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

Who's Nighthover? I've never heard of this entity.

F19585?thread=143046

Who would have thought that such a simple post could generate that much silliness

n i g h t h o o v e r

B

The Nighthoover that can be named is not the tru nighthoover. The nighthoover that can be known is not the true hoover of the night. The thousand things care not if they are judged but only that they are swept up with the dustbunnies in the wee hours.

Lettuce pray...


* bows head *

I hope that's cleared that up.

B

Perhaps we should all take the Nighthover incident as an insult. After all, its one thing to decide that we are boring and abandon one's account. However, it's another thing to try to delete your account. That suggests that Nighthoover thinks we're all weirdos or omething.

Well........

Possibly. On the other hand, we average a person a week who wants to delete their account. When it comes down to it, there's no accounting for people's eccentricities.

B

There IS accounting for it, but the maths will make your head spin.

Really? I've never heard of nyone else wanting to delete their account.

"When it comes down to it, there's no accounting for people's eccentricities."

But is it they, or we, who are eccentric?

F28173?thread=291034

I don't wish to make judgments either way on that one.

If you don't believe me about the account-deleters, check out the backlog on <./>HowDoI</.> They're not all there, of course; newbies tend to find some odd places to post.

B

I don't appear on a thread because I asked via email before joining. It took me ages to find a suitable looking email address. The lack of a visible method of cancelling and the answer I got that there wasn't one put me off joining for quite a while. Foolishly, to some extent, I eventually did join.

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To: [email protected]
Subject: h2g2

I'm concerned about registering for h2g2 because there doesn't seem to be any way to de-register! It's a bit like the disturbing lines from "Hotel California". Long ago I refused to even start a car until I'd been fully briefed on how to stop it because I'm a naturally cautious person, but I wonder if there's some technique I missed here. It took me a long time even to find this address for posting some questions without already being a member. From the FAQs it also seems you have to have a personal space and that then means people can post nasty messages onto it over which you have no control. At least h2g2 allegedly has password change facility unlike the BBC message boards though (despite claiming it to be important at the start) - very lax. Any comments on all this?

By the way, I find it hard to believe you don't have a dolphin smiley yet. Though I suppose if no-one is allowed to leave your world then there is no need for a "so long and thanks for all the fish"...

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Hi

h2g2 Support is not an email address for questions about the site, it is actually for people having problems registering or logging in. We encourage people to register and ask questions on site, because there the Community can answer their questions and we like the debate to be as wide as possible.

There is not way to deregerister as such, though you are welcome to leave h2g2 at any time. Yes you do have a personal space, however the tone of h2g2 is friendly and to be nasty another Researcher is to break the House Rules. This can result in the person who was nasty having their account suspended and the nasty postings are removed.

We cannot comment on the BBC message boards as they are a different department, but our understanding is that there is a password change facility at My BBC http://www.bbc.co.uk/cgi-perl/mybbc/mybbc

Best wishes

h2g2 Support

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PS I am _not_ nighthoover (unless I don't exist either and am merely an illusion dreamt up by nighthoover) but I think I know how stupid (s)he must have thought the site was for not allowing one to ask that question without already being registered in order to be able to ask it (thus rendering it effectively pointless).

When you asked this SEF, what kind of thing were you specifically thinking about? Shutting down your message centre so that no-one could post there? In other words, I'm asking for a kind of 'feature specification' as to what the 'unregister' command should do.

spelugx

Has it occured to anyone that nighthoover might have been a joke?

BLASPHEMER!


Oh, sorry, got caught up in relegious fervor for a sec.

Nighthoover may well have been a joke, as possibly was the "second coming". However, my query (made with no prior knowledge of nighthoover or any other such question and answer) was entirely serious. So nighthoover's post's status is not really relevant.

Spelugx, I was indeed thinking of being able to delete one's personal space in such a way as to hide/delete all existing posts and prevent any future posting there. I think it is already possible to hide journal entries and wasn't intending to make any anyway. I was not particularly bothered about any posts I had made on the site myself not being deleted as that was covered by the House Rules and terms and conditions and I had no particular issue with those as stated (except that some parts of them turned out not to be true - but that's another rant). Unsubscribing from threads was always possible but not being able to remove messages from one's own PS or other pages struck me as a bad thing.

I had a thought about this after I posted, and the only thing I thought of was being able to remove your personal details so that they couldn't contact you any longer.

So what you'd want is essentially the ability to 'moderate' yourself, posts made on page which you'd consider to be part of _your_ 'domain' (pages you've created etc). To me this seems to be connected to a 'microsite' (cybersquatting? I forget the term for this in wikis), where you bring your own friends (and bottle <wine&gt and set up your own corner of a site without integrating into the rest of it.

Perhaps what's not being communicated before someone joins is the sense of permanence on h2g2, where a page or post will exist in perpetuity (approximately!) and people can reply years later. A very nice medium (at least to me).

spelugx