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

Crescent~

I am posting this here, rather than at the thread, because that thread needs to die. You have made an unspeakable mistake. You have crossed every line with me. I shall take this up with h2g2 support if you do not respond in a week or less.

1) You said: one of the rules is 'do not chase people away, please'
My response: so why are you trying so hard to drive Barton and me away? It won't work, but it is not for lack of effort on your part.

2) You said: It was a good Entry, this is because I reckon it was and would have chosen it for the Edited Guide as was.
My response: I am glad you are no longer a Scout. If you are correct in reckoning that would have been chosen for the Edited Guide, then standards here are not just low, they are nonexistent.

3) You said: I was wound up because of what was written to PlayboyR really quite badly trashed him
My response: Your 'prizing and coddling' of Barton and me was not?

4) You said: one persons joke is another persons bigotory.
My responses: No, one person's joke is not another person's bigotry. The BBC are very clear on this. Check their policy before you try to explain hate-speech away with the work 'joke'.
You are a sub-editor? Your spelling is not what I would expect from someone with that responsibility.

5) You said: You do not seem to care that PlayboyR left, indeed you seem to find a kind of joy in it, this does not make it easy for people to like you.
My response: Go back through the thread and prove that! That is outright false and I demand you retract that statement and apologise! I will NOT be spoken to or about by *anyone* in such a way. You do not know me. Who are you to put words in my mouth, thoughts in my mind, and then post them in writing?

6) You said: The thing that grabbed the goat (at least for me) was the lack of community spirit, you seemed to come across as 'he is wrong, I am right, he doesn't see this, I am a superior genius, he is an numbskull idiot, the only way to do it is my way.' I do not reckon this was your intention, but that is the way it came down.
My response: If you do not 'reckon this was [my] intention', why did you say it? Did you *read* the backlog, or just make things up out of whole cloth? Again, a written retraction and apology is in order.

7)You said: If you like a community, and want to stay there, you have to make an effort to fit in.
My response: If 'make an effort to fit in' means dropping my standards, or pretending to be anything other than who I am, I shall surely not do that for *your* comfort and convenience! Who was it who went on about the writers and how important we are? Fortunately, your views are not even close to representative of most people in this community.

8) You said: there IS a problem on our side (for one, we are to quick to start jumping down peoples throats)
My response: Clever of you to have worked that out.

9) You said:'I am superior to all of you no-brains' attitiude (I know this was not your intention, but, again, it was the way it seemed to come out)
My response: Again, if you *know* that was not what I said or meant, why did you say it as though I had done? Thank you for demonstrating my point, about the way people assume those of us who are 'brainy' are always looking down on people. I did not say it, but you assumed it. This says more about you than about me. If you are (or anyone is) insecure, that is not *my* fault.

10) You said: I do not think I went off the rails there, and I do not think I was abusive, if any of it came out like that, my apologies.
My response: Apologies? You have crossed the line, mister. This is the second wholly, wildly out of control post you have written, doing your level best to make two writers want to leave here. Your attitude, combined with your lack of self-control, make you a liability to h2g2. How many writers are you planning to insult next week? Do not tack on an apology, at the end of a foaming-at-the-mouth rant, and expect it to be accepted. A serious self-examination on your part is overdue. After that, I expect a written apology to be posted at my space.

Yes, NOW I sound arrogant. It is not 'my superiority' that is making me sound arrogant. It is my outrage. I get very stiff and formal when I am so far beyond angry that words are wholly inadequate. I am probably significantly your senior. *I* was raised to speak respectfully to my elders. I am giving you the benefit of the doubt and presuming you are merely young and thoughtless.

You are an ACE, a sub-editor, a Guru, and a Scout? Do you have any idea what sort of reflexion your 'rants' are, on h2g2 as a whole, coming from a person with all of these community jobs? You represent everyone here. If I were you, I should get a rein on my temper! h2g2 do not need their *ACEs* twisting off all over the place, and chasing writers away with infantile temper tantrums.

Very disappointed by this repetition of your encounter with Barton, and with h2g2 for putting so much faith in a person who is not reliable,

Leïlah el Kalil Zendavesta, MAR

Hello again Arpeggio Do you remember the conversation we had yesterday, here http://www.bbc.co.uk/h2g2/guide/F67082?thread=121044 ? I asked you very politely to calm down and not post aggressively. You seem to have totally ignored this advice. The above posting is *not* acceptable on h2g2. You are being very rude and aggressive. You've been shown considerable kindness and tolerance by the h2g2 Community, yet you are still picking fights. You were asked to behave in a reasonable manner and you've chosen to ignore the advice. Crescent has done nothing but apologise since the initial fracas, yet you insist on throwing it back in his face. There is no excuse for being rude. If you can't modify your behaviour then I'll have to close your account. I recommend you check out the House Rules at http://www.bbc.co.uk/h2g2/guide/HouseRules to which you agreed when opening your h2g2 account, and decide yourself whether you are happy to abide by the rules... or not. Peta (who, by the way, is the 'h2g2 support' you refer to)

Understood. Please delete.

Leïlah el Khalil Zendavesta, MAR

And Peta,

It concerns me how many 'representatives of the community' have spoken irresponsibly, and subsequently retracted/apologised.

I think it probably concerns you more than it does me, and I shall say nothing further on the subject to anyone.

Please explain whether you think I should sit still and tolerate being told what I was supposedly saying/doing/thinking, and where in the House Rules it says I may not ask for an apology. I realise the above is over the line. I still feel Crescent was grossly out of line. I should like to know how to go about saying this, *appropriately*.

I lost my temper. I should know better. I lost it mostly over the 'one person's bigotry is another person's humour' statement, and over being told I 'seemed to take a kind of joy' in Playboy Reporter's departure. The former is the sort of things bigots say, to make light of the sensitivities of other people. The latter is not true. I shall not be lied about, and misrepresented, if I can help it.

I lost my temper this time. This is not the first un-called-for dressing-down Crescent has delivered, and I find that irresponsible. How does one say these things politely, please, or does one just have to eat abuse? Rather, do I, since my angry post needs to come down?

I see much I do not understand, and will wait for advice on the matter.

LeKZ

Finally, Peta,

I thought you would delete my original post. I have yikesed it just now. As it was in contravention of the House Rules, I cannot understand why you allowed the thing to stay up.

(section omitted as unnecessarily emotional)

I am only human. I too have limits. I should be able to control my temper. I did not. I responded in kind to an abusive posting. I do know better. My nerves are shot. This has been the week from Hell. I don't think you should close my account, because you lot have probably driven me out of here any way, and it looks better for you if I drop off the scene, and you close it later, doesn't it?

LeKZ, who have not been so successfully put upon by so many people since they left their family of origin!

Peta,

Whut? Now we are really, really confused. We first thought you would have deleted this, as unacceptable. Then we yikes it, based upon your comments. We just got an email saying this is all right after all?

Mixed signals are mixing us up really badly. Please help clarify why something you said has absolutely no business here and is in violation of House Rules is still here. We don't understand.

We did not *think* it was, in fact, in violation, or we should not have posted it. We agree we lost our temper, and are not proud of it. We're pretty good at knowing/remembering what the actual House Rules say. This is hostile, and angry, but it is not: illegal, defamatory, abusive (except emotionally, and they don't count that -- we know from the emotionally abusive items that were directed to us), profane, obscene, sexual in nature, harassing, though a person could justifiably call it 'otherwise offensive'. We did not recite those *quite* in order, and may have missed one, but we do know and cooperate with the House Rules, in the best interests of everyone.

This is what we were afraid would happen. This would not end up being called a 'violation' despite your comments, and it would be back. We thought *you* had the final say, so we figured you would take it out. Baffled. We follow instructions to the best of our ability, but the instructions are self-contradictory.

Caprice was one of the worst things we lived with as a child -- the rules changed constantly, so it was never possible to do anything right. It throws us off our stride, still. We don't know what to do and end up paralysed with fear because we assume anything we do will be wrong. If you can help us to understand, we should be most humbly grateful.

all of us who are LeKZ

Hello Arpeggio, sorry it has taken me so long to reply (server trouble) do you still want a response to the first post here? Until later....
BCNU - Crescent

Hello Crescent~

Had server trouble myself so know how that goes. Here seems okay.

Thank you,

Arpeggio, for LeKZ

Was that a yes, or a no?
BCNU - Crescent

C~

Yes. It's just after 0415 here and communication skills are not quite at top form.

So it was a 'yes'.

L

As I will say later, this was written yesterday and the day before.

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Hello Arpeggio, welcome to my homespace.

OK, here we go.

1) I realise that my rant could have made you run, which is why I apologised for it. If you are talking about the second long post, it wasn't a rant (it was more considered) and I am not trying to drive you away, honest.

2) Any Entry I choose which do not meet the Guides standards is rejected by TPTB, and they ask me to choose another. As far as I know I am still a Scout.

3) See 1)

4) I still wouldn't class it as hate-speech, in fact I would probably still call it joke. However as you took offense I can see the BBC rules (if it offends anyone....) would probably support you. Once someone starts blaming mentally unbalanced people for the woes of society, and calling for them to get up against the wall to be euthanised, then I would consider it hate-speech, and stand against it. My spelling is bad, but since I have become a SubEd it has gotten a lot better.

5) You said - 'There's nothing like a problem that packs up and goes away of its own volition to make your job easier. I can't say I'm surprised at all. The only reason anyone might wish 'twere not so was that there was one truly magnificent example, all
in one place, of Doing Everything Wrong. From an Editorial standpoint, that could have been a singularly instructive article.'. Now it may not be joy, but there certainly seems to be some kind of gladness there. No apology

6) No apology here either. That still appears to be the way, at least to me, you came across in that thread. The reason I said that I don't reckon you meant it is because no-one would want it read like that.

7) Hey, it was just my view, I was just trying to explain what had happened, and maybe give some pointers.

8) flames>/dev/null

9) I still think that this is the attitude that came through.

10) The second long post was much more considered than the first, indeed I still do not think it was a rant at all. I did not lose control, like I did the first, or try to be clever, or anything similar. I thought it was much more reasonable. I was trying to get across how your posts may have appeared to other people, and so how, maybe, PlayboyR saw them.

If you are my elder, or not, cannot really be proven here and I was brought up to respect those who earned it. The writer who was chased off here was PlayboyR. Nothing to do with me. TPTB seem, more or less, to be happy with what I do here.

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This was written on Wednesday and Thursday (as I was trying to fix the server, or at home) and isn't meant to have anything inflamatory in it (though looking at it now there may be some, that respect bit could be construed as nasty (it is not meant to be, you are a good writer, and have the potential to enlighten The Guide massively) but I decided to put it in uncut).

Thinking about it more, the thing I am trying to say (I think) is that any Entry on Intelligence is better than what we have now (which is none) - even though it could not hope to encompass it all, it would have given peeps some ideas, or places to go looking - it would also have been able to be updated as new things came to light, or other peeps wrote about it. As it is there is nothing, a big blank hole in h2g2.

On another matter, I tried to yikes my rant, written on Saturday, on Monday morning, but was told similar to you. Seems that TPTB would like them left up as reminders and warnings to us, and others. Hope this answers some questions, no flames were intentional, so until later....
BCNU - Crescent

Crescent~

Whatever you may think, the facts are these:

I said it was very unfortunate that PR felt the need to leave, early on, directly I found out, in fact.

I do not agree that the Guide needs place-holders of poor quality where there are holes. There are going to be holes, indefinitely. Just putting any old thing in, to fill said holes until it can be updated, is risking the Guide's online reputation. Bad reps travel much faster than light, on the 'net. They also take literally years to lose. Isn't it smarter to err on the side of quality, over quantity? That way, people will say, 'well, it's not really comprehensive, but it is really *good*, and maybe I can help expand it'. The other side gets you, 'well, it sure covers a lot of topics, really haphazardly, and is basically a bunch of dilettantes and amateurs throwing ideas into a hat; don't think I'll go back.'

That is my real opinion of how I think preferring *any* content over no content is a way for the Guide to shoot itself in the head.

In order:
1) I was talking about the second post, which is the one to which I responded and from which I quoted. It did not strike me as *much* more considered. It did strike me as what felt at the time like another shove to get me and Barton out of h2g2's hair. As you seem fond of saying, that may not have been what you meant, but it still sounded that way.

2) I shan't address this, as I could not do so in any useful way.

3) And very nearly did, not make me 'run', but rather walk away in disgust. I do not 'run' from conflict. I also do not suffer fools gladly, if at all. But most importantly, I did not survive 23 years of verbal, psychological, emotional, physical, and sexual abuse to put up with *any* abuse from anyone, ever, any more.

4) Hitler did that. It happens in Central America. It happens in countries all over the world. Developmentally disabled people, people with chronic mental illnesses, some people with episodic mental illnesses are routinely exterminated in countries where they cannot afford 'useless' mouths to feed, or in countries that are 'above' having 'undesireables' in their society. People with mental illnesses are the objects of random as well as official violence. Tell me there are no gangs of hooligans in England, setting fire to street-people (of whom over half are mentally ill, in the States, and probably a greater proportion in the UK - because the UK has fewer homeless working people and families). If you honestly did not know that Hitler (and the Spanish Inquisition, and the burners of witches, and The Khmer Rouge, and the Tontons Macoutes, and the Honduran Government...) shoot orphaned children, 'retarded' (developmentally disabled) people, and people with mental illnesses, then you had no business shooting your mouth off without finding out what I was so exercised about. If you did know... I prefer not to consider that.

5) Relief. There was definitely relief, because it was a problem, and escalating. I still think the paper is a stellar example of How Not to Write. 'Joy', no. 'Pleasure', no. Never said I was sorry, false. Read the backlog, and do not quote me to me, out of context, and think I'm going to knuckle under. Yes, I was *relieved*. I was not happy about it, but things were getting so out-of-hand (I had no idea how out-of-hand they could really get!) that I wanted the problem resolved. It packed up and went away of its own accord and I said 'Phew, how convenient'. Why didn't you ask me what I meant by that, instead of putting words in my mouth, and thoughts in my head? That would have been the 'considered' approach. I still believe I am owed an apology.

6) Which is it, did I say that, or did I not? If you put thoughts in my head about Item 5, don't you think it's possible you inferred things I did not say, or mean, into what I actually said elsewhere? I am really sick of having the actual words continually misread by people in order to find something, that is not there, wrong with them. The only rationale behind saying 'I don't suppose you meant it, but you said: something utterly outrageous and contrary to all human decency' seems to me to be a way to slither out of saying 'I think you are beyond all human decency' and say it anyway. This is precisely what you did. I still believe I am owed an apology.

7) I cannot address this constructively.

8) Agreed.

9) I try very hard never to say anything in writing that is not precisely what I mean. There are no guarantees about people
a) understanding what I say (vocabulary, grammar, style, language)
b) not reading personal biases of their own into what I say
c) not assuming I mean what they would mean if they said that -- actually, that is virtually a given
d) believing I am honest and put care and consideration into what I say
e) not having uncontrollable knee-jerk reactions to what I say.

The only parts of this over which I have any control ar a) -- use primary school language so no one is confused by the presence of subordinate clauses or 'hard' words, and to some extent c) -- know what other people are likely to mean if they say the same thing, so I know how the might misconstrue my meaning. The other elements are not up to me. If people infer things I never said, that is, to a large extent, a reflexion on them, and not something I can change. I do not read everyone's mind, for stupid prejudices, in advance.

I realise that people do not want to hear anyone call hirself a 'genius'. I made it very, very clear, in short words, on several occasions, that people's insecurity, and the way people who are 'intellectually advanced' are blamed for that insecurity, is *proof* of anti-intellectual prejudice. I have said, again and again and again, those of us who grew up brainy know 'normal' people hate us, and why. You did the same thing again, by assuming that by stating a fact: 'I think differently from 'normal' people', I implied a belief in 'superiority', which *I* do not do, but *you* may. I do not put people down for being different, and assume they think this or mean that, if they talk about being different. Most people don't.

When it comes to people 'admitting' we are 'intellectually advantaged', that is socially unacceptable. You proved my point about the bigotry, which was vindicating in a way. You also showed yours, towards people like me. I take exception to people parading their prejudice against any minority group, especially one which includes me. I expect an apology.

I suppose the 'elder' thing is irrelevant to you, because it is not a cultural value with which you were raised. I have had to accustom myself to being first-named by children, upon first acquaintance, which was simply *not done* when I was a child. I have got used to the in-your-face friendliness of people in the States, though I find it rudely familiar. I have not become, and have no intention of becoming patient with, or tolerant of rudeness from my juniors. Anyone over about 35 is not 'my junior'. No one, ideally, should have to be tolerant of rudeness from anyone, of course. This is a personal dislike, and as you say, there is not much way of 'proving' anything. In this way, I am both old fashioned, and very much Indian. It is a culture-gap. I have to endure excessive familiarity from people I scarcely know, and it will not kill me.

It would not kill people, once they know this, to make a point of not being saucy, if they are in their 20s or early 30s. You did not know.
I should prefer to believe you are young, or you have less excuse for going 'over the top' -- twice. Yes, the second time was less bad. It was not 'better'.

Sara for LeKZ

Hmmmm, I only see this thread descending to flames, or heading to an impasse.....
BCNU - Crescent

Crescent~

There will be no further flames on my part. Impasse, yes, that is probably where it is going. Shall we stop trying and agree to be civil, or if we can't be civil, be silent around one another?

Upon receipt of your reply, if you agree, we can both unsubscribe, and call this over. That would certainly be my preference.

LeKZ

That would be good. I look forward to seeing what you decide to put in The Guide, and if there is anything I could help you with around the site, just ask Until later.....
BCNU - Crescent

Okay pax.

I have a couple of simple entries (a recipe How to Make Cheesecake Ice Cream) pending. I have a detailed bit on grammar (Declining English) rec'd. I have another article (Colorado, USA) nearly done in PR. Not bad, I think...

All right, it is time to end this thread. See you around.

Sara, for LeKZ