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

I agree with Kelli there, though I can see how sometimes LWs posts have caused topic drift and subsequent frustration.

*thinks... non-stick bogies, parrots and oompah-loompahs... *



Sometimes people post responses that are only partly relevant to the conversation, which is something I have seen in LWs posts as I read around, but to me this is no better or worse than some other posts I see. Having said that because I read much more than I post I don't have a personal investment in the conversation, so maybe it's that which causes the frustration? Just a theory.


My son, who's sitting beside me as I type and asked what we're talking about, just made the comment that conversations here are like trees - there's usually a main trunk but then there are always off-shoots, i.e. branches of digression that eventually come to an end, while the trunk continues to grow. Smart kid, my lad.

It would be quite fun and interesting to have a 'thread of the year' competition on hootoo. I think I would nominate this thread. Altough I have only contributed a couple of posts, I have found reading it totally fascinating. People are really trying to be honest about stuff I think, and it even has an excellent element of silliness along with the serious stuff!

hootoo at its best!

Thanks to those who lumped us together, I got to know tig, and believe me, he may have offended against the *group* mentality, but you shouldn't rejoice at having got rid of him, he's actually a very nice, well-intentioned person.

Why be proud of hounding away someone whose only crime was disagreement with the middle class masses?

>Why be proud of hounding away someone whose only crime was disagreement with the middle class masses? <

Della, the vast magority of posts I read from tig had nothing to say. And he said it profusely,repetetively, consistently, interspersed with rare and sparkling gems of offensiveness.

We all create ourselves equally on this site, but the way we use it afterwards doesn't mean we're a victim of 'middle class masses'. Sometimes it's called 'just deserts".

Let him eat .

I don't see it that way at all, MoG. Sure, sometimes he was annoying and pointless, the rest of the time, he made good points, but they were ones that the most powerful people disagreed with - and so he was declared a pariah/troll, and one person in particular started a habit of referring to him as 'it'. I yikesed all her posts, but got back an official email saying that calling another user 'it' was not against the rules. If not that, then what? It. Think about it - this is okay?

Germans call children and animals 'it' in a neuteral kinda way. I don't see that as an insult, more an acknowlegement that they're not fully developed in the way most adult human beings are.

I'm still unconvinced that there are 'powerful' people onsite, other than the italics. Some people embody themselves in text which manifests reason, compassion or common sense. That naturally garners allies. I never saw tig behave that way.

I haven't read the threads concerned so I don't know if the postings were intended to offend, but with infinate respect, MoG, no English speaker would call even their pet 'it'.

I meant to add that while the Beeb's preferred neutral possessive adjective,'their', as in "RUDEST ELF? hasn't added any friends to their list", which still grates, '*it's* list' would be unthinkable.

I imagine that 'their' was selected to demonstrate the BBC's commitment to P-C'ness, when other constructions were/are available.

When the subject's gender is unknown, we call *them* 'they' - never 'it' (unless we wish to offend - very rare in my experience).

>>>
People have every right to get annoyed with LW but it is their choice on how they choose to express that annoyance.
<<<

Yes, totally agree. That is the point I was trying to make on the New What's Just Happened thread. For two reasons - one is that some of the behaviour (although not all) is beyond what I personally feel ok about being in or around in a thread (or seeing on site).

The other is that short of LW not being on the site the only thing that I can see changing for the better now is people's response to him, so I've become more interested in the behaviour of the people reacting and the choices they make around that.

But I don't think it's a simple as they're mean people and they should stop.


>>>
I assume that Ben is talking about the actual thread she has linked to, not another one pointed to in that link. The thread linked to, F10027?thread=673065, makes for some of the most unpleasant reading on hootoo just now, and is the thread I referred to in my post above.
<<<

Yes, although the page Ben linked to wasn't anything to do with LW.


The thing about that thread - the New WJH - is that it was set up by Vibenstein on his PS precisely because people were so annoyed with LW and what he was doing on the old WJH. Many people felt like he had ruined an enjoyable, long running thread. The old What's Just Happened thread had been running for a year and was at 2000 posts when LW first posted there (in his first week on h2g2).

I'm not sure what first got on people's wick, or where it happened, but LW *was spamming, and was posting alot of extremely inane posts (like 'nothing') when the shit hit the fan. He was also doing the same on other threads ALOT. Eventually he was put on premod for his side of that, and has been on premod for quite some time now. I talked to him about this yesterday and he says the Eds have not given him a finish date for the premod, that it's dependant on his behaviour. He's still getting enough posts failed by the premods to not take him off (posts where he gets angry and abusive I think rather than spamming).


Kelli, I get what you and Ben and others are saying about the reactions to LW and that some of that behaviour is unpleasant. And I agree (although we might have different limits on what we consider unpleasant). What I'd like to know is how people think this could be done differently?

>>>
Altough I have only contributed a couple of posts, I have found reading it totally fascinating. People are really trying to be honest about stuff I think, and it even has an excellent element of silliness along with the serious stuff!

hootoo at its best!
<<<

Red, I have been thinking something similar - about how satisfying this thread is. I haven't seen a discussion like this on h2 for a long time.

Della said: 'Thanks to those who lumped us together, I got to know tig, and believe me, he may have offended against the *group* mentality, but you shouldn't rejoice at having got rid of him, he's actually a very nice, well-intentioned person.

Why be proud of hounding away someone whose only crime was disagreement with the middle class masses?'

Disagreement with the middle classes? Homophobia, anti-Catholic bigotry, racism and making vile remarks about people's sexuality if they disagreed with him? Mere disagreement with the middle classes? Mere offending *group* mentality? I'm sorry but someone who posts the sort of hateful rubbish that tig was banned for most certainly is not and cannot possibly be a nice well-intentioned person. Even if it was a 'joke', nice well-intentioned people do not make that kind of 'joke' or find it funny. Nice well-intentioned people do not screw up conversations by spamming them with ugly remarks and constantly insult people. Or is this some new ironic definition of 'nice' I'd never heard of before?

I stumbled across this convo & have found it a fascinating read too.

Does it not occur to you Della, that tig would not have been banned if his postings were as inoffensive as you imply? Or are you inferring that the Italics are part of your perceived 'middle class masses'.

And by the way, who is this newcomer U2170369, posting in a rather similar style?

<>

Coo... I never realised I was a most powerful person. Tig was a racist, a homophobe and a troublemaker who would disrupt serious conversations to spout his bigotry. I actually had to unsub from a thread he was on before I did something I regretted.

I have no middle-class agenda, partly because I don't consider myself to be any 'class' but mostly because I have no agenda, I call it as I see it.

Oh, if valleyspookhunter is Tig our Evil Middle Class Overlords will pick it up soon enough because of IP addresses and things.

That's the researcher I mentioned to Grey Desk earlier, Teasswill. I hadn't wanted to post their U-number here as it was merely a suspicion, but they do sound 'spookily' similar to shifty/tig.


az

*blinks*

Backlog! Arrrgh!


>> While I have seen LW engage in trollish behaviour on the odd occasion, I think most people would agree that the problem is not trolling but spamming. (Kea, 196)

Interesting. Since I haven't been in most of the threads that he posts in, I am not aware of the spamming. I did consider asking whether or not the Italics' posts about the British Counties in 'Challenge' could be considered spam. It felt like it as I deleted thread after thread after thread from my conversations list.

But the question remains - in fact the question intensifies - to what extent is it acceptable to mob a researcher? Wasn't there a phrase from the LeKZ days about 'group-jumping'?


>>>Then folks start behaving like the Troll-finder General, and people who aren't trolls get labeled as such.<<< (Me)

>> Can you give examples Ben? Do you include LW in that? Who else? (Kea Post 196)

Daamn. Probably not. The words surfaced in my mind several months ago, maybe even a year or so ago, when I got the impression that the heady excitement of the Della Wars was spreading over into a more generalised crusade to identify, label and isolate trolls. It was an impression, and there aren't links to back it up. It's possible some of the impression was based on IMs and e-mails.


>> Just to put the two links in perspective: (Kea, post 196)

Thanks for doing so. I was wary of posting them, because I had no context for them.


>> As is usual with convos with LW, LW took some time to get with the vibe of the thread and other people jumped all over him. (Kea, post 196)

Which may be why he is more infuriating in real-time than when you (I, whoever), read the threads later. It's an interesting point about both him and those who interlocute with him.


>> The first is a way of letting off steam (or are we not allowed to talk about people unless they are present?). The second is an overreaction, and one I felt uncomfortable about too. But those people were already in that thread. They didn't hunt LW down. (Kea, 196)

Fairy nuff. As I said, I did not have context and did not really know how to interpret them properly.


>> I don't like how LW gets treated. But I also don't like how he treats h2g2. (Kea, 196)

It's a tough call, isn't it?


>> Ben, I'm curious as to where you see the line is. Are you saying that *any activity of a collective nature in response to someone who is perceived as hurting the community is not ok? If it was ok for people to organise in the Atelier why not elsewhere? Or is it the *kind of activity? (Kea - 196)

Interesing question, and one I hadn't thought of explicitly.

It's the *kind* of activity, I think. The Atelier experience was an interesting one, because the initial response to Oetzi was to include him in the thread and to try to get him to adhere to the local threadiquette, (courtesy, good spelling, etc). When assimilation did not work, and his persistant agression became increasingly disruptive, discussions off-site resulted in an agreement among the regulars to ignore him, which was more or less enforced. I pesonally felt very let down by the Italics at the time, because it was not until he started s**tting in the Collective that any BBC employee deigned to acknowledge the damage he was doing.


>> Given that we're all going to have our own limits on what is ok, how can we as a community find ways of managing or responding that create community rather than undermine it? (Kea, 196)

Hmmm. Well we seem to think that we can - as a community - enforce our mores on to individual spammers and trolls. We are effectively saying "we don't do this" or "we don't like that" here. I have no idea whether or not we can, as a community, enforce certain standards of behaviour on ourselves. Somewhere in this thread I rambled on about this being a challenge which faces us as we mature *as a community*, and I do believe this to be so, though perhaps with less urgency than I believed it when I posted it a few days ago.


>> all those situations were resolved by some people leaving the site (either voluntarily or being suspended):

Good point, well made. Maybe I am naive in hoping that we can all rub along together without rules and that we will all behave in a civilised way without prompting, that it snows every christmas, that I can eat chocolate without getting fat, and that - somwhere - out there - there really is a tooth-fairy.

Buggrit. I have only read Kea's post, and we now have to Go Out. Sufficient unto the day is the backlog thereof.

B

Re-reading the above in a post-posting proof-read, I am struck that the difference between the Oetzi / Atelier experience and the tig / h2g2 experience is that the Atelier's response is, as kea implies, not scalable.

I do think that h2g2 does have a form of collective consciousness, one might call it group-think, it isn't a hive mind, it is most definitely a community and on occasions acts as a community ('a coming together of individuals). And this is the level that I think is being challenged to mature.

Must Go Out now, or the Shops will Shut.



B

Re: Oetzi. He was also a disruptive force on the God Thread, in fact, he almost destroyed it for awhile. As he also did with the Atelier. It became almost impossible to keep these threads going.

Also, Oetzi became my 'stalker', following me to my PS and starting intrusive and unpleasant threads there. And even to my photo gallery, posting nasty comments there. This was when Grey Desk and others stepped in and helped make me feel supported (it was also when both Lil and Ben invited me to join the Atelier).

I did find the fact that he started stalking me quite upsetting. And I even felt threatened by him. This was before I found out how to trace IP numbers.

The support of other researchers here at the time really helped me a lot and I will always be grateful for that.

Likewise tig has posted nasty/weird comments in my photo gallery, which I immediately remove, hopefully before others see them. And once even Justin the Preacher stalked me over to my Fotki page and left creepy comments. Like, WTF?

It's quite one thing to disagree with people on a particular h2g2 thread, but later to take that to someone's personal space or to another non-h2g2 site is clearly harrassment.

Because I have a special h2g2 email address for receiving photos from people for the photo gallery, I've also received some very unpleasant emails from what I can only consider to be quite sick-in-the-head individuals. Again - WTF?

After one very nasty email experience the h2g2 Eds (who were trying to help) even suggested I close down my photo gallery for awhile, but I refused to do this because so many people love the photo gallery and I just thought it would be a serious shame to shut it down because of one or two individuals.

I guess just pointing out that people who 'troll' or are otherwise offensive onsite don't always leave it there.


az

Della wrote: "I yikesed all her posts, but got back an official email saying that calling another user 'it' was not against the rules. If not that, then what?"

Perspective alert.

Della - it has been established that use of racial abuse and threatening "seriously" to kill another user on this site - something which is a *criminal offence* in this country, something at least one person on another discussion board has been *jailed* for in the UK within the last year - is not even grounds for a warning, let alone premoderation or a ban from this site.

I hardly think merely using an impersonal pronoun even comes into the same league. Frankly, for such a trivial, time wasting complaint as that I'm surprised you even got an email back.

SoRB