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

I think I'm going to avoid making any jokes about that and merely direct you to the porch <./>T310561</.> where the whittlers seem to have congregated. I would say pooled but I'm probably the only one working in ice. I got so cold I have the fire on now.

Here's the best I could do Granny:





CZ

Any new info on this?

I just want to say, this whole deal is important to me for several reasons. I really do care about this site. I care about it because it has awesome potential for communication between people, and for supplying information about 'Life, the Universe, and Everything'. Especially because this information comes from so many different people, different perspectives, which could all be very interesting, informative, and even enlightening. Many people use this site as a kind of social sphere, where they talk to friends, share joys and pains, experience closeness, and so forth. All of that could be extremely valuable to individuals, and to the site as a whole. So this site certainly has immense potential. Its 'infrastructure' contains immense potential tools for enhancing the quality of communication. So yeah, I think this site could be good ... great even ... and I'd like to see it prosper. I would like to see the users of this site really *becoming* a community, and I would really like to see, in this community, justice and fair play, and good general management. So when I see things here that I think totally suck, it upsets me, and I'll try to do what I can to change things into something better ... and I think other people on this thread have a similar attitude.

I also care because people have been hurt. Some of those people are close friends of mine, some not so close, but does it matter? People have been hurt. I have myself been hurt. And all for no really good reason! There might be a reason for hurting people ... like having to give a child an injection ... which is painful at the time but prevents or cures other suffering. But in this case, people have been hurt, and I've seen no really good reason for it. I've also not seen the people who are supposed to 'manage' this site, do a really good job at preventing and alleviating this hurt, or at the very least, not contribute to the hurt. When individuals are hurt, so I feel, the site is hurt. But after all ... what is more important: the site, or the people?

One more observation.

If you do not mind hurting other people, you are cruel, callous and brutal.

If you do not care if other people are hurt, you lack compassion. I think without compassion, we are not civilised human beings. I say, if you do not care if other people are hurt (without good reason), then you are simply a barbarian.

Errr Symphony is back.

Willem only gets here irregularly. But, what he says is nonetheless important and meaningful.

Yes, Willem, they are back. Their account has been reinstated with no public apology -- no public statement at all.

We are all glad they are back. We are still dismayed at how the whole situation was mis-handled.

The implications of this kind of Gestapo mentality and behavior have profound implications for our community that further devalue contributing here. For myself, the series of events that began with the mysterious influence of Playboy Reporter and the banning of Arpeggio and which have continued through various demonstrations of demonization in the community (seemingly, encouraged by management), with increasing lack of responsiveness to the needs and concerns of members of the community, only fortify my resolution to continue to show that I care and am dismayed, while refusing to contribute to the edited guide.

I know that I am less heard here than before, but I will continue to contribute to efforts that empower this community and it's individuals. I will certainly react to any attempt to harrass people with accusations of being or having associations with Arpeggio or others of LeKZ (or the Guyz) who are villified here and not permitted to defend themselves.

I still fail to see that their banning was in anyway justified, given the behavior of other members of this community who have been regularly much more reactive and disruptive than they were ever accused of having been and not persecuted nor banned as they were.

Given that that happened and is not going to be reversed and that nothing could induce the Guyz to come back to a place that treated them so unfairly, which they gave their word not to do (except for some necessasry, brief, open and emergency communication, such as the sucessful effort to save Willem's life), it was unfortunate and unfair to have raised all that previous and evidently still raging hatred again in this unjustified attack against Symphony, seemingly because they are multiple and open about it.

Symphony has been villified by comparison to some imagined creature created out of whole cloth which in turn is claimed to be someone who has been silenced and made impotent here, unable to reply for themselves or by proxy due to rules specifically created for that purpose (not just for them but for anyone whom the management chooses to punish in that way.)

Since I again have a reason to be here, I am here, again. I left in disgust as did others. This event shows that the community and the management are still behaving in a shameful and virtually biggoted fashion.

I am formally stating these observations of mine now, which others may or may not agree with. I expect that I am making my last post in this thread. Hopefully, there will be no more such occasions that require such efforts. Hopefully, the management and the community will be more fair in expressing their concerns and taking action on them, honoring the procedure which was proclaimed by management and acclaimed by the community for events and accusations such as were leveled here.

Accusations are easily obtained, perhaps with a whisper of suggestion from above and perhaps not. But the largest blame here must be laid on the Editors for having acted as they did without responding to the questions and concerns of the community. The rest of us had no power to change what was happening except to protest as loudly as we knew how. We have done that, and we still have no answer from the Editors. I don't expect one, but I would still plead for them to make a statment to reassure us all that they were not being merely arbitrary and capricious. Our lives in this community are real and our concerns are honest. Our work and participation are deserving of that small amount of respect from the management of what might well become a ghost town archive of dead things that happened a long time ago which cannot grow and cannot change because no one can stand to be so bullied and transgressed against as is seemingly becoming the standard practice here.

Barton

Hear, Hear, Barton!