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

While I was editing the article, all of a sudden
i got the above error message. This baffled me - I couldn't think of any gratuiutously offensive four letter words I'd scattered in the text so as to offend people.

What was the offending word?

"pootling"? "ramification"? "Birkenhead?"

Then I saw it: in the bit about university students who hadn't got into Oxbridge and hadn't made it and had to settle for UEA Norwich as their fourth or fifth choice. That you could tell them by their yearning pronunciation of "Magdelen Road" as "Maudlin Road", as if it were in Cambridge. (in Norwich it's pronounced pretty much as written)

I'd described them as "sad b@stards", a phrase acceptable in every previous version of this entry, but all of a sudden a naughty word now.

Why so?





How come a word that was accepted in previous versions of this entry was all of a sudden

And there are another couple of postings where I use the word "b@stards" where this word has been allowed to stand. If I go back and revise them but leave this word in place, will my update be blocked until I remove an hitherto unobjected-to word?

yup, I used the word in its unaltered form and h2g2 refused to allow this posting...

"This message has been blocked as it contains a word which other users may find offensive. Please edit your message and post it again.2

But you allowed the word before, and it still stands serene and undisturbed in other entries I have made on h2g2, so where's the problem????

Speaking of "gratuitously offensive" and eminently blockable four letter words, try the following search, all of which leads to Guide submissions which have not been blocked...

This does not make a great deal of sense. "B@stards" is blocked, but this word is allowed?

http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/brunel/Search?searchstring=shit&searchtype=goosearch&go.x=23&go.y=3

I don't find this word in the least offensive.Take a look and a listen to the way people talk now[and for the last thirty years].I think it's stupid to keep up this pretence that we are all middle class white Elephant Stall Brown Owls down at the Parish center.I agree some four letter words are excessive and offensive,sometimes though when something terrible has happened,through someone like Ian
Huntley for instance what else can you resort to.Calling him a Rotter
or a bad egg???.I know myself for a fact foul language is here to stay and no ammount of pretending will make it go away.Then again i can see that a ban must sometimes be enforced,However saying it's because of children logging in is ridiculous,as they are [or seem to be]the worst offenders.