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

I'm sorry to keep banging on about this, but arguments about "human rights" and freedom of speech seem to me to be deeply flawed as arguments against the current decision to ban discussion on Iraq. I've argued this at A792812 some months ago about a different issue, but it's still relevent now.

I've posted this link in a number of places already, and I hope it's not taken as spamming or flooding - I'm only posting it as a response where it's relevent to an earlier comment.

I'm a philosopher, so arguments interest me.

Otto

I just refuse to go to the centralised and censored part-time forum to continue offtopic in discussions elsewhere because it somehow may contain the words war or Iraq.

I will just go on posting ontopic. If they want to kill those posts, that's up to them.
Neither will I yike posts that in my opinion do not violate the normal houserules because someone way up might be afraid of it. The Italics have been very clear on that: NEVER YIKE SOMETHING THAT MIGHT OFFEND SOMEONE ELSE BUT NOT YOU!

I wasn't exactly making a human rights argument...I meant, if we are supposedly free to assemble and free to talk, why shouldn't we be free to do that in cyberspace.

As I keep ranting on to everyone...I am sick fed up of people who have no f'n clue what they are talking about getting so opinionated about something and thinking everyone should be falling in line with their uninformed views. (Like all those *offensive word* people insist that the whole...thing...is about...oil)

I don't know anything much about human rights, or ...this thing...or especially how to be president or prime minister so it is not my place to argue about these things. If I don't know the whole story, I don't give a damn. Being 17 and largely uninterested in the world I don't give a damn about a hellofa lot of things.

But as the rant says...I do give a damn about uninformed opinionists.

Hi Otto,

I read your article about freedom of speech on h2g2. It's an interesting hair you're splitting, but if it makes you feel any better, I imagine most of the people opposed to this policy would feel just as comfortable thinking of it in terms of consumers of a service. If the service changes in a way that we don't like, then we should say so, or we should threaten to stop using the service.

The other thing that must be confusing to people, especially outside the UK, is the way BBC is intertwined with the UK government like bubble gum stuck in a child's hair. They seem to present a fairly balanced presentation most of the time, definitely better news than 95% of US news outlets, in spite of the Beebs highest appointees being pals with current and past government officials. For some people, it must be hard to distinguish whether the Beeb is protecting itself from lawsuits, protecting itself from public attacks, or simply shutting down discussion by order of the government.

I'm willing to drop the question of whether restrictions on h2g2 are "free speech" issues. But whatever my relationship with h2g2, user or consumer or member of the community, these restrictions need to go.

I fail to see whay mentioning Ch*na got me modded or mentioning a TV programme that had an episode linked to an event 12 years ago got me modded.

I think the mods are getting trigger happy

I'm not really hung up on the freedom of speach argument - it's polarised, so no-one's right. What I am hung up on is the utterly clumsy implementation of some utterly clumsy policy. It was dropped on us as soon as the shooting started, and went unexplained until some fuss was kicked up. Then, we got some cut and pasted explanation from the Hub. It was then repeated, with the threat that if we didn't stop posting to the thread, then the thread and all past postings would be obliterated.
After this the only reply we got was from an italic who seemed to think that grand gestures involving whose turn it was to make tea were of more importance than letting the 'powers that be' know that the Italics were unhappy with the situation. She intimated that resignations on ethical grounds were naive in the extreme, and that if all the Italics walked out in protest there would be no H2G2. This is of course true, but it was put bluntly, and delivered in a 'nyha nyha nyha' style that did nothing to calm the situation. They failed to mention that H2G2 gets all its content generated for free, and that the reverse of the 'no italics, no H2G2' was also true; "no researchers, no H2G2"
As to the alternative place to discuss the issue - well putting it bluntly, it's bollo*cks. The reason given for concentrating the thread in one place was so the moderators could concentrate. This is of course utter rubbish - as anyone who has tried to follow a conversation recently will attest - they're everywhere.
Researchers have given H2G2 and the BBC plenty for free, and in return we've been treated very poorly - the thread had been running for 7 months for goodness sake - we should have recieved some warning, or at least a decent explanation afterwards.
We still haven't, so boll*cks to it. This is my last posting on H2G2 - best wishes to you all.

I was going to go too, the BBC can afford to lose me. What they can't afford is people exposing this policy of censorship. So I'll stay for now and make a nuisance of myself, in the best possible taste, of course.

Good Luck Frogbit.

I hate the idea of loosing such an entertaing researcher as you Frogbit


But an hour ago the mailbox the I pay $$ to my ISP for was flodded by the mods. 8 messages telling be of 3 posts being removed.

"After this the only reply we got was from an italic who seemed to think that grand gestures involving whose turn it was to make tea were of more importance than letting the 'powers that be' know that the Italics were unhappy with the situation. She intimated that resignations on ethical grounds were naive in the extreme, and that if all the Italics walked out in protest there would be no H2G2. This is of course true, but it was put bluntly, and delivered in a 'nyha nyha nyha' style that did nothing to calm the situation"

I apologise to anyone who thought that my remarks were offensive or too flippant. I wasn't trying to be dismissive at all, nor was I trying to demean anyone's contributions to h2g2 is any way. So I'm very sorry if they were taken that way.