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

"...most of the rest is poor quality porn."

Hurrah! Good call, xyroth! This article would be much better if it showed people how to get *high quality* porn from the internet!

[It was hidden before I got a chance to see it, but it's difficult to disagree with that sentiment.]

lilithcookie, there have been several cases where appeals to the Editors have gotten guide entries reinstated. There have also been a few cases in which researchers have compromised and gotten seemingly hopeless entries approved, after much discussion and debate, such as:

A427204 Female Masturbation
A219061 Male Masturbation
A583580 Molotov Cocktails
A753527 The Origins and Common Usage of British Swear-words

[I contributed a few details about one of the words in that last one, but if I wrote the word here, you'd have to guess it under the asterisks anyhow. Something to do with a feminist festival at Penn State.]

"So then I gotta decide what this place is good for from my perspective and I haven't decided that yet."

h2g2 is good for getting to know other researchers, and for posting totally innocuous articles, but not a place to try pushing the envelope. They have a whole staff of people holding the limits of the envelope 24 hours a day. As long as you have someplace else where you can post the heavy stuff, you can still have fun posting the lightweight stuff on h2g2.

Those examples I mentioned above show that you can get things through if you discuss them with the Editors. Sometimes they'll disagree with the judgements of their moderators. Sometimes they'll show you that it's only a little detail of the article causing a big problem for them, which can be easily clipped out or smoothed over. But if you don't like fighting over it, let it go. There are other places where you can get your message across to people, and there are other fun things you can do here.

lilithcookie, the BBC have their obvious limits. These are easy to run into but hard to push. Ben (agcb) took on the fight and after a year and a couple of days, the 'short words' entry finally made it into the Guide. You've got the chance to become another h2g2 Jeanne d'Arc if you really want!

Hey that's a great idea Boss. Didn't the Brits burn her at the stake in the Rouen marketplace? But sorry... I can't play... there's a ban on open fires in my neck of the woods ok?

So let me clue you in on my take so far.

We gotta a 'family values' issue here right? And we also gotta an issue where certain guys are not gonna want their spouses or significant others or mamas or priests to know what they do at 3am with that other woman aka the computer. So even if this passes muster as the colonel would say... it ain't gonna fly.

This is the same crap that goes on all the time all over the internet now that it got commercialized. Sex is ok as long as you use it to sell something else but it's not ok if you use it to sell itself.

All you have to do is checkout the comments in Ben's Paying for Sex thread to see which way the wind's blowing and right now it's blowing towards the tinder on Joan D's bonfire.

Now let's try to look at this objectively ok?

I could do a piece on revolution in the 3rd world and it would get bounced for condoning terrorism... guaranteed. There's probably a hundred other subjects I could do from land reform and redistribution to executive compensation that would also get bounced for challenging the system one way or another and the editorial rejection pretexts would be adjusted to suit the situation.

I've already done a piece on table dancing and that's getting shredded because it doesn't conform to the stodgy subjects preferred here. But we might actually win that battle in the end and frankly I think it's the better of the two pieces anyways. And it's light enough that it probably doesn't rattle anybody's cage or throne.

My point being that alotta this stuff is actually going to fall under the heading of op/ed but you can't actually publish that here so your op/ed issues are determined in the editorial process by what you can shove through the meatgrinder and have it taste pretty much the same as what you put in. The content identity itself then becomes the op/ed so to speak. If I can publish something about masterbation or downloading porn then I've sorta made a statement about freedom of expression and individual liberty without actually coming out and saying... 'fight oppression... overthrow censorship... growup kiddies!!!'.

But realistically we're up against some of the most powerful forces on earth... greed and commerce... and that leads to compromise because the system doesn't work without collaborators ok? So like someone already said... maybe I need to do the heavyduty stuff elsewhere and stop trying to dance around it here hoping somebody will get the real message ya know?

actually, you are up against an even worse problem than greed, you are up against fear.

the bbc are publically funded and relatively new to the internet as anything other than their lawyer reviewed content.

thus they are afraid that something will get through that the press can later use to attack them with for "promoting ....".

but keep pluging away. at least we can mention url's in forums now.

Yeah... I noticed a change in the disclaimer about BBC's responsibility or lack of it for outside content so what you just said sorta of explains that doesn't it?

Too bad they couldn't rely on the disclaimer, tell people "Abandon hope all ye who exit via external links, and don't blame the BBC cuz we warned you." Then we could link to anything. Oh well.

At least it ain't 'arbeiten und lieben'... yet...