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

This was going to be a journal about the sexy gay doctor in Doctors and just how sexy he is and yet his boyfriend looks like a gimp. However it's not going to be that. Instead it's going to be about this site.

In the last few months, or maybe even the past year, this place has turned to sh..poo and it seemed to have, as a major contributing factor, a bbc policy seriously affecting our right, as protected by European law, to freedom of expression. I used to be proud to be a member here, but now I'm feeling less pride and more antipathy.

Friends have left because they can't be bothered with it anymore, friends have left because they've been forced out by those in charge, friends have left because they've fallen out with other people, friends have left because they've been made to feel unwelcome by people who should know better and friends have left because People who joined following the BBCs advertising campaign for the place have been nasty, rude, abusive, just plain anti-social.

I have a short story on here, which I wrote for a college course, which contains a reimagining, credited to the original source, of a scene from a Mel Brooks film. It had that in as when I wrote it I was on limited time and I needed something to do what that scene did. Anyway I recently rewrote it to remove that scene and when I tried to update it on here the stupid profanity filter blocked me from reposting after I'd finished editing it.

This profanity filter has also upset some friends of mine because it, alledgedly, not only blocks posts which it doesn't like, but also trawls the site looking for anything which could be a rude word and then yikesing that post. Now I'm sorry, but surely the whole point of the yikes button is that if someone sees something which they find offensive they can use it to complain, so why on God's green one is there any need for the profanity filter in the first place? Especially one which so helpfully points out that your post/article may contain a word/words which someone else may find offensive. Yes, but which words? I mean come off it, any word could be deemed to be offensive to someone, personally I don't like the word kumquat...or persephone.

I've been a member of this site for quite a while now, this is my second account as I hardly used my first one and forgot the login details a long time ago....y2k I think, or maybe 1999. Anyway in those many years this site has had a profanity filter for naught but a handful of months and yet shockingly civilisation did not fall, people did not go around constantly hurling abuse at one another and people did not take the parent company to court because their mother fainted after reading something on here and serverely injured herself. In fact it seems that the only thing that the profanity filter is doing is causing more work for the moderators and causing grief to a significant proportion of the population of h2g2.

oooh story

Kitush want to read!

Mail it to me TB I'd like to read it, I have the profanity filter problems and after I've amended my stories they don't really sound the same

Will do Reef. I'll send it as a Word document, that way the footnotes will work properly. Kitush I can either email you a copy or when I've got my website going give you a link where you can download it.

just email me a copy please??
Thank you

A profanity filter... That doesn't seem to be logical. English is a language used for a great many things. As a language, English could be offensive to a West-fearing culture. The fact that there is a section marked "Sex" on the main page could offend a number of people. The fact that this is a user-edited guide that can contain most anything could offend someone. There are multitudinous reasons that someone could find something profane or offensive. This is the internet we're on. The internet was designed to assist free-flowing information. Opinions are expressed on this site on a regular basis, and whether or not someone decides to read, believe or listen to a belief is up to them. An individual can yikes a post if it offends them. That's fine. But a blanket ban on anything that may be offensive to someone, somewhere, just doesn't make sense. Its like putting "May contain Nuts" on everything on the planet, because it is impossible to prove that, due to the multidimensional nature of the universe that something does not contain even the slightest trace of nuts. It defies logic.

As for your story, I'd like to read a copy of it. My e-mail's [email protected]. Thanks.

*Danger! This sign has sharp edges!*

Where did we go wrong?