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

I got a very nice e-mail from HooToo explaining that the word "faggots" had been misunderstood in the Veil thread. The posts have been re-instated.

Well, at least someone learned something today

What, that the mods can't read properly?

I got a nice email too

Is this the thread? http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/alabaster/F2148564?thread=3291228 Pretty interesting. What had you posted? That Mohammed engaged in criminal activity? I wonder if it's not so much that it's not ok to offend people (I mean look at how many of blicky's posts don't get modded ) but that the bbc are careful about not creating controversy and thus risk in the larger public arena. There was some discussion a few years ago about censoring posts about terrorists. One of the points made was that the bbc didn't want its staff to become targets if the bbc was perceived as taking sides (against Al Qaeda maybe). Can't remember the exact details, or when it was (Iraq invasion? London bombings?) but it was interesting that the issue wasn't the one most people first assumed. So I'm wondering if it's not so much a policy of avoiding offending people as a pragmatic approach to not atracting ire (in the way that the cartoons did).

That's one of them Well done. I did actually talk about it on HooToo as well but, as less people get modded on HooToo there were less people who had suffered unreasonable moderation.

I had posted that when Mohammed left Mecca, he was forced to exist by raiding Trade Caravans for booty. He even received one of his revelations when one of his followers queried the morality of doing so. Allah went to the trouble of even advising how the ill-gotten gains should be divided up, (one fifth to the prophet, the rest shared equally). Being succesful at this, (he was a trader himself and had inside knowledge as to which caravans had the richest pickings), other raiders flocked to join his camp and the raids increased. Finally his own tribe, the Quaryeshi sent out troops to bring him to justice. He won the battle and the legend was born.

You may be right about not inviting controversy.

There was an interview with some Labour Apparatchik on the telly which I only caught the tail of. This chap was arguing that the web is a threat to the democratic process as unsubstantiated rumour can be batted around as if it were fact. He was arguing that Government needed to exert firmer controls of chat rooms and message boards in order to ensure that only the facts are debated. A few days later, the Today Board announced that it was no longer allowing posters to start threads and only approved subjects could be discussed. R2 have just announced something similar. Current Affairs may only be discussed if the topics are covered by the R2 Jeremy Vine discussion programme.