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

Interesting post. F615?thread=1360342&skip=40&show=20#p16122859

Good point, well made.



Ben

I suppose none of it really matters, though, does it?

The chat forums seem to be filled with the most inane chatter and the leeches can come and go and say what they please.

In the end there's nothing really to get upset about I see, now. When so many folks simply try and emulate Adams's style in the edited entries I'm not so sure I even have an argument about "edited quality vs. forum quantity" because I'm doubting that "edited quality" ever existed.

Long live the stupids and all those who support them. Sigh.

Take it easy,
Bryce

I'm going to respond here, because the general idiocy of h2g2 has once again invaded a thread. Can't people stay on track, or are they so easily distracted by conversations about ignore features? Can they not possibly focus on any given task at hand? Jesus Christ, man.

"Ok, I am now awake, and drinking the first cup of tea of the day, and I've enough brain in me to tackle your posts Met K."

Congratulations! I might advise a crash helmet as my posts can lead to irreparable brain damage and bruising of the communications center of the soft little squishy gray thing.

"As I understand it, para 1 of the first one (562) is saying - I dunno - straws show which way the wind blows, or maybe that something minor can blow up into something major at anay moment.

(Interestingly, your comments about not dismissing 'ever issue as being minor, something worth talking over at dinner' does suggest that like me and Kea you are advocating engagement.)"

562 or 561? I assume 562 since you said so, but if it's 561 I'll elaborate more. Either way... here's my response to 562: You're correct here. Internet communities are a lot like seas of wheat. The bigger the sea of wheat the longer it takes the wind to blow through, but it will blow through.

"Then in para 2 you seem to be saying that we each make subjective interpretations of what is going on, and that a lot of the time a lot of us underestimate what's happening. Since you don't sound like a conspiracy theorist, I'll assume that what you mean is that it's easy to miss the symptoms of organic decay in a web environment."

Well, I won't say it's easy to miss them, but I won't say it's hard either. There's no "eye" that you have to learn how to see with to be able to gauge it. You just have to experience it enough times to know what type of situations bring the decline, the real decline, not just the pendulum swinging, upon you. A website like h2g2 is populated by many very, very different people, with no real goals and no real conversation points to discuss. We are not like a forum specialising in home theater or guitar, where a common thread binds us all.

The one common thread binding us all to h2g2 is just as varied as the folks who come here, edited entries on numerous topics, and you aren't even relegated to discussing said topics, you can talk about anything. There is a firm lack of authority, with a slap on the wrist being the only recourse for abuse. You also have many, many reactive people who think too highly of their own opinions, who are the kind of folks who have a lot to offer about a whole lot of nothin', yet they still feel their opinions are just as valid as any other.

You will also find many folks who will befriend these folks just because they share a common bond, and will turn a blind eye to the disruption they are causing. I can play armchair philosopher all day long, but really, it's just like real life. The type of problems that will tear apart friendships, tear apart groups of friends, tear apart weekend book forums, newszines, tear apart any human social interaction from a complex web of friendships to simply walking down the street, they all apply online. We don't think they do because we don't view the internet as real, we view it as a disconnected, disjointed means of communicating with strangers. Unless we've met the folks, face to face, and shared a moment of friendship or at least a moment of recognizing they are real, live, breathing people, then we don't view them as such. No matter how hard we try, we're all guilty of this to some varying degree.

It's different than writing a letter to a penpal because there we are speaking to one person, only one. You want to talk to them, you want to share your feelings and thoughts with them, and no one else. Writing on the internet is like being the world's most popular author, everyone will criticise what you write, everyone will have an opinion, everyone will feel as if they have the right to voice their opinion, but the key difference is that the internet allows them to do so. No interns to read your letters for you, no fireplace to toss the letters into, just one big screen displaying every single thought which every single critic or fan has of your work, which you must read, lest you miss out on the good stuff.

"Para 1 of 562 - in the middle you seem to be commenting once again on subjectivity, and saying that some individuals are more sensitive, (hyper-sensitive?), than others. I'm not sure if you mean that they have greater emotional vulnerability, or greater acuity of thought. I'm not really sure what you are saying in the rest of the paragraph to be honest. I understand the words you use, but I cannot get it to fit meaningfully into the context of events here. It's really frustraating, because it's clearly relevant, but I cannot quite get there. Like almst but not quite speaking a foreign language."

To be slightly crass here, it's like being on your favorite beach. Everything's going good, and you're happy, and your friends are happy, and then all of a sudden this wackjob walks up and starts screaming at you. Let's say he's yelling at you about Star Trek, or bridge building, or how he's a paralysed wolf and his followers are going to bark at you until you run away like a pig, all because he happens to think your towel is ugly. He's not particularly menacing, but he just won't shut up. You clear your throat, ask if he will please leave you and your friends alone, you're having a mighty nice time on the beach, and that if you wanted to be annoyed by loud, obnoxious people who think they're werewolves you'd watch American Werewolf in London, and his only response is to sod off, this is a public beach, and the life guard is too busy saving people from being eaten by sharks. What are you going to do? Ignore him, try and get the lifeguard's attention, or leave?

This is doubly bad if they then follow you and your friends home and proceed to calmly stand outside of your bedroom window and, now they're not screaming because they don't want you to call the police, not that it matters because it's before 9pm and noise pollution rules aren't in effect yet, proceed to tell you how ugly your beach towel was, and how your friends weren't very nice to his. You call the police, they come and take him off, but he's not charged with anything so before you know it he's outside your work, yelling at you once more, but purposely being ambiguous in his direction of shouting so you can't file harassment charges. Getting old yet?

Now what if they were yelling about something that really mattered to you? And they were doing it because they know it is something which you hold with respect, no matter how little or how much, but you do hold it with respect. At first you might want to simply talk about it, relay an anecdote to your friends of a glass of wine because the guy walking after you yelling at you on a daily basis is a crazy eccentric and it's sort of funny, but after a while it gets old. It just plain gets old. You can escape it sometimes, you can ignore it to a degree, but in the end, it will get to you. This web, which you once viewed with detached interest, has now become very, very real. It's amazing how the only two things which can get our interest in things sometimes is a large like or dislike for something, now innit?

Some folks just view the type of posts that LW and Della and etc have made as annoying, slowly building from simply annoying to outright perpetual attacks on our very minds through how rampant they are. Others have taken them to heart nearly immediately because of their subject matter. The latter folks are more sensitive to the situation. Between these two camps, those who are slow to anger and those who flew off the cuff immediately, somewhere between these two is where the truth lies. It's where you can accurately gauge just how bad someone is getting to a community.

"Then para 2 of that post appears to be crystal clear. The 'overt acceptance of this place' is [insert bad stuff here]. Which is an idea I find so challenging as to be really really interesting, and which is why I'm trying to understand your thinking.

You then use the word harassment. What I am really curious about is whether you consider Lord Wolfden to have been harassing the rest of the site, or whether you consider the 'baying mob' to have been harassing Lord Wolfden. I think this is my key question about these posts of yours, to be honest."

Act like a monster like enough and, no matter your true intentions, you will become the monster. The baying mob won't be dissuaded and your master's keep won't even be a safe haven for you. That baying mob will get you one way or another, whether they harass you into leaving their town or they outright destroy you, they will get you. The baying mob is never right except in one respect, action needs to be taken. On both sides.

Curb the baying mob's angst, lay it to rest. The Sherriff is your huckleberry and he needs to act like it. He is the only thing which can keep the pitchforks and the torches from being brandished. Often times he can settle a problem by simply relaying the town's discontent to the 'monster,' let the monster know what it is doing wrong, let it know that folks want to accept it and want it to participate, but it might want to do this or this.

If the monster then proceeds to disrupt the town once again, the Sherriff's got to step in once more. The mob will be even less tolerant this time around, so you've got to act fast. (Pre-modding) too late won't get you anywhere, because now the mob's broken into the armory and stolen the axes and the muzzleloaders. You better be the point of authority, or soon you'll be arrested the folks who you once called friend, or worst yet, you'll be finding that your quaint little town has seen pillars of the community leave, all because of your inaction to curb the perceived monster's indiscretions.

At some point you're going to have to just kick that monster out for his own good, and to allay the fears and the anger of your own people's. It isn't a "us or them" situation, the Sherriff isn't George Bush, the man in charge can think in multiple layers and is very complex, but at some point a line has to be drawn and you have to say, "One last chance. You cross this line just once more and you are done." And if they do, no ifs, ands, or buts, no being weak, no more acceptance, and despite the protests of the bleeding hearts (and I'm a very large leftist on a lot of human rights issues), the monster must be shown off for everyone's good. If he reforms, perfect! If not, what must be done is done.

"Post 564 appears to say that letting the trolls off the hook is bad for websites. Which is another interesting comment, and one that I almost agree with.

Para 1 in post 566 is clear. As I said in my reply, I disagree with your analysis. (History here shows that some sanctions do have an effect in making some people change their behaviour on site. Also, kids grow up. But as I also implied in my reply, "S-Some men you just can't reach...So, you get what we had here last week, which is the way he wants it! Well, he gets it! N' I don't like it any more than you men.")"

Some sanctions do have effect, of course. At some point though you really must just say "F it, we're going in" and do so. Some men you just can't reach, and when they force it to ahead, you must deal with it. The longer the folks in charge choose to dismiss the threat, the more the angst builds. Unless LW has truly reformed, which I doubt, at some point he will return to his true colors, hiding behind his bloody disease as his excuse for being a dick, and the mob will form once again, just as it has with Della. What then? Sanctions? No. Then it's time to bring out the big guns.

"Para 2 seems to imply that retaining trolls and losing long-term members is a bad deal, and that is something I agree with.

And now I have to go or I'll turn into a pumpkin. I'll take a look at 567 when I get back tomorrow night.

Met K, I am really interested in what you are saying, and am just trying to understand it to find out whether or not I agree with it. I have a feeling that I do.

Ben"

You'll have to forgive my excess usage of analogies and comparisons in this post. I suppose our follies here are that we both enjoy responding when we've just woken up, and that's dangerous! I'm sorry if my posts lost you, I'm trying to be as clear as possibly here and I fear that I've once again failed. Oh well, such is the life of me, I'm a much better lyricist than I am a writer. I'm very interested in what your responses are, though, too. It would be nice to discuss things like this with folks who actually have a vested interest in it, and do take enough care in their thoughts as to not be distracted by silly ideas that have been posted. Have a good day.


This was the second thing I wrote in this response and I felt I'd put it at the bottom: It is aggravating that instead of addressing valid points brought up by numerous people Jimster seems content to simply ignore those comments and instead address the very unwashed masses, who fritter away disrupting constructive conversation with their utterly dumb ideas. You may call me pretentious, or even arrogant, but just because someone has the right to speak doesn't mean they have anything to say, and that cliche fully applies to most of what is said in these threads by the general populace of h2g2.

I've just lurched to my PC having had a late afternoon / early evening kip, so it's obviously very true what you say about posting when just awake.

I'm aware that this may be seen as a private converstation, to be lurked but not joined, but I think that there are folks, (such as kea, for example), who would have useful things to contribute if they stumbled across it. It's your space so it's your call, but so far as I am concerned I'm not against intelligent joining-in.

I didn't know Dr E Vibenstein well, I'd seen him across a crowded pub at a couple of meets, and was aware of him on site. What I find interesting and amusing is that he's set up a closed PHPBB board for himself and fellow exiles. What I find interesting about the people who flounce out of h2g2 because of some imagined or real grievance and set up a board elsewhere is that they create a pale imitation of h2g2 with less of its liberal virtue and more of the very faults they'd originally complained about.

I've seen this before, where someone who screamed about moderation and editorial control then imposed far heavier-handed moderation on their own board than was ever imposed here at h2g2. I am resisting the temptation to get sidetracked by the psychology of this.



At one point it seemed as if people had a natural h2g2 attention-span of about two or three years, before they'd get bored (or real life would intervene) and they'd leave. That theory of mine is slightly damaged by the fact that the site is now six years old, and there are still a number of early denizens around. Dr E V was in fact one of them. I think that one of the things which keeps the few remaining five-figure U-numbers here is the emotional meaning they get from their interactions here, not just the intellectual stimulation. It is, as I try to remind Jimster and others, a community, and with every year that goes by it gains more solidity, more mass: it becomes more reified.



Jimster. Ah, there's a thing. I like him personally, and though I don't see eye to eye with him, his vision for the site is - I think - good enough. He's grown into the community aspects of the job, which I think is the hardest aspect for people to 'get' if they don't think that way. What the hell the BBC is playing at employing people to run its web communities who don't think that way is another matter entirely, of course.

I prefer not to do more than mention my on-going three-year-old issues with Natalie's lack of involvement here. I find it unacceptable and dangerous. A lot of Jimster's early decisions and Natalie's ongoing ones appear to have been about minimising effort and fuss. Unfortunately if your role is governance then you have to be a complete s**t some of the time, and be willing to stand by your decisions as s**t-head-in-chief whenever you have to make them. Hell, you have to be willing to make decisions. Let's just say that a lack of testicular fortitude, combined with belief that sticking one's head in the sand is an effective long-term strategy for trouble avoidance, and a truly frightening obtuseness about how communities work and the role of leadership in steering them, resulted in long-term damage to the site, and a subtle, low-level, long-term lack of trust in them as leaders.

I am supportive of the Italics in public, (this is an open page, but not a highway of the site), because they aren't actually bad at what they do any more, because they do have access to information that I don't, and because they are doing a devilishly difficult job which I doubt that I could do as well as they do.

As I said, Jimster's vision for h2g2 is not my vision, I think it is smaller, duller and more circumscribed than my vision, but - hey - I am not employed to run it.



What I do find interesting about this h2g2 stuff is something I've been finding interesting about this whole internet stuff since 1995.

We are one of the few generations privileged to see a new frontier in action, and witness or even participate in new Utopias. I accept that that has been true for more Americans than Europeans, but even so, not many generations see the foundation of Utopian communinties - there were some in the 19th C, and some in the 17th, and that's more or less it.

It's fascinating to see human nature projected onto a tabula rasa. Most of the time human nature is projected onto a palimpsest, and it's hard to tell what is content (human nature) and what is context (culture). But by being in a position to watch a community form from scratch, you can tease out the assumptions and watch their weaknesses manifest. A good example is the assumption that freedom of speech is good. In fact, none of us like sites where there is total and irresponsible freedom of speech. The web gives us the chance to test our assumptions in ways that RL does not.

Anyway, all of that was just riffing, and I could go on for ever, so I had better stop.

Ben

Sure, the more folks who would like to discuss this the better. You know, my life's an open book and so is my personal space. Folks can say and talk about what they want. I would just like it to stay on topic, where twenty some-odd folks don't come and piss themselves worrying about being ignored.

This iteration of h2g2, I believe, isn't what the h2g2 should be. Jimster's vision, if it is small and duller and circumscribed, it isn't what this community needs. That isn't a vision at all. Lawrence of Arabia wouldn't be Lawrence of Arabia if it were ninety minutes long. Likewise, you wouldn't be Pink Floyd without the long, spacey freeform instrumentals. Why smaller? Why duller? Why so limited? That just won't do.

I'm not going to start a mutiny, obvious, but the more I get involved in this conversation the less I wish to offer up. I come back with the hopes of writing the entries I write because seeing my Local H entry on the front page was amazing. I've had numerous compliments on it and my Local H review from many esteemed members of the Local H fan community, and that's a wonderful feeling. I also had someone else join the site just to comment on it. How cool is that? If I can do that with every band or musician or movie I wish to write about then that is phenomenal. How great would that be? I want to bring art and culture to the rest of the readers of this site, and at some point I hope some of them enjoy who and what I write about.

I don't come here for emotion, nor do I come here for intellectual masturbation. Our brains are a sponge. I come here for information. It's cool to be able to chat about the topics which we read about here, but in the end, the chatter is so secondary that it hurts. When the next iteration of Wikipedia comes about, one that is much more like a real encyclapedia, the *only* thing the h2g2 will have up on it is personality, and it will become an even smaller dot in the landscape of the internet.

I digress, however. I think our small conversation, which has seemingly crossed multiple threads where we've read what the other has written and finally bothered to reply to is growing larger than either of us thought it would. Is this a good thing or a bad thing to you?

And I thoroughly disagree. Freedom of speech is fantastic, as long as perspective and balance is kept. For all I care Nazis, Black Panthers and whatever other negative groups can march and assemble. It's their right. As long as there is a balance, and folks simply view it as a few zealots marching together for a socially unacceptable cause, then that is fine. That's great. Folks are exercising their right to free speech, and others are exercising their right to ignore the hell out of them.

The internet is a great exercise in free speech. The one thing it doesn't seem to be is an exercise in restraint, control, and when restraint and control fail, authority. Those who have nothing to say need to exercise restraint, those who have no desire to read what they have to say need to exercise control over their own ears and eyes and mouths and fingers, and when those two groups butt heads, there needs to be authority to seperate them, tell them to down a stiff drink and just go their seperate ways. Should someone not wish to go their seperate way willingly, they then must be forced to.

The same mentality which lends itself to responding to a troll poster or the inability to ignore a string of bad posts is the same mentality which leads folks to click on banner ads, open spam and virus mails, and to visit websites like stileproject.com. The rubberneckers just can't help but avoid the trainwreck, and they cause just as many problems as the trainwreck itself, so at some point you have to draw lines and be done with it.

As I've said before, the internet is as flawed as we allow it to be. You've been around it long enough. You know what one of the first encounters I ever had on the internet was? One of the very, very first? And I wasn't even looking for it? I had a user come out swinging at me, declaring one of my favorite bands a group of drunkards, jerks, and liars. This wasn't even on the fan forum. Then I go on the fan forum of the band and lo and behold there are numerous posts saying that the previous night's show was the worst show they've ever been to. Who were these kids and what the hell did they think they were doing? Once again it comes back to thinking that because you have a voice you should be heard and have something to say. Nuh uh.

That kind of talk drove off many, many great folks, and a lack of moderation continues to make sure that most communities are filled with cliques, elitists, and in general the worst forms of humanity. That or a bunch of folks who flap their jaws to keep their minds from locking up. So sad, innit? That's what I see when I join MiscChat.

Thanks for reading. Invite whoever you'd like. I'm done for now, I type too much.

B

In haste.

Freedom of speech is the tricky one; I am passionate about freedom (and the responsibilities which go with it), but unfortunately my freedom to make inntelligent and incisive nalyses of web-societies is somone else's freedom to publish child pornography. If it isn't absolute it isn't actually freedom, and it is very very hard to argue a case for absolute freedom of speech. I am firmly of the experience that in order to function, a web community, in fact any community, needs boundaries.

It always fascinates me to discover what people come here for. I came here for company, (I was lonely and abroad at the time), stayed here for the glory and remain here for the friendships. The Edited Guide was important but ultimately incidental in my relationship with the site.

For many people it's the other way round. These seem to be the people who stress 'we must remember that we are talking to real people'. It's easier for me. I socialise with a lot of them. In fact I introduced two of my friends once, and only realised when I was explaining how I knew them that they both came from h2g2, but at different times, so they had not met here.

Anyway, I have a house to move.

B

Hope the move goes well.

I will say that I think the social aspect of this website is an important one, but not nearly as important as its content. Then again, behind all of the socialising I like to do, I'd much rather come home and write or make music. Only when I'm discussing music, film, or literature am I really happy when conversing with other people. Otherwise socialising can go and stuff itself.

This isn't important, really. I'm just saying this is why I may have a bit of a rather bent perception towards the social aspects of this site, and why I believe they are secondary, very distantly, to the content of the site.

B