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

I was upset when the War broke out that the emails sent out to voluteers was worded so strongly.

As people will no doubt be aware from the brackets I used after my name in the lead up to the War in Iraq I was strongly opposed to any action taking place without the proper authority and (this is still a subject of debate in the UK) international legality by being supported by another UN resolution. Only after all diplomatic channels had been exhausted.

This sadly did not happen and as yet there is no clear evidence that Saddam was harbouring any Weapons of Mass Destruction. All we have had for the last 4 weeks has been a series of statement which have been withdrawn or ammended from the US?UK/Austailian side. It is no wonder that the Iraqi information minister was so confused he was propably watching all the conflicting reports as were we all.


At times in the last month I have had a roller coaster ridew through H2G2. I hate this. Having meet most of the Italics personally and known some of them for 3 1/2 years me and them have at times almost come to blows about something over which they have no control. I appreciate this and am sorry for any pain, injury or heartache I have caused the Towers. I know they will be working hard in the interim to ammend and discuss with the bigwigs way to prevent the ammount of wallout this has cause this time around in happening again.

H2G2 is about dialogue and community. I reckon a lot of steam was blown about here because that dialogue went on behind closed doors and did not involve the community in anyway. So we were still digesting and pointing out flaws in the guidelines when only 20 minutes later things changed radically.

This is a situation that must never happen again. We knew for months since september that war wit hIraq was a real possibility as at that point Bush started to lay down deadlines. We could have had six months of bouncing the guidelines around so that all the annomolies which were present at implimentation did not exist.

After all the powers trust voluteers to test run the site for upgrades those views should also be noted from all sides when it does come to crisis manahement.

That is more than my worth.

Comments will be treated with respect.

Hi DD,

Thanks for the comments! They're noted and appreciated. Sometimes we don't get the notice we expect either when these decisions are made - we had absolutely no idea that the policy would be implemented 20 minutes after the guidelines were posted; our intention was to get them up and open for discussion for at least a while before they were implemented.

It wasn't an ideal situation from *any* of our points of view. Many of us were probably as frustrated with the situation as you were, believe me.

If we can avoid this in the future we'll endeavour too.

I've made a few comments over at
F94024?thread=269760&post=3353387#p3353387

I don't know if you'll find them helpful at all; if we change change the response in the future though, we will do. We really were trying incredibly hard to do so behind the scenes this time.

I know you lot were Peta.


It just all blew up at the wrong time IRL for me as well and I had to take the stance I did bas much for external politics as anything. Standing for a party that stands for open and honest government menat that the way this was being carried I could not risk any mudslinging of having my name attached to it.



I'm really genuinely sorry that I had to resign as an ACE and Guru but the wording of the email and policy left me wit hno logical choice.


My page looks bare now with just my PR badge

Good - I'm glad you knew the score. I understand taking a stance, I'd probably have done exactly the same thing in your position.

Having somehow come past your page I wondered if you would be interested in Jack Biggs new PARLIAMENT page, a refuge from declining service on the bbc message boards. It is A1114354.