Revising a famous point made by Mike Godwin about the effect invoking Hitler or the Nazis has in a Usenet discussion, I hereby present an h2g2-specific variation of Godwin's Rule:

As an h2g2 discussion about the recent history, present or future of the site grows longer, the probability of a Researcher claiming to have some idea of what Douglas Adams would have believed with reference to the topic under discussion approaches one.

Once Zarquon's corollary of Godwin's Rule comes into play, two things happen:

• At the point of the post being made, that person loses the debate

• ... and at the point when one of the in-house team reads the post, other team members who actually worked with Douglas will entertain the in-house team with anecdotes about things Douglas did actually say on occasion that would almost certainly not help the point of view of the person who invoked him in the first place

In short, everyone who ever knew Douglas has far too much respect for his memory to ever casually use his name to back up an argument. It therefore follows that anyone who does use Douglas to back up their own point of view almost certainly never knew him; the relevance of Douglas to their opinion can be discounted and their comments forced to stand alone.