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

Well I said N****r and it hasn't been yikesed yet, so now I'm going to see if the word c**t does. The time is now 1.55pm. How long will it take?

ooh I do like testing things out

Well I'm nmot going to, but GD ought to, he is a good little Guru after all

Traveller in Time not going to yikes
"Remember it is not apreciated to provocate with unsuitable language usage.

(it takes, on average, an hour)"

Hmm. An explanation is in order.

H2g2 started out as a freewheeling dotcom, and you could say whatever you liked. Swear or whatever, anything went.

Then came Rupert, and you couldn't say *anything*.

Then the BBC bought it, and moderated it. Every single post made on h2g2 went before the moderators, and was hidden if it was 'orrible, and edited to add asterisks if you said something f**king ridiculous. At that point, the idea was that every single post on the site would be seen by a moderator within an hour or so.

After much negotiation by the staff at the time, namely Mark Moxon and Peta Haigh, h2g2 became, I think, unique among BBC message services in that it became what is called "reactively moderated". Which is to say that postings do NOT go before moderators, unless and until some other user actively complains about them. Which means you CAN say "c**t" if you like, and if you say it somewhere obscure it *might* never be edited (unless some busybody gets going with the search engine).

On some level h2g2 owes its continued existence to the success of reactive moderation, because it should be obvious that it's a LOT cheaper than having enough moderators to read EVERY post. Therefore it is in our interests as responsible h2g2 users not to f**k this system up. Yes, it's also our responsibility to question policies and test the boundaries and stuff, but just randomly posting the word "c**t" in full is just putting needless stress on the system.

For that reason, I would appeal to people not to do it. If you're going to swear, **** it out yourself. People know what you mean, and the Daily Mail contingent can't get their knickers in a twist that way. Remember, the BBC's online content providers are the ones most under the cosh come charter renewal time. We don't want to see our beloved site disappear, do we? (Not that I think it will, but never say never...)

H.

A Fascistic nightmare might include the following:

- A dominant political elite with little hope of unseating them.
- Widespread use of camera surveillance in the name of public safety.
- ID cards, because if you don't carry it you are obviously up to no good.
- Unlimited phone and e-mail tapping.
- The ability to imprison without charge or trial any person seen to be a danger to the state/public.
- The deliberate targeting of minorities with public security measures.
- A Freedom of Information Bill that allows anything that might embarrass the political elite to be shredded or denied.
- The imposition of controls over the judiciary by the representative of the legislature.
- The use of the Parliament Act to bulldoze through Bills that have little relevance to the majority of the electorate.
- The public censure of any language that can be used to offend. I'm surprised that 'spin doctor' has not been added to the watchlist.

Hmmm...sounds familiar. Time to pack.

Blessings,
Matholwch the Discordian /|\

Hi ice.,
Nothing wrong with that word in the proper context. It's an old Anglo-Saxon word for the sheath that encloses a (mutton?) dagger. But it's not in polite usage these days, old lad! (as the C.O.D. would put it perhaps?). Like the image?

A blushing old man who won't use the word.

Ronbloggs

icecoldalex, please don't needlessly create work for the Moderators. We can remove a posting fairly quickly (we can also - he says ominously - put persistant offenders on premod in seconds if we think it'll save us time in the long run).

And thanks, Hoo, for explaining why posting such words is not actually that bright. As Hoo points out, we were the first BBC site to be trusted with pre-moderation, and this culture has now spread across a number of other BBC sites, which is something to be proud of.

Personally, I think there's a big difference between political correctness and simple good manners. I doubt many of you would like it if I came round to your parents' house and started swearing my head off, just as within my own peer group I use whatever language I believe is acceptable. Maturity is not about being able to say what you like, it's about knowing when saying everything you want to say is appropriate.

Oh, I don’t know. Isn’t the next level of maturity accepting that people ‘say words’ that have arbitrarily been made deemed offence and then either shrugging your shoulders and saying ‘So, what?’ or “And your point is?” and hence removing the offensiveness – EVEN if that remark was supposed to cause offence to you?. People use these words because they know they can get a reaction – if one rises above it and does not react in a negative way but a neutral way you make the word impotent and useless.

Unfortunately, society hasn’t thought about taking up this paradigm shift in the treatment of offensive words and so we still have to be careful on this site – I agree with you (through gritted sad teeth).

For me, Ice’s use of the c-word totally out of context is merely that just writing the word down in the way you would write the words dog, artichoke, torture, bulbous, holocaust, Cilla Black. Just an out-of-context word – and in the C-word’s case it is a word that means vagina or horrible person or sheath – a statement for me. But then that’s me and a few others.

So, it is a shame that you have had to asterix these out in what has been an intellectual discussion in the use of words and in that context could be left un-asterixed…but that cannot happen can it Jimster since someone dropping in out of context could report to the Beeb that h2g2 allow words like n****r and c**t to be written on the forums…of course we really are allowed to use them but asterixed out even though we STILL fill in the gaps in most instances…unless your history is rubbish and you really do not know what Guy Gibsons dog was called. And thank you for not asterixing that out in post 22.

Or am I again just being too logical?

Um, I'm slightly embarrassed by this. I have just found out that the Brazillian footballer that I mentioned earlier does not have a 'c' in his name. The correct spelling is Argel Fuks.

Interestingly the name used on his shirt is Argel rather than the expected Fuks. I mean he plays in Portugal, and so his name as it stands shouldn't have any connotations in that language. Is this an example of the spreading influence of English, that potentially embarrassing word combinations are changed dispite the fact that it is in a foreign language.

To paraphrase Lenny Bruce, you can tell all that to the next little boy who runs home crying because he's been called racist names at school. I'm sure it'll be of comfort to him.

In the meantime, watch your language, pottymouth.

Traveller in Time on his head
"Do you mind if I take the children to watch it? If you are swearing in fluently spoken uncomprehensable language for them.

(Do not wait too long however, they are learning english at school already.)"

But surely the important difference there, Jimster, is that he *is* a little boy, and therefore not mature enough to know when a word is just a word, and doesn't have the intellectual capability to rise above that, the little boy just knows/thinks that someone's being nasty.

For example, 'numpty' is a non-offensive word meaning 'bit of an idiot'. The son of the landlord at a local pub once burst into tears because his Dad called him a numpty- the little boy had assumed that because it was a word he hadn't heard before, it must be a rude insult.

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It would if society started to react neutrally to being called racist names etc and thus removing that power from them. I am not saying it is easy. It is an ingrained response but a slow change would help.

By that boy crying and running home the bullies have won. If that boy was amazingly (I am not worthy) strong in character and simply stood there and said "Yes and you mean?". The bully would see that the names have no power and would stop using them. Ok, he would probably hit the kid!...but the power of the word against that kid would be gone.

Lenny Bruce was not thinking out-of-the-box enough OR long-term enough. If people stop reacting in the way that they are expected to they have the power and not the bully. If all the kids being called racist names at that school did not react at all would the name calling carry on? Wouldn't that be a comfort?

I am not being rose-tinted here. I am not expecting this to happen. I am expecting people to say to me well you haven't been on the receiving end of racist comments and you don't know how much it hurts etc - well a few random half-hearted one's in at Uni however I would really really hope that I would have the control and strength not to react and not to let it hurt me in the same way as when I was a kid and people called me big-ears - it hurt for a bit until I realised that was the point and then it didn't - there would have to be that fight against the ingrained knowledge that the words are insulting and what they had come to mean - but with the knowledge that you could pull back that power should win over. It only hurts because YOU allow it to hurt.

Off to get the soap Mr Jimster

No, the important difference is that the people who use the word know it can cause offense but use it anyway. In my day (cue Northern brass band), a little child who says naughty words just as a means of getting attention ends up with slapped legs and no supper.

"If you are swearing in fluently spoken uncomprehensable language for them."

In an attempt to derail this conversation a bit...

icecoldalex and I went to see Cirque du Soleil the other night. The performers speak a sort of indeterminate gibberish language they refer to as "Cirquish". It sounds vaguely Eastern European/Mediterranean. And yes, I know that makes no sense linguistically, but it's gibberish, OK?

It is, however, consistent, in that they say the same words every night. They memorise them phonetically. Where is this leading?

Well, after some initial mucking about by the clown posse, the show proper starts with a musical number, in which a bloke begins a song with some spoken words... the first, and most prominent, and repeated one of which, sounded for all the world like "Jism". Actually it sounded more like "Jizooooom".

We'd been told about this in advance by someone who'd already been to see it, and found it hilarious. Bizarrely, hardly anyone else was laughing. Is the word "jism", like the word "felch", somehow swearing on a frequency so high that Mary Whitehouse can't hear it?

I think any suggestion that we should be allowed to say what we like on here because we're all adults and should behave maturely is to deliberately try to ignore two undeniable facts:

1. Kids read this site. Kids SHOULD read this site. We should not do anything that would make parents reluctant to let their kids read this site, ESPECIALLY the kind of parents who are offended by naughty words. Their kids need exposure to the kind of ideas you come across here more than most.

2. Idiots read (and post to) this site. The kind of idiots who, if they see something contentious, write to the Daily Mail and their MP. The kind of idiots who have it in for the BBC. Posting unasterisked swear words is playing into the hands of these knuckle-dragging cretins, which is as good a reason as any for not doing it.

And don't come back with arguments about context. The kind of people I'm talking about don't understand its relevance. Remember, we are talking about morons here. You can't debate them, so don't bother to try. Just put your f**king asterisks in like a good boy/girl and console yourself with the knowledge that you are better than them, that by doing so you are protecting their ickle wickle sensibilities even though your intellect is superior.

Works for me.

H.

Hoo, I quite agree with all you have said - that is a undeniable fact of this world.

I am just putting forward an argument to say that, really, when you get down to it, words are only offensive in the context of the asterixed words on this site, offensive because people have deemed them to be offensive and we have the Pavlov Dog reaction to them that we ARE offended by them without thinking why we are! And the only reason we are offended by them is because we are supposed to be. I find it hilarious. I am far more offended by the words: rape, murder, torture, peadophilia. These are words describing things that ACTUALLY hurt people.

The general sweary "asterixed words" do not actually hurt people - the racist one's do on an emotional level of course.

<>

No, that statement is an intregral part of my proposition - it is a fairly theoretical proposition but it is to try and get people to understand what the words mean and why the are offensive. Taking the rather far-fetched example that if we make all people who take offense at various words NOT take offensive or rise to the words those words lose their power. The people who then use the word because they know it can cause offense would find it no longer causes offensive - the word is defused.

Of course, general sweary words could still be used for purging stress and stuff which is what they are so good at - it is like verbally hitting a punch bag and feels great. The ex-racist words (if I can call them that in the new situation) would still have a historical aspect of offensiveness - in this wonderful rose-tinted situation would the words just not be used due to those historical undertones or would they be used in normal conversatin like n****r would just describe a black person. Difficult to say because at the moment we still have the offensiveness of the word in our mind-set - it also has that 'great' aspect of good swearing/offensive words of being a hard word that can be said with venom. I do wonder had the Latin word for black not been nigre but a much softer sounding word whether we would have such a word as there would be no venom in saying it - possibly another word at some point would have come along


<< In my day (cue Northern brass band), a little child who says naughty words just as a means of getting attention ends up with slapped legs and no supper.>>

Yes, thereby reinforcing these words in that childs mind that they have power and cause offence. I am really talking about a major paradigm-shift in how we view words and that we can simply make a decision that words that were offensive aren't anymore that child would then use that word and there would be NO reaction, NO attention, NO slapping of legs and he would stop using them...but of course since they are no longer 'offensive' he could carry on using them.

Right that's it. If you cannot see what I am saying about a long term defusing of these words and I am not talking about *now* then fine carry on being offended by these words. OR you could get under the radar and decide that they aren't offensive and obviously not use them in polte company but when you see people beign offended by them pass on these thoughts to them so that the next time they hear these words they aren't offended by them and they can concentrate on ridding the world of words like rape, murder, torture, peadophilia apart from being in history books.

Does any one actually get what I am saying here?

And I think that the theory is a valid and admirable one. But for the sake of the site, we'd prefer you didn't test the theory out here

I certainly hope you don't think I would. Now, I *would* find that offensive.

Is the word shorty offensive.

If it is deliberately used to hurt someone it is certainly offensive then.

The n, w, or even c, word do not offend me themselves I find it offensive that people choose to throw them at me or use them in my presence. Words that seek to ostracise me or distance me are offensive they embody the idea the Im seperate and deserve les respect becuse of my skin colour.

So when shorty is used in a malevolent or nasty way it becomes offensive.

"words are like weapons
they wound sometimes"

sorry for quoting a Cher song

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Only the person it is aimed at finds it offensive. You have made that assumption that the person it is being aimed at finds it offensive which is the whole point of what I have been saying. If the short person shrugs or just says - "Yep, I'm short. Great observation there." to the person throwing the supposed insult then the word shorty has not carried out it's purpose: to insult.

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Only if you allow it to.

<< Words that seek to ostracise me or distance me are offensive they embody the idea the Im seperate and deserve les respect becuse of my skin colour.>>

Do you feel that when people use these words that they actually get less respect from you and others - or should do? The words also have the power to isolate racists with a slight shift in mind-set over there use. Could you actually change you view of the words and hence, for you, they change their meanings?

Just interested in whether my wonderfully flower-powerish theory could work!

"words are like weapons
they wound sometimes"

So blunt the weapons!! Shrug