Guardian Unlimited Talk

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Front page of Guardian Unlimited Talk from August 16, 2005 showing folders and recent threads
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Front page of Guardian Unlimited Talk from August 16, 2005 showing folders and recent threads

Guardian Unlimited Talk is the forum on Guardian Unlimited, the network of news and information-related websites owned by the British-based Guardian Media Group.

Also known as "GU Talk", "The Talk", or just GUT, it is the most popular news & politics discussion site in Europe. Its discussion topics (divided into folders such as "International", "Media", "UK News", and off-topic folder "The Haven") are a diverse and eclectic mix of British, European and American politics, media-related topics, and eccentric British banter by bored office workers.

The Talk utilises the Web Crossing forum software, and visually resembles a newspaper column, with a spartan black-and-white appearance devoid of clutter prevalent in other forums, such as avatars, signatures and smilies. Another distinctive feature is that users may add threads to a "subscriptions list" which supposedly enables them to quickly cycle through threads of interest to find new posts.

Contents

[edit] Recurring topics

[edit] Forum moderation

The enforcement of the GUT talk policy is an issue of some controversy among users. In general, a great deal of freedom of expression is allowed, the key exceptions being libellous or defamatory posts; and comments that are racist, sexist or otherwise offensive (though it appears that comments of this kind are only removed if brought to the moderators' attention by someone claiming to be offended).

Unlike many forums, GUT generally tolerates swearing, personal attacks (where the attackee does not '[run blubbing to matron|honour]'), sexual chit-chat (ironic 'grooming' is a common practice), and much material that would usually be deemed unacceptable for general distribution mass-media printing or broadcasting.

While the internet provides many such havens, GUT manages the rare trick of remaining a serious forum for political, social and cultural debate without restricting the means of expression available to participants. While this expressive anarchy may not be to everyone's taste (and complaints are periodically raised by users), it has allowed for the emergence of an extremely wide-ranging, linguistically creative chatting, debating, and discussing medium.

However, many posters claim that moderation is often arbitrary, unpredictable, and often biased. Threads are often deleted and users banned for unjustified reasons, or without a reason given. (Particularly common is the silent replacing of posts with the Talk guidelines, with no explanation as to how the guidelines were transgressed). They also allege that the moderators take little interest in following the Talk Policy guidelines and are easily manipulated by posters who co-ordinate complaints.

[edit] Folklore and traditions

As with any such 'community', GU has a wealth of shared anecdotes and experiences, which are often discussed. Some are quite scurrilous, others merely whimsical.

  • Folders have a variable number of threads. The rules according to which threads are deleted are a much-debated mystery, but the idea is to ensure discussions are topical, to reduce server load and to remove libelous comments by users, for which the Guardian may be liable. As a result threads are often given extremely stupid names and frivolous topics in the knowledge that they are not permanent. Several such threads have evolved into general-purpose chatting threads and extensions to a poster's social life. In some folders, threads can languish for months - in the Haven however, threads not posted to vanish in about three days. Threads created by moderators, though, are immortal, and are often vandalised. In 2001, one such immortal thread, about Flat Eric, became the site of a game of 'chicken' in which posters made remarks of increasing profanity and obscenity until the moderators finally had to step in and delete it, despite the fact it was unlikely to offend anyone.
  • The GU servers sometimes experience what is referred to as 'A Great Crash'. When this happens, the GU boards start to behave oddly. Links suddenly take users to unexpected places, posts appears in the wrong order, threads appear and disappear without warning. During this period, GU users become disorientated and a sort of communal hysteria manifests in which people make references to the end of the world, or make doom-laden posts along the lines of: "The engines cannae take it!" This escalates until the entire board crashes and it can be weeks before it is repaired. The last 'Great Crash' was in May 2002.
  • To prevent Great Crashes, large threads (which can reach over 15,000 posts in a few days) are often deleted with little warning. This leads to multiple replacement threads, often with silly names, in the mistaken belief the thread will not last
  • The differing cultures between the Haven and the International folders provide confusion and amusement in equal measure. The "Havenites" consider many "Internationalistas" to be wild-eyed "mentalists" obsessed with racism, Israel, and other controversial American topics; International posters see the "Euros" as shallow and vacuous due to living in what "Tony Blair's socialist dystopia"
  • GU meets frequently occur. Numbers of users get together in real life, usually in a pub, and more often than not in ThatLondon, to see how they get on without electronic intermediation. These meets are friendly affairs, at which newcomers are welcome (traditionally, attendees should display a copy of the Guardian newspaper to aid identification; however this practice has fallen out of favour after embarrassing introductions given to hapless passers-by, genuinely reading the paper). However, these meets are also a regular source of gossip and scandal, discussed on GU afterwards with varying degrees of diplomacy. Many relationships have occurred as a result of these meets, including at least one marriage
  • Due to the inherent pseudonymity of GU use, many users are alleged to be fakes and/or Sockpuppets. Several users are suspected of being an employee or agent of the Labour Party due to their near-robotic pronouncements in favour of Tony Blair's policies and attempts to celebrate the government's achievements in the face of sullen ridicule
  • Tories. Despite being a talk board hosted by a noted leftwing paper, there are a handful of very visible posters who clearly support the Conservative Party. The purpose of these posters varies. Some clearly left wing posters attempting to(what they no doubt see as successful) take the mickey out of right wing views, while others are the genuine article, taking the opportunity to genuinely put forward and debate a different point of view from the Guardian norm.
  • Extensive debates on whimsical topics, such as the relative popularity of kittens or penguins, brown sauce or red sauce, or indeed monkeys and pigs
  • Genoa has great resonance in the GU experience. Some years back, a handful of posters, most frequently seen hanging around in The Haven (specifically GTAE and The Lost People), used a thread in the Travel section of the board - simply entitled Genoa - to secretly pour great scorn upon other users of The Haven. In order to keep this 'secret' from other users who might use the search facility to see if they were being discussed the use of asterisks was employed. This went on for some time until a Genoan spilt the beans and the whole thing came out into the open. The unveiling of Genoa was met with varying degrees of rage and amusement. Posters who had been accused of being in possession of a "Wizard's sleeve", for example, were NOT pleased. The repercussions of this little escapade are still abroad - although no longer in Genoa.

[edit] Catchphrases, shibboleths and memes

As with any discussion board, GU has fostered a number of in-jokes, the origins of which are often unknown. Nevertheless, these stock responses and predictable comments form a part of the shared language of the talkboard's users and can often be baffling for newcomers.

  • "Won't someone please think of the Children?" - an all-purpose plea issued in the event of any supposed moral outrage. Believed to originate in the Simpsons as Helen Lovejoy's catchphrase. The word "Children" is often replaced with other words, depending on the context: one variant -- "Won't someone please think of the chickens?" -- is almost established in its own right.
  • The Shag-chart - The incestuous nature of the Haven is documented in this semi-mythical document. Purportedly, lines link the names of posters who have gained biblical knowledge of each other. The original draft was drawn on the back of a fag packet at one of the fabled London meets. At the last reported sighting the sheet of paper had grown to the size of a tablecloth and resembled a map of the London Underground by Jackson Pollock.
  • "This thread will now be deleted" - the inevitable last line of any response from the moderators when a thread has overstepped the mark.
  • Frequent references to the supposed sexual practice of wolfbagging and the mellotron, a cult 1960s electric instrument.
  • WHERE ARE THE WINGS?!?!?! - an in-joke to theories regarding the "missing" wings of the September 11th attack planes, with long, turgid threads (in capitals) by one particularly determined poster
  • "[X]: Where is it now?" -- standard formula for a thread title in Notes and Queries, where [X] is a little-remembered subject from yesteryear, ripe for nostalgic exploitation. This can range from the simple ("Pots shaped like crying onions: Where are they now?") to the esoteric (example collected August 2004) : " "I'm backing Britain- I'm buying British" stickers on stolen, clapped-out Austin Rovers : Where are they now ?").
  • "Why haven't you answered my 47,324,982,137,094,872,137 txts?". Used when a poster has emailed or otherwise attempted to contact another poster in real life. Derives from the much-missed Recently Single Support Group thread (RSSG). This thread tended to feature posts along the lines of "I've rung him/her and texted him/her and waited outside his/her workplace and still he/she hasn't rung me back; do you think he/she could have lost his/her mobile phone?" Such behaviour inspired the spoof thread, The Mattress-Backed Slappers' Support Group, in which posters competed with one another to see how many txts they could claim to have sent to an unwilling recipient of their ardour.
  • Tenuous puns on the word Lost - the folder known as The Haven was formerly known as Lost People, but renamed by moderators in 2001. Various 'old timers' therefore make elliptical references to this by creating threads with titles such as We're Drinking at the Lost Chance Saloon or Weeping for Lost Babylon (both examples collected 19 August 2005). These threads contain nothing but chatter, much to the annoyance of the moderators who make frequent threats concerning the site's purported purpose of discussing news.
  • "Users who do not wish to discuss current events can feel free to go and join one of the countless other discussion groups on the internet" - the standard line uttered by moderators in response to the above.
  • "not[X]" (where [X] is a defunct username) -- the standard way of referring to a poster who has been banned and has returned with a new username.
  • In contrast, a shorthand way of referring to particular users, places, concepts, is to prefix them with that, e.g. "thatLondon".
  • The Guardian Talk Hamster - said to power the server through its exercise wheel. The state of mind and state of health of the hamster is said to lead to The Great Crashes.
  • Overuse of the term cunt, and its variation 'gritpype', which originated on the thread 'People who are cunts'. "GuardianTalk", the moderator account, posted the message that the thread would be deleted; the poster "gritpype" swiftly added "GuardianTalk" to the list of cunts, and then "GuardianTalk" added "gritpype"; this rare occurrence of mods having a sense of humour has passed into the GUT lexicon.
  • "Capitalist Money Madness" - A series of threads posted in UK news by a poster formerly called "1Jester" (now "HeinrichDorfmann"), a proponent of a particular stream of socialist thought known by its adherents as Real Moneyless Socialism. The threads nominally refer to a news story, and link what ever bad news therein to capitalism. Under RMS, a great deal that is bad is caused by capitalism. The threads have attracted a group of posters, who pose a number of questions to 1Jester about how his proposed system will work; these questions are of varying economic complexity, ranging from basic theories of demand and supply to more complex matters of resource allocation. According to 1Jester, the answer to all of the questions (and by this it is meant this is the only level of answer given, with no actual details) is that "direct collective ownership of the means of production and distribution" means that "production purely to meet needs". Attempts to delve into the practical operation behind the "theory" are met with the response that it will be up to the future RMS society to decide how it will all actually work. Unsurprisingly, this is met with more than a little scepticism. Some posters have drawn comparisons with religion, explaining that RMS apparently promises the Earth. Others have drawn comaprisons with the murderous Khmer Rouge regime, which simlarly held money to be quite literally the route of all evil and abolished it. A curious side line of the CMM threads is 1Jesters frequent predictions of the imminent end of capitalism, usually prompted by a fall in the stockmarket. Rather astonishingly, once 1Jester has proclaimed a further fall, the stock market invariably rises, leading to some of the more financially literate posters to wonder whether using 1Jester's predictions to invest might not produce results far outstripping the success of more conventional fund managers. CMM threads are often used as 'cover' for friendly and irrelevant chats about posters' love lives, work problems and other trivia once 1Jester decides to leave the debate.
  • "alltid!!!" - a reference to legendary troll Horserider, who has posted in many incarnations. He claims to be a Scottish Nationalist sick of England's interference in his beloved home, and can frequently be riled by troll threads along the lines of "Why are there no famous Scottish people?" Alltid is apparently a reference to "horsey"'s one-time obsession with Sweden, where he once claimed (patently falsely) to be living. Occasionally posts consist of just "SCOTLAND ALLTID!",however, so the phrase's meaning are often debated.
  • Regular comments along the lines of "it's not as good here as it used to be" which come in a variety of flavours such as a) the lack of wit of the current community, b) the recent influx of right-wing posters, c) the preponderance of in-groups, etc.
  • "X NOW IN BETA" and "I WILL KILL YOU" - catchphrases based on a thread about Google Writely's beta test, largely in capitals, which descended into grammar-based vitriol and eventually death threats
  • Whenever Noel Edmonds is mentioned, the following statement (with minor changes in wording), will inevitably occur:
Noel Edmonds, who hosted a show in which a member of the public was killed during a stunt in 1986; ten years later, a nine-year-old boy was also killed when a helicopter crashed during a flight sponsored by his charity, the Airborne Trust.

Similarly near-libellous stock phrases are used for Eamonn Holmes and Jimmy Savile.

[edit] The "Barefoot Doctor" Incident

The character of GU Talk's Haven was particularly well demonstrated by the live online appearance of "The Barefoot Doctor" (real name Stephen Russell), a proponent of alternative medicine, whose work appeared, until recently, in The Observer.

The "Doctor" is strongly disliked by most GU talk Haven posters, not least for his spurious advice. Despite his pseudonym, he is not a medical doctor, nor does he have a PhD. His online appearance lurched between outright aggression and farce, as posters (who were overwhelmingly contemptuous) asked him such questions as "Given that 95% of what you preach is superstitious nonsense, [...] how do you sleep at night? ", "I know two people with Multiple Sclerosis. Should they massage their kidneys clockwise or anticlockwise?" and "How far are you from the nearest lemon?". He maintained his good- humoured demeanour but soon slipped away under a continuing hail of sarcasm, only to recount his experience on his website in a somewhat comic fashion, bemoaning the general meaness of people.

The satirical Private Eye magazine claimed that the Observer had asked their staff to pad the forum with less combative posts, quoting an internal memo:

The Barefoot Doctor is online on Tuesday to answer questions of healing and health. Safe to say, he isn't proving wildly popular and the questions are just a tad aggressive. [...] If some of you could take time out to ask a rather more benign question, then you'll probably feel better for it.

The detection of Guardian and Observer staff making surreptitious appearances in the guise of regular posters is another favourite hobby of the GU Talk community.

[edit] External links

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