Guardian Unlimited is a British website owned by the Guardian Media Group. It contains nearly all of the content of the The Guardian and Observer newspapers, 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 [1] (nb link requires registration). Interestingly, there were more visitors from the US than from the UK.
The site, running on the Web Crossing publishing platform, is made up of a core news site, plus a network of niche websites covering subjects including media, sport, education and the public sector. "Guardian Unlimited" is notable for its engagement with readers, including long-running talkboards and, more recently, a network of weblogs. Most of the site can be viewed for free and without registration, though some services such as the talkboard and some of the online-only news content requires users to register.
Ownership
"Guardian Unlimited" is part of the Guardian Media Group of newspapers, radio stations, and new media including The Guardian daily newspaper, The Observer Sunday newspaper, the Manchester Evening News. All the aforementioned are owned by The Scott Trust, a charitable foundation which aims to ensure the newspaper's editorial independence in perpetuity, maintaining its financial health to ensure it does not become vulnerable to take over by for-profit media groups, and the serious compromise of editorial independence that this often brings.
History
Guardian Unlimited was launched in 1999, born of the Guardian New Media Lab. It was designed by a team including celebrated British designer Neville Brody. Its popularity soared after the September 11th attack in the United States, largely thanks to the diverse range of viewpoints published in the Guardian newspaper. The website won the Best Newspaper category in the 2005 Webby Awards, beating the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal and Variety. [2].
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 posters from the United States. 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 Anglo-American politics, media and eccentric British banter. 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.
Recurring topics
- 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
- Criticism 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
- Alleged sporadic and ineffectual moderation of the site, which is only performed during UK office hours, resulting in timed vandalism by trolls with abusive threads which may or may not be deleted
- Debating which are more popular, kittens or penguins, brown sauce or red sauce, or indeed monkeys and pigs
- Posters playing games with moderators by means of secret threads and catchphrases to see if the moderator notices them. Examples include:
- a thread innocuously titled "The Coffee Shop", secretly used for homosexual cybersex for several months; another, Dr Beaky's Academy, was little more than a cyber S&M dungeon masquerading as a virtual minor public school with the well known poster beaky1 acting as both headmaster and chief 'disciplinarian'. It ran in various guises for over two years.
- Another, "Eamonn Holmes' Ammonia Home", used innuendo to imply celebrities secretly abused children via water sports
- Referring to Pikeys (a phrase deemed offensive by moderators due to its connection to the Roma) as "freshwater fish"
- 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 heavily-ridiculed threads started by one particular poster endlessly trying to promote World Socialism
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 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 (unoffically) 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.
- 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 (of several thousand posts or more) are often deleted with litle 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 vacous 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, 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 London ('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.
- 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. Although perhaps inevitably a predominantly left-wing Talkboard, there do exist a handful of very visible posters who make regular remarks - with varying degrees of irony - in support of Mrs Thatcher, private education, fox hunting, lowering income tax at the expense of public services etc. Not trolls in the strict sense, their antics are met with responses varying from indulgent bemusement to naked hostility depending on the audience at the time.
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 a Daily Mail article, circa 2003. The word "children" is often replaced with other words, depending on the context: one variant -- "Won't someone please think of the kittens?" -- is almost established in its own right.
- "This thread will now be deleted" - the inevitable last line of any response from the moderators when a thread has overstepped the mark.
- "[X]: Where is it now?" -- standard formula for a thread title, 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 19 August 2005: "Soothing, dreamy daytime TV about pipe-smoking rural eccentrics pottering around on canal boats : Where is it now?").
- 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".
- "LOL! ACK! let's all work together on this one, gang!" (and variations) - the frequent exclamation of a poster called MyCatSmells, which has since become common currency.
- Carrots/Duck Tape (sic) /Robert Fripp/Yoko Ono/John Lennon/Attack prostitutes - these terms are used to refer to a bizarre conspiracy theory held by one (apparently former) user, a deaf and mentally ill man from America, who believed that he was being persecuted by a cabal of rock musicians who were somehow involved in the assassination of John Lennon and the spread of AIDS. Much loved by the GU community, who treated his ideas with gentle indulgence.
- Swears. There is a feeling among many members of the GU community that swears are big and clever and that everybody is laughing. They are probably right. One of the favourite swears is the word 'cunt', and whilst using it in its unadorned state can be creditworthy in itself, greater kudos can be gained from - to paraphrase Rachmaninov - Rhapsodising on a Theme of Cunt. Favourite variations include: cuntosity, cuntish (as in 'he seems a bit cuntish', i.e. 'he's a bit of a rotter/idiot/fool'), cuntastic (which can be used to celebrate or denigrate), cunted (as in 'my computer isn't working, it appears to be cunted') and cunting (this can be used as both an adverb and adjective and may well have first been used in the phrase 'it's cunting it down outside', i.e., 'it's raining rather heavily'). The word can also be used in conjunction with other more innocuous words to create a new phrase - a favourite in the GU community being 'cunt soup' - meaning (to employ another swear) 'a bunch of arse', or 'really not very good at all'. Fuck and all its variations is also a GU favourite, but in recent years has had to bow to the greater power of cunt. Many thread titles are simply at attempt to get as many swear words as possible in thread titles (e.g. "Can you get away with "Cunt" in polite conversation now?"
- "Fuck Off, Cunt". One of the most cunt infested "threads" on GUT is "What Are You Wearing" which is believed to be a bunch of self obsessed London based fuckups talking bollocks to each other, however is in fact a bunch of self obsessed fuckups talking bollocks to each other from around the UK. A notoriously unfriendly thread, any time a new poster attempts to engage them in conversation, they are met with a hearty succession of "Fuck off, cunt" until the poor cunt either leaves, or realises they must also become a self obsessed fuckup and talk bollocks. The latter very rarely happens. All know each other in real life, and meet up very regularly to talk bollocks with alcohol. None of them are important in a GU sense.
- Frequent references to the sexual practice of wolfbagging and the mellotron , a cult 1960s electric instrument
- "Poor Old Gladders" . A persistently recurring reference to JackGladny, an erstwhile GU poster.
- "HavenMutton" . A collective term for the ladies of a certain age who post on the Haven, aggressively detailing their failure to land a man.
Prominent Posters
- Callidice - an infamous troll who described her herself as a "race realist", starting threads like "Why can't we discuss how Blacks smell?" on Friday evenings (so the thread would last all weekend). Claimed to be a Jewish admirer of Oswald Mosely, and to live in Chelsea. Repeatedly banned only to resurface under another username, often similar to another user's name to sow confusion (e.g. "garr1ck92")
- CentreRight/Bryan Hinnen
- garrick92
- horserider - a Scottish poster obsessed with devolution who would turn any thread he posted on into a rant about the acheivements of Scotland
- Iblis - A tedious urban homosexual. Notorious for posting links to pictures of himself having receptive anal sex, thus earning the soubriquet Wizard's Sleeve .
- jani2 - A truly fearsome woman. Known for flashing her breasts at meets, and encouraging others to do likewise. Violent when drunk. Once brought a chocolate fudge cake ("CFC") to a meet.
- JohnKnox/JohnKnoxLives - long time poster affectionately know as the padre. Slatwart of the N & Q Club.
- Twemlow/Spontu - Liverpool correspondent and stalwart of the N & Q Club.
- Shadrack22 - our man in the North
- Hankinshaw - in no way related to a former poster, the vile, libelling cunt rickytmbg.
- Lawlsie OverUSES capital letters in an ATTEMPT to make her OPINIONS noted and AGREED with. Middle aged. MAD.
- Leftie26 - formerly known as LeftieB. A stalwart of GU, Leftie is known for posting at great length about her friend who hasn't phoned since 1997, the price of chips and the problem of people who don't say what they mean. Leftie lives in Newcastle.
- logos - suspected to be holocaust revisionist David Irving
- mycatsmells
- RankBajin/mickey73 - likes to drink lighter fuel and perform TheWrong
- patrick1971 - A long-time poster, patrick1971 represents possibly the best example of a shallow existence attempting to find meaning through insulting others on the Internet. His caustic wit makes him loved by some and loathed by more. Reviled as one of the ringleaders of Genoa (q.v.).
- policywatcher
- slacker
- TheMiddleMan - If banality were an Olympic sport, this poster would win. Generally slags off the Daily Mail, one of the most controversial things one can do on a left-wing talkboard!
The "Barefoot Doctor" Incident
The character of GU Talk was particularly well demonstrated by the live online appearance of "The Barefoot Doctor", a proponent of alternative therapies whose work appeared, until recently, in The Observer.
The "Doctor" is strongly disliked by many of the GU Talk community, not least for what they see as his unjustified use of the title "Doctor". His online appearance lurched between outright aggression and farce, as posters 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?".
The incident was simply another amusing in-joke, until 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 of course another favourite hobby of the GU Talk community.