h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

It might have been because in the early stages of the saga i paraphrased Wm Shakespear with " Methinks they do protest too much

Novo

Moderation emails NEVER tell you which bit of your post caused the problem. In most cases, they don't even tell you in any specific way what the problem even is.

The text is standard, and looks like this [in square brackets, some comments I have]:

Thank you for contributing to a BBC community site[this bit used to say "h2g2" when h2g2 was the only community site the BBC had]. Unfortunately we've had to remove your Posting below because it contravenes the House Rules.

Postings to BBC Communities will be removed if they:

* Are considered likely to provoke, attack or offend others [This I think is ridiculous, because there's always some pinhead who'll be offended by anything.]
* Are racist, sexist, homophobic, sexually explicit, abusive or otherwise objectionable [Again, I'm all for this rule right up to the catch-all "otherwise objectionable", because that covers anything someone doesn't like the look of]
* Contain swear words (including abbreviations or alternative spellings) or other language likely to offend [once again, fair enough because this is a family site, but "likely to offend"? Offend whom? Me? You'd have a hard time offending me. Offend Mary Whitehouse, or some similar witless busybody? Why should they be the arbiter of what's acceptable?]

Discussions considered likely to have been started with the intention of provoking others or disrupting the Community will be removed.

If you would like to re-write your contribution to remove the problem, then we'd be very happy for you to post it again. [This despite the fact that we've only given you the vaguest of clues what the problem actually is...]

If you have read the House Rules carefully and are still unsure why your message was removed, please reply to this email.



It's that bit about rewriting your post that reasonable regularly sees me splitting removed posts down into individual sentences and posting them one at a time. It's stupid, but since in a post comprising several paragraphs it's often impossible to second guess what some moron has objected to, it's the only way.

The annoying thing is, I can't see any reason why the moderators can't highlight the offending text in some way so you at least know what the problem is. Most reasonable people on here, myself included, grumble a bit but don't fundamentally object if a single sentence from the middle of something we've said gets cut because we said something dodgy.

However, this is the system of moderation we have, and there's no realistic probability of it changing. Therefore - get used to it. And DO repost what's been hidden, a sentence at a time if necessary.

SoRB

yeah but it is the same policy for entries too... and this is what it says on the moderation page

"If you have a piece of content failed by a Moderator,

you will be emailed with the details and the content that was failed.

This only applies to new Postings, new Guide Entries, or Guide Entries which you have reactivated from your Personal Space."


i have never gotten any details nor have they specified which content needs fixing. i think they should. they say they do on their page.

Hello all,

Thanks for your points here. We have no desire to censor unnecessarily, but we have to be ultra-careful where issues like this are concerned.

We've tried to provide guidelines on what's acceptable and what isn't. As ever, we'd ask you to reply to any moderation emails you receive regarding decisions you disagree with.

However, all that said, we have to err on the side of caution. It isn't a matter of us being pedantic or over-censorious: Our chief interest is in safeguarding the site, and the consequences of us carrying postings that break the law could be dire.

You might see more detail on, say, BBC News, but they have constant recourse to legal teams. If you want to chat about this issue in more depth, we really would suggest that you use other sites that aren't subject to the same constraints or concerns.

Kind regards,

h2g2 Editors

One point I'd like to make in direct response to that:

"we'd ask you to reply to any moderation emails you receive regarding decisions you disagree with."

In most cases, I *don't* disagree with the decision. I like this site as much as anyone, and don't want to see it cause or get into any trouble. I am 100% on the side of the Italics here on keeping this discussion legal. The thing is - we simply don't know where the boundary is. If the Guardian publishes speculation about someone's actions on its front page, can we discuss it? Maybe not. Can we MENTION it? It seems perverse to not be able to talk about things that are on the front page of national newspapers - but there is of course a precedent, several in fact. Because this site is BBC, it has restrictions during times of war and elections. We generally don't object to those. I think we need to accept that, unlike every single other missing child case ever in the history of the world, the McCann case has the status of an election or a war. Deal with it in that context.

For myself, I tend not to respond to moderation emails, because I see that as putting an unnecessary load on a stretched resource. I work on the assumption that simply hiding a post is a quick, simple, easy thing someone can do with a single click of a mouse, whereas reading an email and writing a response takes much longer. I simply repost, a bit at a time, so that most of what I said is visible, and the problem bit can be hidden again with the assumed single click. Just trying to cut the workload, guys.

SoRB

aha! maybe i should try that with the entry i am trying to get reinstated!

Aaand back on topic.

Anyone find it strange that despite another suspected sighting in Morocco today, the McCanns are strangely quiet? You'd think they'd ask their bearded benefactor for flights, wouldn't you?

The h2g2 Editors



Or to put it another way:

We have no desire to censor unnecessarily, but we have to be ultra-careful when people might sue the a$$ off us...

"We've tried to provide guidelines on what's acceptable and what isn't. As ever, we'd ask you to reply to any moderation emails you receive regarding decisions you disagree with.

However, all that said, we have to err on the side of caution. It isn't a matter of us being pedantic or over-censorious: Our chief interest is in safeguarding the site, and the consequences of us carrying postings that break the law could be dire."

Can you please try and understand that all this is just so much piffle if you don't *specifically say* to people what it is that broke the house rules. Ultimately the h2g2 overseers are judge and jury in these instances and the community simply has to trust them and when postings are routinely removed without a full, proper explanation being given then that breaks that trust.

It's also worth remembering that one hell of a lot of people on this site are license-fee payers. They are your *customers* and they pay for this site. People have a perfect right to expect fullness and frankness from you.

This isn't an objection to the censorship, I fully understand the BBC's needs to stick to its charter (something a lot of people here don't seem to appreciate, thinking the site should have absolute free speech), but with that comes the responsibility to tell people *what it is that they are doing wrong*. We can probably agree on the rules but we'd really really like to know what it is that's been breaking them.

Fullness and frankness are expensive. Yes, we pay the licence fee, but we mainly pay that for Dr. Who, Jonathan Ross and Ready Steady Cook. H2g2 is a pimple on the bum of the BBC and it doesn't have the time or money to answer every answer to every moderation email.

Have a sense of proportion and just repost what you said in bits, and they can hide the bits they don't like. Plus, when they do that, you can see what the problem was...

SoRB

"i have never gotten any details nor have they specified which content needs fixing. i think they should. they say they do on their page."

Nor have I. Interestingly, when you "yikes" a post you're asked specifically what your problem with that post is and yet I imagine that the poster of the "yikesed" text isn't told that in any email sent to them. This, for me, sums-up the absurdity of the censorship policy here. The administrators *will* send you a polite email telling you you broke the house rules but *not how you actually broke them*. This is self-defeating since the censored user won't know in many cases what they did wrong and hence can't make sure they don't repeat the offence. I think that is what has caused so much anger in this thread in particular and the administrators dismissive "why don't you go and talk about it somewhere else if you don't like it here?" post fails to address any concerns at all. Whoever wrote it, frankly, isn't doing their job.

"Fullness and frankness are expensive. Yes, we pay the licence fee, but we mainly pay that for Dr. Who, Jonathan Ross and Ready Steady Cook. H2g2 is a pimple on the bum of the BBC and it doesn't have the time or money to answer every answer to every moderation email."

None of this explains why the moderators are unable to tell people in this thread exactly what it is that shouldn't be discussed. Given the amount of annoyance that has been created by people who can't understand why certain posts are yiksed I think there's a perfectly-good basis for someone asking "can you please clarify what *exactly* needs to be discussed with caution".

"Yes, we pay the licence fee, but we mainly pay that for Dr. Who, Jonathan Ross and Ready Steady Cook"

This is also an absurd argument. When I bought my nice new Nintendo DS today I bought it to play games, that doesn't mean that if the stylus is flimsy and breaks Nintendo can turn around and say "yeah, but that's not the important bit is it? I mean, the consoles the main bit". When you give someone money for a large organisation like the BBC the customers (the license-fee paying public in this instance) have *every* right to expect quality, openness and service at *every* level and for *every* enterprise it involves itself in. The BBC is a public service company - it doesn't have the luxury private-sector companies have of saying "yah boo sucks what we do with what is now *our* money is *our* business and if we want to spend it on rubbish and you don't like it why don't you go elsewhere?". One of the reasons I support the Beeb over its private-sector rivals is that, along with generally superior quality in output, it is forced to answer to its own customers in a way the private sector avoids doing. Here, that is just what I (and others) are demanding.

Hi Zagreb,

Last week we posted up some guidelines that will hopefully help you (post 245). Here they are again:

_ _ _

Just a quick note to try and clarify what we presently can and cannot say about this case. It is not entirely a 100% exact science - hence some confusion - but what is clear is that we have to be very careful about defamation. This is our legal duty.

You might see discussions and speculation taking place elsewhere on the BBC and on other news outlets about this case, but journalists and other broadcasters are very careful to avoid defamation in their reports - sometimes messageboard users aren't quite so careful with what they say... So the thing to watch out for is defamation.

(If at any point, anyone is charged with the crime then contempt of court rules may apply.)

The mods have to remove anything that is potentially defamatory, and the BBC must remove this sort of content since it could be held liable for publishing it. The BBC has to be cautious, since nothing is ever decided to be defamatory or not until a decision is reached in a court of law, and the BBC obviously wants to stop things ever getting that far.

As for now, here's a rough guide to the rules the mods are working to - let this be a guide to work to for your own posts:

- "I think she did it" - fail, defamation.

- "Do you think the parents might have been involved?" - okay, it's a question.

- "I suppose the parents might well have been involved" - fail, defamation.

- "I suppose that the parents have to be investigated by the police, they have to cover all possibilities" - fine.

- "Do you think they did it?" - question, so okay.

- "Yes, I bet they did it!" - fail, defamation.

We hope this helps,

h2g2Editors.

just to clarify.

So we can ask the question "Do you think the parents might have been involved?"

However any answer that implies this might be the case will be failed?

As it is:

- we don't have the resources to list the ins and outs of every decision we make

- there are a lot of 'grey areas' where defamation is concerned and we don't have a legal team who can devote themselves around the clock to all matters h2g2

- these points aside, describing exactly what you can and can't say would involve us actually saying things that are defamatory!

There are many, many places on the Internet you can have this conversation unhindered by such concerns - but they are not user-generated content sites run by the BBC. Someone made a point about being sued but the consequences for us could be even worse than that if we were to get it wrong. I'm afraid we're just not willing to let that happen.

We prefer to allow as much conversation as possible, so rather than blocking the discussion altogether we're trusting you and relying on your goodwill. However, this is always subject to change if we find we have to spend a disproportionate amount of time on a thread, or if it's starting to get really legally problematic.

>- "I think she did it" - fail, defamation.

>- "Do you think the parents might have been involved?" - okay, it's a question.

>- "I suppose the parents might well have been involved" - fail, defamation.

>- "I suppose that the parents have to be investigated by the police, they have to cover all possibilities" - fine.

>- "Do you think they did it?" - question, so okay.

>- "Yes, I bet they did it!" - fail, defamation.

Thankyou! That's exactly the sort of thing I was looking for (although these outlines should have been explained earlier given the way people were responding to the "yikes"ing of post.

However, I do find this a little inconsistent. There are a lot of threads on h2g2 where people make accusations (some wild, some not so) against various people and these tend to be tolerated because they fall under the banner of "the opinions of the site's users" and therefore *not* the views of the BBC itself.

additionally:

>- "I think she did it" - fail, defamation.

Well, it certainly is an accusation but it also makes the point of it being an opinion rather than the truth.

>- "I suppose the parents might well have been involved" - fail, defamation.

I'm confused by this one. This merely floats the possibility and doesn't actually make any sort of accusation at all and yet you claim it's "defamation". How is it defamation to float a possibility since many things could be described as such?

>- we don't have the resources to list the ins and outs of every decision we make

But you do have the resources to explain to people the part of their text that was objectionable. After all, stating the same is necessary for the person making the objection.

>- there are a lot of 'grey areas' where defamation is concerned and we don't have a legal team who can devote themselves around the clock to all matters h2g2

Fair enough. I hope you understand why I (and others) want so much clarification on this issue but I know that you have to be careful and I'm more than aware that the BBC has its fair share of enemies.

>- these points aside, describing exactly what you can and can't say would involve us actually saying things that are defamatory!

Would that be the same in the case of a private email? In any case if you make clear that you are not endorsing the views? If, for example, I was running a website and I got a bunch of neonazi wonks posting on it and I make a statement saying "Anyone posting messages which claim that the holocaust was a myth created by a jewish conspiracy will be banned. This is not only offensive but without evidence and rejected by reputable historians" I would have repeated the offensive claims without anyone being able to claim that I had endorsed or supported them.