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

http://www.bbc.co.uk/h2g2/guide/F48874?thread=150661 is shaping up to be just like the intelligence thread, although the flaming hasn't started yet. Yet again we have an entry where the entry is absolutely full of factual errors, which have been forcefully pointed out, and where for some of these errors the author makes it clear that as "his sources are correct", he has no intention of fixing them. Yet the article remains in peer review, and all we need is one thoughtless scout to recommend it, and the editors might welcome it. does anyone have any idea how we can stop this thing becoming a regular problem here?

De gustibus non est disputandum.

There's no accounting for taste.

This person is presenting a faith based argument.

There is slight chance that *I* would ever become involved other than to state that I don't argue faith and leave the discussion.

If someone can find sufficient shared axioms, postulates, and theorems with someone else, they can have a discussion. Failing that there can be no connection. To continue to attempt to do so is to guarantee misunderstanding.

The few comments there which I have read are science based and are largely saying that what has been presented is not science or not good science.

So, if I were to comment at all, I would have to join the camp that suggests a title change would be appropriate. Failing that, there doesn't seem to be anything wrong with attacking those portions that present themselves as science with proper authorities and references.

The final solution to frustration is to watch _Inherit the Wind_ and remember how the trial ended. However, it wouldn't hurt to remember that the play was not terribly objective or properly representative of the facts of the actual Scopes trial.

How do we prevent such things from turning into huge conflicts? We strive to stay objective and we trust that the editors will make sure that what *is* accepted for the edited guide is factual and complete.

How do we insure that such is the case? We can't.

What do we do if it isn't? Strive to correct it.

As was shouted at me and LeKZ at the time of the Intelligence fiasco, it's this person's article. S/he isn't required to accept anyone's suggestions.

And, the guide isn't required to accept any article, either.

Barton

I don't think there's a Scout on the verge of recommending the Entry in question. I *do* think it's on the verge of being moved to Writer's Workshop, so I don't think it's as serious a problem as you, xyroth, seem to think it is.

I do think that those who have been critical of the entry in the thread, including you, xyroth, have gone about their criticisms the wrong way, except for the first round, when you could claim you didn't know better. (Definition of insanity: doing the same thing and expecting different results)

There's being right, and there's getting through. Different strategies must be adopted with different people. I continue to think that the intelligence thread need not have turned out the way it did, and there's certainly no reason that this one should follow anything resembling that path.

In Writer's Workshop, if someone takes some of Hell's good advice and *helps* Josh write the entry instead of just saying "This thing still needs a lot of work. Go do it, Josh," then the Guide will, in the fulness of time, be enriched with a good entry about gaps in the Theory of Evolution.

Even if it goes into the Guide, and still needs work, it's not the end of the world. The Guide is built so that Entries get updated, eventually. I just Subbed an update to an old entry that had been significantly crappy, but which had sat in the guide for two years without doing any more harm than inspiring someone to improve upon it. Additionally, I have on my to-do list the completion of my already half-written update to the current Edited Relativity Entry, which frankly needs work, but which isn't hurting anyone right now.


All of this, IMHO, of course.

xyroth,

It appears that the hostility in that "evolution" peer review thread begins with post #4:

"I think that considering the consensus on the complete lack of credibility of each strand of this creationist diatribe, the editors should pop this into the guide as an example of why certain states in the bible belt of america are producing worthless degrees."

It sounds like the system might work better if there was a way for scouts or subeds to reject entries which they feel don't meet the criteria for guide entries, to prevent other people from "accidentally" recommending faulty entries.

But after that problem is dealt with, there will still be a problem with people expressing their disagreements in hostile terms on peer review. Your comments on this evolution piece seem consistent with your comments so long ago on the Intelligence thread.

(Also, I may be missing some of the interchange that has taken place elsewhere, maybe on the long evolution vs. creationist thread? Maybe you and Josh have already started a heated discussion elsewhere? Still, reading the first four posts on peer review, yours stands out as aggressive.)

I'm new. I landed here via a twisted path which you can see on my page with a link from the word 'not' at the end of the first paragraph. For some reason the ACE Mistdancer thought I should take the paragraph about what I saw and thought about it out of my page and move it in case it offended somebody. I gather a lot of people are on the defensive? So I moved it into an entry called 'Uh Oh?'.

Mistdancer said I should read this thread. I subscribed to it by following a link from someone who said something I thought made sense. Then I saw how huge it is. Mistdancer said it would explain a lot of my questions.

Before I go out and buy a week's worth of microwaveable meals, beer, and antacids, I thought I'd ask:

1. Will reading this really help me understand?
2. If not, could it be worth it for any other reason?
3. Will it only take a week?
4. How the heck can anyone be 'suspended' for 'life', or is that one of the things that will be explained here?

I'd appreciate some warnings and guidance. Maybe you have Tour Guides for these really long discussions?

Thanks for any help you can give me.

New last night, and not at all sure about what I got into,

~Silent Lucidity~

Hi, Silent Lucidity, and welcome!

Boy! Of all the thread joints in all the world, you had to walk into this one... Did you, like, really, really annoy Mistdancer or something?

Tackling the backlog on this one could be useful as a sort of a crash course in 'Meet The Researchers' and 'How to Manipulate, Intimidate and Otherwise Humble the Italics (Not!).' (Don't pay any attention to me - I resort to sarcasm far more than is healthful, even 'though the advertisments all say resorts are healthful...).)

I signed up five months ago today, and the "Lifetime Suspension" happened very soon thereafter. It's pretty clear in the beginning of this thread what happened, and the ensuing aftershocks continue to rumble through the site - as you may have noticed from a lot of the threads you've posted on (you and I seem to share many...)

There are many, many references - i.e.: 'the intelligence thread' - in a lot of the conversations you're now a part of (and we hope you stick around) that will be much clearer for having waded through this one, and you'll get a good sense of the dynamics hereabouts, too. I, for one, would be fascinated to hear what you - as an impartial new person - think of the thing as it is presented here.

And, finally, I think the antacids are a brilliant idea, and you should go right away and recommend we get an antacid smiley.



-7rob7

Hello Silent Lucidity! We almost met already. I think you can learn something by reading this, *but* you will miss a lot of the context that led to this. This is basically a record of disputes here on h2g2, which started out with the banning of a people called LeKZ. Now LeKZ were steeped in controversy almost since entering h2g2, and a mere eight weeks after they joined, they were banned for life. To make it clear: LeKZ have multiple personalities that inhabit a single body. I got to know them near the end of their stay here, and very rapidly became very good friends with them. I also have extra personalities, and one of them, Vivienne, grew especially attached to LeKZ. But anyways, there's a context of what happened before LeKZ were ultimately banned: there were escalating arguments with some of the researchers here. LeKZ are *extremely* intelligent, and outspoken about many subjects, and this led them into conflicts with some people. They were subjected to prejudice on a number of different fronts: they were called 'elitist', for insisting on high standards for the Guide, and 'antisocial', for not wanting to join in the 'parties' and frivolous talk, and for disagreeing with some people whom they considered biased, or ignorant... some people refused to give any countenance to their multiplicity, some people refused to believe the accounts of their personal histories that they offered, some people questioned their sanity and/or plainly insulted their intelligence, and so on ... it was a terrible and tragic mess. The authorities of the site seemed to always take the viewpoint *against* LeKZ and did not do anything to help them gain acceptance here, or integrate into the community... they were subjected to attack after attack until they became extremely unhappy, which I can attest to, having entered into lengthy email discussions with them at this point. It ended in LeKZ writing a cryptic posting to an out-of-the-way forum, which was pounced on and 'translated' into an offensive message for which LeKZ were banned from the site, 'for life'. I am still friends with them, though, still exchanging lots and lots of emails. They are wonderful and fascinating to know and this site has lost some thousands of people who could have been extremely valuable to it.

This 'Lifetime Suspension Thread' is long, contains many arguments and criticisms, but I think you'll be able to finish it in a day or two ... printing it out may help. I myself probably need to wade through it again.

You may know that currently three more researchers have been banned, for a week ... which is a preliminary to being banned for a month, which is a preliminary to being banned for life. They are/were all closely associated with LeKZ, and they just *happen* to all also have manifestations of multiple personalities. This is making me afraid that I might be next ... I am, as far as I know, the only 'out of the closet' multiple person remaining, and I am still very closely associated with LeKZ. This already makes me feel very lonely over here.

Right ... I think that may help you a bit. If you need a Tour Guide, I'm offering my services!

What did you get yourself into? At the very least, something interesting ... so stay around!

Hi 7rob7,

I visited your user page to try to get a clue, last night, but mostly what I got were clues phrased sort of negatively, like 'well, if I were allowed, I'd tell you something'. There's a lot of that about. I find it unnerving. Is this a website for people who admire Douglas Adams, or is it something else? See, now I'm doing it. The anxiety is visible around here, and the tendency to read the worst into everything seems pretty well everywhere I've looked.

I checked out that peer review that is linked at the top of the page, on non-Darwinism. I don't agree with a word the kid said, and I do agree that pulling out 'I'm only a kid' as a defence late in the thread was silly, but wow, that was harsh. The disputes between the people arguing about the article were worse than the disputes with the article. I don't see what anyone thought they were accomplishing.

So you are a friend of this LeKZ person whose name I keep seeing around here, whose story I also just read in the message below yours (thank you!). Is that why people get into trouble around here, for having been connected with someone who was kicked out in July? I don't know what I think of that. I want to check this out. I'll give you my impressions if you like but somebody needs to tell me how to get a link into a post.

Thanks,

~Silent Lucidity~

Hello Einauni Muznobotti,

Clever pun, that! I like it.

Prejudice? Not believing what they said? I know a little about multiple personalities and they're totally real. Why would anyone make up something as badly understood and off the wall as that stuff sounds, when people don't know? I remember when I was first hearing about it from a friend who was a multiple she was telling me things that scared me half to death, and nobody ever believed her, because her stories were so bad. I believed her. Some things happened to me that no one believed, so I believed her. It was pretty jarring, though. People are not what most people want to think. They're a lot more dangerous and wanton.

For people here to be prejudiced against her for that is just like any prejudice: it's wrong no matter what. If she was out of control or something, maybe, but the people with mulitple personalities that I met through my friend were mostly on the angry side, and I didn't blame them. Mostly, they were just interested in not being hurt any more, and in having a little freedom to be themselves.

If what you said is true, and you said yourself you're a friend, so it's biased, then something really bad happened to that girl, here. No way am I hanging around some place if they discriminate on the basis of people's mental health, or past histories, or anything like that. That's illegal at a BBC site anyway, isn't it?

Off to see the beginning. I'll be back next week. Or so.

~Silent Lucidity~

Hey you guys, no fair!! Silent Lucidity did not really annoy me!!

I just thought that jumping in on the SBVM thread was a tough thing to do, and would be a bit easier if s/he had a bit of context. And this is the best thread to get that...if you can wade through the backlog!!

Also, if memory serves (which is subject to debate!) there are some links to the other relevant bits dotted about in here.

I didn't want to give my opinion of all of this to a poor newbie who has no idea what they're getting into , so I thought if I pointed towards this, s/he could read and make up their own mind.

If you really want to read everything, this link takes you to Arpeggio of LeKZ's message centre. These are the threads that were on her page before the ban.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/h2g2/guide/F67082?showthread=125494

Good luck, Silent. Remember, I'm still here if you need anything!

*waves to everyone and wanders off*

Just kidding, Mistdancer. (I gotta figure a way to make sure people realize I'm really a nice person with a deeply twisted sense of (what I call) humor... Maybe a alert would help, but then there's the ever faithful , too.

Silent, I apologize if my User Page seems a bit off-putting. Shortly after the Lifetime Suspension, LeKZ and some other h2g2 researchers set up a forum elsewhere on the web to continue the discussions they were no longer allowed to participate in here. Several of us - voluntarily and when asked to by still other h2g2 researchers - posted links to that forum on our User Pages. We all had our pages moderated/hidden until we removed the links, because the Italics felt the FolKZ (LeKZ' forum) were still very angry at what had happened and were not terribly respectful of the Italics here. <>To put it mildly...</>

I was pretty annoyed at what I saw as a supression of debate, and re-worded my FolKZ link (linKZ?) accordingly. I have left it simply as a reminder. <>I'm lying - I'm really just too lazy to come up with a better way of putting it. Yet. </>

Please don't be put off by the rages you bump into. It's actually one of the most exciting things I've found here - the bottomless capacity of the people here to express conflicting opinions is more than equaled by their ability to learn from and come to understand (if not always agree with) each other. Respect, however grudging, is fairly easily earned.

Engage!

-7rob7

I know you were, 7rob7!

Not impressionist. Surrealist.

Never have so many people slanged someone so nonstop for so long for no very *clear* reason. It's a bit discouraging, to see how much slagging off was allowed, given as I gather she wasn't allowed to speak in her own defence. I don't understand why they didn't put a stop to some of it.

To an outsider, it looks as though they wanted her reputation destroyed, and that's not particularly agreeable to look at. There must be some subtext I don't know about. Otherwise there's just no apparent reason for the degree of sheer nastiness I see.

The original post appeared in a thread of non-sequiturs, which wasn't connected to anything except a witty (I thought) sort of entry on what sort of things people could post. Is there a rule against subscribing to that thread? I like it, and I'm kinda tempted, but if that's going to bring Cerebus after me with all three heads slavering, forget it.

I know what they said she wrote. I agree it was disgustingly offensive. Did she do stuff like that a lot? I mean, was it consistent with the kind of person she was?

And about that offensive garbage being what *she* wrote, I'm not sure I agree.

I have to press the button to post. What is *there* when I press the button is what I posted, right? That seems fairly logical to me. What was *there* was mostly all censored out, before she posted it. Someone had to try to work out what it supposedly meant. Then a couple of people with crossword-puzzle software had a go at it. Well, that's more effort and attention than most people give any posting, and it's pretty easy to be misunderstood in plain English.

For the time being, I'm operating on the theory that I'm misunderstanding something, and that there was *not* any deliberate goading of the community to trash this woman behind her back, where she'd have to have seen it. That would be really ugly and I'm going to need more evidence that that was what happened.

I'm not satisfied that she said anything more than appeared in the actual post. Everything else came from sources other than her, didn't it? I'm no lawyer, but the way it was presented looks pretty prejudicial to me. Again, I'm going to need more evidence, and I'm not going to jump to conclusions here.

Even supposing that nasty villifying stuff was both what she meant and what she said, the way the discussion is carried on is very unattractive, just because it's so destructive. This much negativity piled on her like that... I'm not at all impressed. Nobody deserves that, even if they *did* say something horrible, and I'm not convinced she did.

Will get back to you all in a few days.

~Silent Lucidity~

Two points of response to SL, re LS

I read the "X" post, and decided that I'd already got too much context to interpret it impartially. So I gave it to someone who had no connection *at all* with it, furnished them with a bare minimum of bits of information about it (I hesitate to grace them with the term "facts"), e.g. it's in English, written by a resident of the US. AGES later, he "interpreted" it, and I posted it. It was still pretty nasty.

The interesting thing is, LeKZ herself (who maintains that it was complete gibberish) publicly admitted that posting it *without* checking that it could be misinterpreted as being offensive was a mistake.

The other slightly interesting point is this: I've since posted, as a joke, something mostly X'd out. I got an Official Warning for it. NOT because it was offensive - it was and is demonstrably the first paragraph of "War of the Worlds" by H.G. Wells. No, I was inducted into the disciplinary system of this site because to post this stuff was "inflammatory". Strange, because the only reaction actually posted at the site was 7laughter7. Almost nobody else even actually saw the post, because it was pulled within the hour. TWO people complained about it, I'm told. Despite my making perfectly clear what it was (i.e. a piece of classic English literature, and not a veiled insult to anyone) and also making perfectly clear why I'd posted it (i.e. to raise a laugh in a thread which could well have used it at that point), I'm WARNED. If I make a joke like that again, it's Hasta la altavista, H, you're suspended. So I'm trying not to be too funny. Let me know if I'm humourless enough for you, won't you guys.

H.

Hi Silent Lucidity!


I think we met before in some other thread.
To answer your initial questions in this thread.
You jumped into the deep end of the H2G2 pool. As you might have read on the Home Pages of the people involved here, we do not generally run around and start heated arguments about everything just for the fun of it.

I for one go to the SBVM or this thread if I have something serious to say. That usually includes something the Editors have said and done. There are other threads were I am silly and talk about myself and just enjoy being here.
The thread on the SBVM page is the most serious one the SBVM was ever involved in. And this one is IMO the most serious one in the whole H2G2.

But to answer your questions:

"I gather a lot of people are on the defensive?"
No. Like 90% of H2G2 are happy and fluffy. You just happened to come across the bunch who want to know "why" before thy accept anything on face value.

"Will reading this really help me understand?"
Yes, it will help you understand. The question is what will you understand. I think you will understand that there are a number of different ideas of how to approach a decision by the Italics. Some will "blindly" agree with everything thy do some may even "blindly" disagree. But in the end we found that we all wanted the best for H2G2 and the ones involved. The question remains which way to take.
If you read this thread thoroughly (plus the ones referred to) you will understand why there is a Magna Charta and an Arbiter Scheme and a lot of other stuff.
But maybe it might help to spend a month or two here before you read all this.


" If not, could it be worth it for any other reason?"
Yes, if you study psychology or suchlike


"Will it only take a week?"
No.


"How the heck can anyone be 'suspended' for 'life', or is that one of the things that will be explained here?"
It's a bad choice of words and it's explained here +/- post 800-900 I guess.



To sum up: if you *really* want to know something about WHY h2g2 is the way it is ATM and want to learn something about some of the more outspoken members of the drift read the thread. If you just want enjoy H2G2 you don't need to.

Hope that helps!

Tube
SBVM

Thanks Tube,

Yeah, we're still holding hands over at that other thread! Thing is, I'm kind of a serious person. I don't have a lot of fluff in me. You can go read my page and see some of why, and some of my conversations which will tell you more of why. I've spent my life being the politically conscious, socially active, heard-hearted schmuck the song 'Easy to Be Hard' from the musical 'Hair' is about. I'm working on stopping that and learning to be a human being. I thought writing at a website that was founded by Douglas Adams, who's one of the most brilliant, witty, incisive satirists to write English lit in the last century, would help me to do that.

I lurked and read a lot of entries. The standards seem to vary a lot, but this is a very diverse community, so that's about what I expected, except *some* things which I personally would call 'embarrassing', but I don't run the place. Then I decided to join, not having anything in mind by way of entries. I clicked who's online, found myself at US Researchers for Peace, and it avalanched.

I have always been an intolerable 'Why'-asker. They don't like that much here? They didn't in schools, they didn't at university, they didn't at any of my jobs, they have never ever liked 'Why'-askers. So, the authorities in different places deal with it different ways. I gather here, they make people who ask 'Why' in a way that seems to reflect on anyone personal (as opposed to the completely vague 'they', which I am using, which could mean everything from the Crown on down through the BBC to the people who run the actual site) is to make that person vanish, for a shorter or longer, or supposedly indefinite period of time.

Okay, here's a 'why' question: 'why does anyone think that the "lifespan" of this website is could approach the lifespan of a *person*'? I don't know about you lot, but it's a bit nervy, to my way of thinking, for a website to claim they have power over a human 'for life'. It distorts the relative importance of the site and the human user beyond all possible measure.

Something about that is screwy and now I'm curious. So, I'm going to look around. I'm also going to check out things in peer review. That looks like fun. And maybe I'll think of something to write about, though nonfiction's not my style.

I don't believe in being rude to people or cutting them down, for any reason, especially in writing, and especially in public. I don't like what I've seen so far, so I'm going to ask 'Why'. And I am not going to take anyone else's word because I just don't have the knack.

~Silent Lucidity~
Actually, it's a song-title by Queensrÿche, and I am NOT a 'fan', but I like them, so you all know.

Actually, if I remember correcty [slighty ATM] your space wasn't there yesterday. And it does remind me a bit of my space . And it does explain why you came here.


Yeah, DNA... So great an influence on my life.

Oh, belive me, you'll write an entry one of these days. Just "because".

One of my favourtie quotes "'Why?' - a childish question". As an adult you don't ask why. It's because. I gues that's why I went and studied law... to find out "why". Psychology would be the runner up.

The question of "why" is easy to awnser if you have a good reason. No good reason - no easy awnser.

Why would this site have a power over me for life? Because it is fun, I meet interesting people here (incl. LeKZ), because here I am judged based on what I write rather than what I look like, which is more objective. Because I don't intend to go away. Because I'm old compared to most people here.
Because.
I believe that this site could last longer than my life. Heck. I *do* expect it to. It's the GUIDE. Imagine: 150 years down the lane. I'm dead for about 80 years by then. But what I wrote tells a lot about society now and might tell a lot about society then. This is THE Guide to Life, Universe and Everything.
Imagine the fun for me about 50 years down the track. I'll tell someone who's here for the first week about how the things were at the beginning. I owe this to DNA. (read my old journal entries for more on that)

"I don't believe in being rude to people or cutting them down, for any reason, especially in writing, and especially in public. "
Fair enough. But if one wields surpreme excecuitve power over this side they do have do deal with opposing ideas. No cutting down, I grant you. But I may question the motives and suggestions. "WHY"

"I don't like what I've seen so far, so I'm going to ask 'Why'."
Asking that is sure not the easiest way. But as I said before: You jumped in the deep end. I believe that most researchers never saw this thread. The Guide is fun. Just becasue some question the rules does not mean they don't like the game.

"And I am not going to take anyone else's word because I just don't have the knack."

way to go!


Tube

hi silent licudity, welcome to the most heated forum on the entire site. There is a reason for this. Every time the editors did something that they should have known better than to do, it used to spread all over the place. Then they banned lekz. They did this in a very arbitrary way, giving out no explanation, which as you can imagine drew a lot of libertarians and rabid "why" askers here.

When this thread got to big, the editors asked that we try and keep the stuff in here, so as to keep other threads clean.

After that, any libertarian question, or instance of trying to hold the editors to account, or potential trouble spot seemed to get reported here.

To everyone else, in response to the comment about the heat in the evolution thread starting at post 4 (mine), by the time this was posted, just about every single cock-up in the entry had been spotted and added to seperate threads hanging off the entry. If you removed everything that was demonstrably wrong, you were left with only a few sentences.

A solution to my question has been suggested by the fate of this article. Due to the problems identified with the text, it has been sent to the writing workshop. hopefully, it will devolop from the good points of the article into a good guide entry.

I would suggest that in future, where you have an entry like this one, or the original intelligence one, which contain what are seen to be major errors that an author with self-proclaimed lesser knowedge about the subject area refuses to correct, that the entry be sent back to the writing workshop.

This might stop a thing that has happened in the past, where a scout turns up fresh to a work in progress, which is actively being worked on, and recommends it to the guide before it is finished. the editors have in the past accepted the recommendation, after which, it becomes almost imposible to fix the remaining problems.

Silent Lucidity,

I'm afraid that before you can understand what happened to LeKZ you will also need to read the intelligence thread at http://www.bbc.co.uk/h2g2/guide/F59234&thread=116555&skip=0&show=20
The article that it was referencing is gone now, deleted by its author, but you will find it subtantially as it was when it was deleted quoted and analyzed by LeKZ here on in the thread itself.

LeKZ was generally represented here on h2g2 by Arpeggio and she is who had the account.

And after that if you want to be thorough you can check out all the conversations that LeKZ was involved in.

And so on and so on. Just say when you are ready for 'and so on.' or throw up your hands and say 'enough.'

Barton

Xyroth, or Barton, or anyone who knows,

Just checking my facts here, because it's late, and that Intelligence thing was a freaking nightmare to plough through. You seem to have been there from the outset. Can you double-check my facts for me, please? No reason to drag yourself through reading there, just from memory.

Okay, the writer of the article was just doing it for fun. Then some serious people showed up and said 'hey, you can't go calling something this limited "Intelligence".' If you want to call it that, you've got to do a lot more work. This is basically about IQ tests. Rather than change the title, he decided to expand the article. Am I on it so far?

At least two of those people had obviously some expertise in the subject. They tried to no avail to convince the chap he was in over his head. Then Arpeggio came along, apparently spanking new on the site, and dropped big thumping hints to the same effect, that went over the writer's head, it seems. One made him laugh, and he called it 'a political rant'.

Stating that she was doing so for the purpose of being 'substantive', Arpeggio did something that wasn't even wholly unprecedented, and for which she was praised directly by someone whose name shows up in Italics, which was to get very, very detailed, to show the bloke that he didn't have the half of it written, but if he tried, he might do. That's got to have taken a lot of time, and judging by how much she had to say, and what was already there, the article was right there in quality with this other one you mentioned.

Not long after, the writer abruptly decided to abandon the project and left the site. Then things start getting weird. People started praising the article as though it successfully re-invented Jung or something. A number of people seem to have come over all maudlin about this dear lad who'd been 'driven off', which isn't really as it sounded to me, but maybe they all knew him and he was generally well-loved. I don't know that bit.

Then people actually started saying that they would have recommended the article, as it was, with no improvements. This strikes me as a touch curious. It had no punctuation to speak of. The spelling was bad. Never mind the facts, or substance, the thing wasn't properly *finished*. Arpeggio had tried to say things like 'See the Editorial Guidelines about Peer Review', which I did, and she quoted them correctly, and the article shouldn't have been there at all, leave alone recommended in the condition it was.

So I'm wondering the devil happened? This is a process-breakdown that cost a *lot*. And I'm not just talking about our ambitious young writer. It cost the Guide a lot, judging by the articles Arpeggio has in, one of which is scholarly, and somehow still not stupefying, and one of which is a recipe and no matter, and a joint effort on curry that's really rather interesting.

Process-breakdown is the sort of thing that I'm familiar with. People use expressions like 'growing pains'. Usually, the people I've dealt with in the past whose businesses have 'growing-pains' that cause massive process-breakdowns, it's because of some weirdie variable no one is taking into account.

In this case, the wierdie variable shows up clearly: there's a rift in the space-time continuum in that thread. I don't understand it a bit. Arpeggio didn't start out slanging the writer, and she *didn't* slang him, except a bit, after her toes had been toasted for a few days. She didn't even say, outright, what she must have thought of the article. She went above and beyond the call to try to help the bloke, because she was new, or had high standards, and was clearly familiar with the field. *He* was pretty tactless with her, in my opinion, a couple of times.

So after the rift in the space-time continuum, it was now CLEARLY her fault that he left. No one else, even though she was *not even posting* there any more, got more than tarred with the same brush. One of them was Barton, whom I've met now. The other was Lucinda, who is currently unavailable for comment. Nobody exactly *blamed* Arpeggio, by *name*, but the hints about 'long posts' and 'too much criticism' weren't so subtle a complete newcomer like me would miss them, either.

Have I got this right? I know, usually, there *aren't* rifts in the space-time continuum. There was one. Looks like 6th-9th June. There was a definite *change* from her being patted on the head for the 'nice job' she did, to being 'over the top' and picking on the poor lad.

Rifts in the space-time continuum are not the sort of explanations that businesses pay management consultants big bucks to spot. That's how to become an ex-management consultant, and full-time drunk.

So, there's an explanation for this, somewhere. Can anyone point me to that? And how is it that writer, who was obviously sensitive, wasn't nurtured along by helpful people in the Writers' Workshop?

If this website is subject to rifts in the space-time continuum, all bets are off, of course. And no, I don't *think* that sort of rifts have anything to do with the moon at all, but I'm not an astronomer, cosmologist, or palm-reader, so I really couldn't say.

In obscuritas,

~Silent Lucidity~