to go without incorporating certain pieces of criticism. On the one hand, this will always be an opinion thing - and in any case there's no real way it can be non-negative, saying *this* needs changing... and *this*... and *this*, and refering to earlier comments.

Fortunately, it is a very rare occurance, because by and large authors are happy to listen to what people say and almost always do a stunning job of incorporating such things. I may discuss this further on the Scouts board at a later date.

4) I agree completely. The lack of change history makes this tricky - when people say "this is not enough", for example - you can't tell whether it has been expanded since then or not. I may resort to asking something like "So, what does everyone think of the entry now - looks like all comments have been dealt with and it's vastly improved - what do y'all reckon?"

Oh - and just to remind you - both Barton and Arpeggio feel that an entry on "Intelligence" is an impossible and unachievable target - so I'm afraid your wishes for such a collaborative entry are highly likely to go unfullfilled. Sorry!

Arpeggio - The 'escalation' we had here is normative for a BBS - but is comparatively rare for h2g2. Generally, we do better than this.

Ok, part of this is coming from such delightful usenet groups as comp.lang.java.advocacy and talk.atheism - where we had such escalations going on on a constant basis. "The flame war that won't die", crossposts to the C++ forum, random xtians wandering in lost - ahh, fond memories. Different on usenet. On usenet I don't worry (so much) about offending people's feelings, because anyone with feelings isn't on usenet - or has gotten very quick on the draw with the "kill thread" button. Somehow, "unsubscribe" just can't compete with "kill thread".

Umm - where was I? Oh yeah - in my experience, h2g2 is neither anti-intellectual, nor bigoted. You can trust me on this or not - but it really isn't the case that *anyone* would jump on *anyone* for their intelligence or lack of the same. It just doesn't happen. There do exist people with rather sick senses of humour - I'm one of them. My last trick was to do a Mission Impossible parody on the "Palestinians" thread - Oops.

Anywho - I'm one of the people who think that there should be nothing you can't make jokes about. I'm a big Tom Lehrer fan - as far as I'm concerned - if you can joke about WW3, you can joke about everything. Yes - and that includes mental illness, rapists, whoever. Just as long as you're serious about them too. That said, it is possible to joke about offensive subjects in an inoffensive manner - and it is possible to do the same in an offensive manner. Whether what Playboy said was offensive or not is not something I wish to comment on, because I do not feel it would help. However, if you do see anything severely offensive on h2g2 - anything at all - please hit the "yikes" button (or the "click here" link). That's what it is there for, after all.

In peace,
MyRedDice

Editorial Note: This Conversation has been moved to the Sin Bin, as the entry in question has now been deleted.

However this shouldn't affect the flow of conversation, and links to it will still work (though they might still show 'Peer Review' at the top).

see note, new thread my space

Lucinda,

Thank you for having pointed out on that one point and others that no one seems to be paying attention to what I have said here.

Please, all of you, note that the article I wrote stating precisely that point and attempting to do so in a fashion that might have actually worked as an entry in the guide and which would have been self-evidently false and eminently removable in the event that some one chose to write on the subject, has been recommended for removal to the Sin Bin apparently because Lucinda felt that it was impossible for anyone to consider it as anything other than an insult and which had been posted to only by people wishing to make a comment about the current crisis.

In addition to my observation that the consensus of the tread had seemed to me to be that the article could not be written, please note that I at no time criticzed Playboy Reporter's content other than to say to you all here, after he left, that I thought that in its original form it was effectively about IQ tests and not about intelligence and I stated directly to the author that his article had improved substantially. I have made no representation here or elsewhere on h2g2 that I am an expert on intelligence.

Nor, have I stated that I am a genius. I have been labeled as such and I have been attacked as such. (Which in itself is some justification of Arpeggio's of LeKZ charge in this matter.) By implication I have been 'accused' of having an IQ of 180 or belonging to that class and equally by implication I was told that my comments, observation, and suggestions were not welcome. This however is more an indication of the heated tempers than a pathological condition on h2g2.

Sitll, people seldom have called me a 'dirty Jew' unless they were mad at me. Most of the time that person would have held his prejudice in check, indicating that his prejudice is known to be wrong in that person's estimation,, at least, in the eyes of society.

Your comments, Lentilla, were largely sound and reasonable, yet you went and spoiled them whith your aside. Of course, you are entitled to your own opinion. And I'll go so far as to say that *I* would love to see the two of us collaborate on such an article, but we both don't think it can be done so neither of us is likely to undertake such a thing. Your expression of that wish in a public forum where we have both been under attack for issues related to this very topic, the implication being that we were 'lying' when we made our statements and that we really wanted to do it ourselves is, I am sure quite unintentionally, inflamatory. More so to LeKZ than to me because she is quite fanatical in her opposition to lying and will not tollerate being called a liar. She knows this, she told you so. All of us have buttons which others can push without knowing that we did.

If I had secretly believed that I was the only, or one of the only, people who could write an article on intelligence suitable for the guide I would, in fact, have been guilty of the mockery that Jimi X accused me of in the post that he posted even though he apologized in the same posting for do so. I am not mocking any one. I am simply acknowleging that the issue of there being a hole in the data base on the subject of intelligence and filling it with a place holder.

I have just had an article appear 'on the front page' (which was definitely the only nice thing that has happened around here for the last week and a bit, for me at least.) which talks about the dangers of jargon particulaly in the area of religion and politics. I would suggest, now that some of the anger is past, that we have greatly infringed on the areas of religion, by way of faith and internal values, and politics, by way of ideas about the way that things 'should' be done or not done. These things *can* be discussed as long as everyone is very careful about how they do it and what is said. I haveen't found anyone on h2g2 who isn't to a very large degree a reasonable and considerate person *in most cases.* It would be lovely to get back to that.

But, everyone must realize thata the egg shells are still on the floor, that is the reason that *I* plan to be relatively quiet for a pretty long time. The articles I am working on will not be submitted until I feel that I can safely do so without being hit back at, just by reflex action. My next topic, "The Map Is Not the Territory," was selected before this altercation broke out (which can be verified, if you feel the need), I intend to continue this article and though some of what it says might be taken as some sort of continued attack (as nearly anything I write these days seems to be taken), please be assured that I will be exherting my utmost efforts to insure that is not an attack but merely analysis of the problems related to mistaking symbols for their referents.

What ever happened here, the issue seems to be well on the way to being treated for what and not who caused/permitted it to happen. I will be watching with interest, but you will not hear more from me on this issue unless I am asked.

Barton

B~
Know how you feel.

Take care of you.

~L

Barton - of course I don't mean to insult either of you by implicating that you were lying when you said you didn't think an article on Intelligence was possible! (It sounds a little silly when I write it out, actually...) I'm just disappointed that the two most qualified people to write an article on Intelligence have decided that it's not possible!

Ah, well... I'll wait around in the hope that you'll change your mind.

Lentilla

It frightens and worries me that h2g2 is being perceived as an intellectual-hating organization. This is not the case at all; this is one of the more intellectual organizations extant on the web.

I'm disappointed that Barton and Arpeggio have gotten so much flak for saying what they thought, and I'm especially upset that Barton was booted off a forum for his past history in other forums. This doesn't happen around here! (Or at least it didn't used to...)

I think that most of the criticism B & A received was due to their high standards, not because of intellectual bigotry. The nut of the problem in Peer Review is essentially that we have differing standards for Guide Entries. The whole reason this thing got so bent out of shape is that a couple of people really cared about the truth - enough to get a little upset about it - and other people reacted to the tone of the message rather than the intent behind it.

Subsequent events were not exemplary. Everybody kept trying to make their point without listening to what the other had to say, including making obnoxious posts on people's personal spaces - and Barton's most recent definition of Intelligence on Peer Review might have been a little misguided... although amusing.

Barton, of course I didn't mean to imply that the two of you were trying to deceive the community and angling to write an article on Intelligence by your lonesome - I'm not that devious... I'm just disapppointed that the two people most qualified to write an article on Intelligence - an article we sorely need - have stated that it can't be done.

I know that both of you are feeling wounded and sensitive right now, and I don't blame you - just understand that this global community has many heads, some dumb, some smart!

I don't want to beat a dead horse, or keep rehashing the obvious, but quite honestly, I'm willing to do whatever it takes if we can work out a way in which this whole mess will never happen again.

sorry, didn't mean to repeat myself - my earlier post wasn't showing for some reason.