Guardian Unlimited

"Guardian Unlimited" is a British website owned by the Guardian Media Group. It contains nearly all of the content of the newspapers The Guardian and The Observer, as well as a substantial body of web-only work produced by its own staff, including a rolling news service. It is Britain's most popular newspaper website, and one of the most popular news resources on the internet. For example, on 7 July 2005, following the London bombings, a record 1.3 million unique users visited the site and a total of 7.8 million pages were viewed http://media.guardian.co.uk/newmedia/story/0,,1524130,00.html (nb link requires registration). Interestingly, there were more visitors from the US than from the UK.

Talkboard

The network's forum, called Guardian Unlimited Talk and also "GU Talk" or even just "The Talk", is the most popular news & politics discussion site in Europe. Because of this, and the Guardian's left-wing political reputation, it receives a lot of attention from right-wing American posters. As a result, 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 European and American politics, media and bored office workers indulging in eccentric British banter.

Related Topics:
Forum - Europe - Left-wing - Right-wing - American - European - Politics - Media

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The Talk utilises the Web Crossing forum software, and visually resembles a newspaper column, with a spartan black-and-white appearance devoid of avatars and other clutter prevalent in other forums. Users may add threads to a "subscriptions list" which enables them to quickly cycle through threads of interest to find new posts.

Related Topics:
Web Crossing - Avatars - Clutter

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Recurring topics

• Open debates where users are unafraid to question current world leaders. For example, there is intense criticism of the Tony Blair administration, under the perception that the Labour Party has abandoned its principles in order to court Middle England to obtain power.
• Analysis of the George W. Bush administration, leading to accusations of Anti-Americanism
• Analysis and comment of the perceived dumbing down of the media, particularly the BBC
• Ridicule of UK celebrities as being cynical and exploitative media creations, alongside entire threads devoted to estimating the height of Kenneth McKellar or venerating David Hasselhoff.
• Deconstruction of tabloid newspapers, most frequently the Daily Mail, with a general consensus that the proprietors are immorally influencing British society through the content they publish.
• Analysis of the War on terror, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and related military situations
• Conspiracy theories are fairly common in the International folder, and are often ridiculed with cries of Where are the wings? - in reference to conspiracies regarding the "missing" wings of the September 11 planes
• Alleged invasion by right-wing American posters from Free Republic with an agenda to disrupt the site. For several periods since the September 11th attacks, entire folders were effectively unusable due to the low signal-to-noise ratio
• "Capitalist Money Madness", a series of threads started by one poster which link many (if not all) of the world's problems to Capitalism.
• Endless debates about religion, spirituality, evolution, etc. in the Issues folder which never conclude, but due to GU's auto-deleting function (see below), are endlessly re-hashed.
• Alleged sporadic and ineffectual content moderation. The moderators claim any posts that contravene the talk policy are deleted, but in practice this doesn't always occur. Certain threads (such as the "Lightbulb jokes" thread, started by moderators and immune to automatic deletion) were filled with libellous and abuse-filled posts blatantly contravening the talk policy, but the thread survived for months before finally having its content checked and it being swiftly removed. Some posters often decide to play games with moderators by means of secret threads and catchphrases to see if the moderator notices them, i.e. Referring to Pikey (a phrase deemed offensive by moderators due to its connection to the Roma, despite the fact that the word is sometimes printed in The Guardian) as "freshwater fish" or "predatory fish"

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.

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• Folders have a fixed number of threads - when new threads are created, an equal number are deleted in order of the oldest most recent comment. This is supposedly to ensure discussions are topical, but to also reduce server load and (unofficially) to remove libelous comments by users, for which the Guardian is liable. As a result threads are often given extremely stupid names in the knowledge that they are not permanent. 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, mentally unstable "nutters" obsessed with racism, Israel, and other controversial American topics; International posters see the "Euros" as shallow and vacuous due to living in Tony Blair's socialist dystopia.
• 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 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.
• 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, 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. More to follow...
• Due to the inherent pseudonymity of GU use, many users are alleged to be fakes and/or 'robots'. At least one user is suspected of being an employee or agent of the Labour Party, due to his frequent pronouncements in favour of Tony Blair's policies and attempts to celebrate the government's achievements in the face of sullen ridicule. Another user claimed to be a 17-year-old French lesbian, but her postings were so confusing that no-one believed her. She is still discussed.
• Token Tories. A handful of very visible posters make regular remarks - with varying degrees of irony - in support of Mrs Thatcher, private education, fox hunting, lowering income tax. The purpose of these posters varies. Some clearly are participating in (what they no doubt see as succesful) mickey taking of left wing views, while others take 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
• Some GU Talk posters meet off GU in Yahoo's Ancient of Graun, Legend of Graun and Worldcrossing's Haven (http://wc1.worldcrossing.com/WebX?14@@.ef26fae) hosted by legendary poster MadMadMoose -who has a record of most simultaneous usernames in GU Talk.

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.

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• "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 sexual practice of wolfbagging and the mellotron , a cult 1960s electric instrument.
• ": Where is it now?" -- standard formula for a thread title in Notes and Queries, where 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" (where 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.
• Regular coments 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.

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.

Related Topics:
Alternative medicine - The Observer

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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.

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The incident was not simply another in-joke, but led to the banning of one very well loved and sorely missed wee pixie of a poster, who sadly can't be named. 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:

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: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.

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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. The appearance of various posters' contribution in the pages of the print version of the Guardian is another matter altogether and created a considerable furore.

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