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"Guardian Unlimited" is a British network of news and information-related websites owned by the Guardian Media Group.

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 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.

Recurring topics

  • Forum moderation:
    • 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.

  • 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, 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 what they perceive to be 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, 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
  • 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
  • Token Tories. A handful of very visible posters make regular remarks - with varying degrees of irony - in support of Margaret 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 successful) mickey taking of right 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
  • 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 "WikiSaurus:vagina", for example, were NOT pleased. The repercussions of this little escapade are still abroad - although no longer in Genoa.
  • 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 killed when a helicopter crashed during a flight sponsored by his charity, the Airborne Trust.As with Jimmy Saville

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 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" target="_blank" >(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.
  • 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.

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.

External links

Guardian Unlimited Talk | Guardian Unlimited Talk | Guardian Unlimited Talk | Guardian Unlimited Talk | Guardian Unlimited Talk | Guardian Unlimited | Guardian Unlimited

The Guardian

 

This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the "Guardian Unlimited Talk".

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