Talk:TheGuardian.com

Untitled

2012-08-02, section #Notability of Talk relocated from the top to section 12, in chronological sequence. -P64

lol could this article represent the absolute rediculous nature of Wikipedia anymore? I mean, it's a glorified PR puff piece. Why am I not surprised given the pathetic excuse for a website that Wikipedia is. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.110.210.31 (talk) 16:33, 25 August 2013 (UTC)

List of users

Good to see all sorts of stuff appearing on this page, too - been meaning to write up GU Talk for some time, looks like a critical mass of GU usiong Wikipedians is being reached. And we need that lsit of users on there! --Vodex 01:01, August 19, 2005 (UTC)

Hmmm, I'd say a list of users isn't needed, and is not really what wikipedia is for MyNameIsClare talk 05:51, 19 August 2005 (UTC)

I've changed "Best-Loved Posters" back to "Prominent Posters" for now since I don't relly think Callidice was very well loved... BUT I'm not sure the section should be there at all and it is too in-jokey at the moment. MyNameIsClare talk 08:12, 19 August 2005 (UTC)

Agree with MynameisClare - any addition of 'much loved' or 'prominent' posters will be far too subjective and/or will eventually become completely unwieldy. The entry is better off without it. --OpenToppedBus - Talk to the driver 14:50, August 19, 2005 (UTC)

I think maybe the best thing to do would be to edit out mentions of specific posters, otherwise people will just use it for ego tripping and point scoring - Moist

I disagree. Perhaps we should name GUTalk posters, their multiple usernames, their positionss etc.

Moderators

The following is from the Guardian's talk page:

Note, They have a forum which has many virtues. many erudite posters, but... is extremely poorly moderated. For instance, they have two 'policies' pages, one is extremely liberal (the one which is available from the ordinary users pages) and has four elements. The worst censure there is is "ocassional" removal of text, which "they really hate to do". They have another, hidden ( if one sees the first (s)he will not expect a second ) much longer and leads to banning at the drop of a hat. I've seen gangs of posters hunting down and mercilessly harrasing individuals with no response from mods after complaints. When the offended returns the offense (s)he is banned. No sense of context, no even hand, capricious acts of destruction, give the guardian a bad name. Thus an instutution of potentially great global signifigance is whittled down to a shadow of it's potential. If only the Guardian would take moderation seriously, we might expect great things from their 'talkboards'. Wblakesx

I'd like to expand on the infamously dodgy moderation, but don't know how to without appearing biased or whiny. Any ideas? --Vodex 01:01, August 19, 2005 (UTC)

I notice constant reference to ModeratorS, to the best of my knowledge (and this was confirmed a few years ago by a job advert for the post), there is only one talk moderator at any one time. --Charlesknight (formerly monarch before I got very bored and in a night of fun got banned for posting whatever thread titles that people wanted). 18:51, 19 August 2005 (UTC)

Maturing content

Once the current flurry of editing dies down (hello Havenites), this is going to need some serious editing, NPOVing and generally making more like an encyclopaedia article and less like a GU talk fansite. --OpenToppedBus - Talk to the driver 14:50, August 19, 2005 (UTC)

I suspected we'd get a lot of vandalism, but we're also getting a lot of good raw matter that couldn't be produced by us dust-smelling academics alone - even if we dohave to contend with them pesky gaymo gags being slipped in.

--Vodex 19:45, August 19, 2005 (UTC)

"There is a strong focus on controversial international issues, and in particular there is a lot of erudite, well-informed and civilised debate about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict". Whoever wrote this has his or her tongue firmly in cheek. Jhobson1 (talk) 13:35, 15 December 2007 (UTC)

Other

[pgb] Shouldn't there be some mention of the constant bickering re religion and atheism in the issues folder - it's an reasonably settled aspect of the GUT culture, something that partly characterised it imho?

Yep, I'll add. --Vodex 19:45, August 19, 2005 (UTC)

The Barefoot Doctor's use of the title "Doctor" is unwarranted. Does he have a degree in medicine or PhD? Not sure why this has been edited to remove this "POV".

Because it is POV. I agree that he's an idiot, but that is my opinion. MyNameIsClare talk 21:18, 20 August 2005 (UTC)

Proposed changes

OK, now this has settled down, here are a few proposed changes. Comments from current GUtalkers welcome (I haven't been a regular there for a couple of years):

1. Is "capitalist money madness" really all that noteworthy? I'd suggest just deleting it.
2. Ditto Genoa.
3. The section on "moderation" needs to be cut down a little - it's a bit bloated.
4. The first three bullet points under "Folklore and traditions", on threads and crashes, could be merged into one, and the stuff on the Great Crashes cut down if there hasn't been one for three years.
5. The section about GU meets should be merged with the shag-chart (if, indeed, the latter deserves a mention at all).
6. The "swears" section should be cut down to no more than a couple of sentences.
7. There is nothing at all about the other talkboards - FilmTalk, SocietyTalk, etc - they should at least be mentioned.

Thoughts? --OpenToppedBus - Talk to the driver 16:50, August 23, 2005 (UTC)

Capitalist Money Madness is certainly a very prominent part of the UK News folder - there are currently 10 of the threads there, several of them with hundreds of posts. But then there are a lot of prominent things on GU... MyNameIsClare talk 17:36, 23 August 2005 (UTC)

The other point about Capitalist Money Madness AFAIK those numbers at the end are real, 5000+ would seem to make it pretty prominent. --Charlesknight 17:53, 23 August 2005 (UTC)

87.80.208.58

Are you all just lurkers or reglar GUTalk posters? BTW, why is this Wiki entry mostly Haven-focused?

--badnewswade--: Capitalist Money Madness is grate, don't you dare change it!

Do you think this site should link to Guardian Unlimited talk on Wikipedia as that redirects to the GU page. Also should there be a mention of Guardian America, as it is part of GU Smallbig 07:51, 28 October 2007 (UTC)

History

Guardian Unlimited was created in 1999, not 1998 as a change by 206.64.224.127 stated. Looking at Archive.org [1] pages are shown as early as 1996, but not under the GU name. The Guardian history timeline also confirms this. [2] AL2 11:17, 27 August 2005 (UTC)

hoib

I see Reverred and remembered ex-posters has been removed, but since hoib's obit made the main paper, maybe worth a short paragraph about him?

I agree

Er.. I agree :P but I'm not knowledgable enough to even be bold and start something.--Vodex 21:11, August 31, 2005 (UTC)

How about a "dead posters" section? There's one or two now. It seems fitting, in a way, given how ephemeral the boards are. Or perhaps their ephemeral nature is their value.

Where are the wings

I've used the GU talk pages since 2000 and never heard it referred to as Where are the Wings. I think this is bollocks. I won't remove it though unless someone else agrees. --Wikipediatastic 14:08, 31 October 2006 (UTC)

I agree! I have never heard it reffered to with that name. I will remove that in 7 days if no one disagrees Smallbig 07:53, 28 October 2007 (UTC)

New Design

I added the fact, that GU changed its design in May 2007. Can please somebody make a new screenshot (my screen has only 14") of the GU frontpage and put the "old" one to somewhere else in the article? thx Anschub 17:45, 13 May 2007 (UTC)

Er... "Since May 2007, "Guardian Unlimited" has begun a gradual process of changing its design, starting with the front page" It actually started with the whole of the travel subsection http://www.guardian.co.uk/travel and in November 2006. Calmeilles 14:18, 24 June 2007 (UTC)

No longer "Unlimited", so rename article?

I've noticed that the "Unlimited" seems to have disappeared from the Guardian site, and it now seems to be only called "guardian.co.uk". So should the article now be renamed "guardian.co.uk"? Also, the initial "g" appears to be always lower case as per this (even at the start of a sentence), so the {{lowercase}} tag should be used if it is to be renamed.--81.157.176.42 (talk) 04:38, 12 February 2008 (UTC)

I also noticed this change the other day and wondered about renaming the article, but it seems like some parts of the site still refer to it as Guaridan Unlimited, including the About/Info page linked-to at the bottom, and also the pages you see when you log into the site. I would guess that maybe it's just taking a while before the whole site changes over, but maybe we should give it some time and see. If not, I've no huge objection to the renaming of the article. --roddie digital (talk) 18:28, 12 February 2008 (UTC)

Should mention that the website seems to have more "unable to access" moments than other such. Jackiespeel (talk) 15:49, 13 February 2008 (UTC)

Seems the site is definitely changing over (http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/inside/2008/02/changes_to_the_guardian_websit.html), so looks like the Wikipedia article should be changed accordingly. Probably the same thing that's causing your "unable to access" moments too, Jackiespeel. --roddie digital (talk) 20:27, 13 February 2008 (UTC)

Yes, that link clinches it for me. --217.44.208.239 (talk) 06:42, 14 February 2008 (UTC) (a.k.a. 81.157.176.42)

Requested move

The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

Moved as there is no consensus to keep page at the current name. --Philip Baird Shearer (talk) 12:18, 19 February 2008 (UTC)

---

Guardian Unlimited → guardian.co.uk — The site has been rebranded. —roddie digital (talk) 23:44, 13 February 2008 (UTC)

Survey

Feel free to state your position on the renaming proposal by beginning a new line in this section with *'''Support''' or *'''Oppose''', then sign your comment with ~~~~. Since polling is not a substitute for discussion, please explain your reasons, taking into account Wikipedia's naming conventions.

Actually, Roddie, is there any point now having a survey? Looking again this morning it now looks overwhelmingly obvious that it should be renamed as per your request. The only barrier is that there is a redirect page guardian.co.uk which is sitting in the way, but I believe there's a speedy delete option that caters for this.--217.44.208.239 (talk) 06:54, 14 February 2008 (UTC)

I'm not sure there's need for a survey, it just came with the template. While I was tempted to just get it changed over, I figured it was still potentially a controversial move with some parts of the site still going by the old name, such as the blogs and the forum, and I just wanted to give the chance for a bit of discussion before having it moved. I requested help from someone higher up and they seemed to consider it the correct type of requested move. My main concern is how the site should be referred to in parts of the article that discuss events from the past, and I'm also a bit worried that Guardian America becoming guardianamerica (seperated by font colour on the website) looks somewhat untidy on Wikipedia when it is written all in black. It's not that big an article so I think that giving it a couple of days before changing over shouldn't really be a problem. --roddie digital (talk) 13:05, 14 February 2008 (UTC)

Discussion

I've put in the request to have the page moved to coincide with the site's name change. --roddie digital (talk) 23:44, 13 February 2008 (UTC)

Also, I've started making the proposed changes on User:Roddie_Digital/Guardian_Unlimited so that they can be copied over. Any input is welcome. --roddie digital (talk) 01:13, 14 February 2008 (UTC)

Hi, the title of the page doesn't have to be the "official" name. I understand that it's better to name the article after what people would know it as -- so "Guardian Website" might be appropriate. Also, "Guardian America" should probably stay named as it is. This is how I understand WP:NC. Sam Staton (talk) 18:45, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

The page should not be at the official name but "Generally, article naming should prefer what the greatest number of English speakers would most easily recognize, with a reasonable minimum of ambiguity, while at the same time making linking to those articles easy and second nature." (WP:NC) In this case it does not seem to make much difference, as there is no obvious common usage and using the official name does make it easier to write the introduction. Further as there has been no support for keeping the page at the current name I'am moving it. --Philip Baird Shearer (talk) 12:18, 19 February 2008 (UTC)

* * *

As of 2012-08-02 there are no contributions prior to 2008-08 above this line. Here or following the next section may be a good point to WP:ARCHIVE old talk.

Notability of Talk

Moot

 – guardian.co.uk/talk is a 404 now

Just want to raise something: GU Talk is clearly decreasingly important to guardian.co.uk as time goes on. It's not in the navigation and the links on the front page don't work, and haven't for some time. There are no longer links to talkboards started by Guardian staff, indeed it's a long time since I saw any talkboards by guardian staff. I wonder if it should be spun off from the main guardian.co.uk entry or severely edited, if not deleted from the entry altogether. Also suggest bringing Comment is Free into this entry as it seems to have replaced talk in the hearts of the Guardian staff. Douglasi (talk) 13:19, 20 August 2008 (UTC)

Have also just noticed that Talk hasn't been included in the supposedly now complete redesign of guardian.co.uk, which I think is further evidence of its irrelevance to the rest of the network. Douglasi (talk) 13:29, 20 August 2008 (UTC)

I'm aurprised that there seems to be no mention in the article of Guardian Talk (as in guardian.co.uk/talk) at all anymore. Surely it warrants a sentence or two?

84.203.54.190 (talk) 21:54, 3 October 2009 (UTC)

This section of the site doesn't even exist any more, so I'm marking this thread as moot.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  21:10, 15 July 2017 (UTC)

Talkboards

They were closed down a couple of days ago.[3] Someone obviously isn't happy, as they posted the following which I removed:

At 17.30 GMT on 25 February 2011, the last Moderator to leave Guardian Towers pulled the plug from the server computer (popularly known as "the hamster") and shut down the talkboards which had been online for over a decade. It was also the view of most that The Guardian in closing down the talkboard without warning or consultation were a bunch of gritpypes. The closure was done without any warning to users; however, an alternative site using similar software had already been set up and a link registered as http://www.thegraun.com so many old users were able to re-register with the new site. There are also two Facebook groups, "Exiles from GUTalk" and "GuardianTalkExiles".

Perhaps the talkboards and their closure could be mentioned briefly in a balanced way, referring to reliable sources, but this is not how to do it. Fences&Windows 21:45, 28 February 2011 (UTC)

Censorship on CiF

CiF moderators are indiscriminately using bans to remove comments, that straining too much from official truth. For example, now they are banning for mentions of NATO troops participating in Tripoli battle. And it's not just ban, it's also removing of ALL comments of a person, without trace, and without giving a reason, to cover up what they did.

Here is the proof: [[4]] Search for "Havenofear". He is quoted eight times, including once by guardian employee [[5]]. But not a single post remains.

Please, others who have evidence, add to this. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Vaporized (talk • contribs) 11:40, 23 August 2011 (UTC)

Wikipedia is not a place for original research. Find coverage of this alleged censorship on an suitably independent medium (see WP:IRS) and then it would be suitable to document it here. - Fayenatic (talk) 11:53, 23 August 2011 (UTC)

This is the Talk page, not the article, and he is asking others to substantiate the claim. It is a suitable starting-point for improving the article if they can do so by documentation (from non-original-research) by secondary sources. That said, such documentation would be exceptionally hard to come by. Reliable sources typically do not have the inclination for investigative journalism into censorial abuse by the corporate or totalitarian hand that feeds them. This is not to say I wish to give substance to any particular ideological axe a Talk contributor wishes to grind. But as someone who has posted some 40,000 comments, between Disqus-, Facebook-, Google+ - mediated commenting clients, I would put The Guardian below the middle-of-the-pack in terms of commenting-allowance transparency. Merely commenting on the observation that The Guardian of late is withdrawing commenting on substantive news articles and restricting them to opinion-oriented pages has resulted in landing on their pre-moderation watch-list.

And yet, where else are you going to find this fact reported in the media? The decimation of commenting in major (responsible, not Breitbart and other fringe) Western news sites should be setting off alarm-bells in the free world among journalists. On the contrary, discussion tends to run along the threadbare rhetorical question 'Is it time to shut down the comment-trolls?', with the usual hand-wringing over fair comment being spoiled by verbal vandalism, before concluding that (more hand-wringing) the final solution is regrettably in the offing.

Finally, how would a journalist document the nitty-gritty of censorship from a commenters POV? Journalists are typically on the other side of the fence. It would take several months to work up commenting accounts and posting test-comments on a dozen or so sites, pretending to be a moderate, or severe, deranged, trolly, etc. poster from faux lib, moderate, antisemite, antiRussian, antiAmerican viewpoints and the like. I, for one might wind up needing a psychiatrist by the time I was done. JohndanR (talk) 21:42, 30 December 2016 (UTC)

Yeah, they have a censorship policy which is nothing like what they claim it to be in their guidelines. They won't allow me to post anything linking the Israeli lobby to the invasion of Iraq for example. They are arbitruary and dishonest in their censorship - it's certainly not a place for "free" speech. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 92.40.33.83 (talk) 20:50, 28 August 2013 (UTC)

The Guardian and guardian.co.uk

Today at The Illustrated Mum#References I have provided these two references for the 2000 Guardian Prize.

• [ref name=prize2000] "Winner of the Guardian Children's Fiction Prize 2000". The Guardian 28 March 2000. 2012-08-02.[/ref]
• [ref name=relaunch] "Guardian children's fiction prize relaunched: Entry details and list of past winners". guardian.co.uk 12 March 2001. Retrieved 2012-08-02.[/ref]

One specifies The Guardian and the other guardian.co.uk, literally following official usage (follow the links). I guess those distinguish articles that appeared in print and web-only articles. Does anyone know?

Previously I have noticed the variant "nominal names" and faithfully used them in formal references. The number will increase this month so I will be grateful to know the truth or to think that I know it. --P64 (talk) 22:27, 2 August 2012 (UTC)

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Requested move 8 July 2017

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the move request was: Moved  — Amakuru (talk) 10:24, 16 July 2017 (UTC)

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Theguardian.com → TheGuardian.com – Hostnames are case-insensitive; we should not be making them hard to read on purpose.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  23:05, 8 July 2017 (UTC)

• Support. I don't think that we have a naming convention for this but... makes sense. No such user (talk) 15:48, 11 July 2017 (UTC)
• Support: but only on the basis that it cannot be (well, I assumed that it cannot be) 'theguardian.com'. This is what I would choose. I think capping the 'T' but not the 'g' is a bit odd and – as you say – hard to read. –Sb2001 ^{talk page} 23:14, 12 July 2017 (UTC)
• Support Makes sense for ease of use. L3X1 (distænt write) )evidence( 12:43, 13 July 2017 (UTC)

---

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page or in a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

free

Resolved

 – by a rewrite to avoid the ambiguous "free".

User:SMcCandlish: 'free', here, was being used to say 'free of charge', so was correct. Freely implies something else. You can say that something can be done 'free', just not 'for free'. -Sb2001 ^{talk page} 12:30, 9 July 2017 (UTC)

It was ambiguous, and the entire bit was awkward, so I rewrote it more clearly.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  09:27, 11 July 2017 (UTC)

Off-topic; if someone has sources against the use of "for free", they can use them at the Gratis versus libre article; has nothing to do with this article.

And please drop this prescriptive grammar imposition stuff about "correct" and "you can say this but not that". One certainly can say "for free"; millions of people do it every day. It's simply not a construction you prefer. It's probably not a great one to use in an encyclopedia, but Wikipedia is not a place for grammatical campaigning of any kind.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  09:27, 11 July 2017 (UTC) Not prescriptive: a preposition can only be succeeded by a noun. (I do know about English and grammar ...) Therefore – according to any decent grammarian – 'for free' is totally incorrect. The end. –Sb2001 talk page 23:09, 12 July 2017 (UTC) Your premise about prepositions is wrong to begin with, as this sentence clearly demonstrates (begin is not a noun), so whatever conclusion you're coming to from it is invalid. Please do not make linguistic arguments if you don't have the background for it; it's a never-ending waste of editorial time on Wikipedia, tedious to everyone. Every native speaker and even fluent non-native one has an innate sense that "I do know about English and grammar" and they are generally wrong; i.e., they "know just enough to be dangerous" as people say about power tools, firearms, and chemistry. See also the Dunning–Kruger effect. Even if that central detail about prepositions had been correct, "can only" and "totally incorrect" and "according to any decent grammarian" are illustrative of the very definition of prescriptive – subjective advocacy of what's "best" or "proper", in defiance of actual observation of use, including use in professionally edited and published works, and reference works on the structure of the English language. It's no different from objecting that plastic "is" an adjective and "cannot" be used as a noun. That's an argument made by thousands on a probably daily basis when the noun usage was emerging in the first half of a 20th century; it was as jarring to them then as is today the usage of "creative" as a noun by people in marketing, to anyone outside that sphere ("Our company provides top-flight creative for websites, pamphlets, and corporate identity materials"; translation: "we do graphics, copywriting, layout, and logo work"). No amount of fist-shaking will change the fact that it's in use, intentionally, by educated people. An actual grammarian (a linguist specializing in grammar, not an advisor or tutor for particular styles or registers of usage) would never make the sort claim you think they would, because the work they do is to accurately describe how the language is used, not how they imagine it should be used in a perfectly logical and classy utopia. If you think you have reliable sources for a preference in modern style guides (prescriptive works), or even in linguistically descriptive grammars of English, against the expression "for free", feel free to cite them. But please do it at the article Gratis versus libre, where it would be on-topic, in a section on usage considerations of the word "free". The article's lead mentions prominently that the word is problematic in English, but does not yet have a section about this, only material about the free software and open source movements and their interrelation.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  21:07, 15 July 2017 (UTC)

Sport

This article previously claimed that the Guardian uses "sports" rather than "sport" to refer to that section of its website. This is not true, and can be verified at https://www.theguardian.com/uk/sport. Cheers. – PeeJay 18:19, 12 December 2018 (UTC)

Well it depends what country you are in. The US version of the site can't make up its mind - the URL is https://www.theguardian.com/us/sport but it displays "Sport" at the top and "Sports" on the left hand side.-- Pawnkingthree (talk) 19:01, 13 December 2018 (UTC)