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

One of the things we should be proud of here is that H2G2 was one of the earliest blog sites on the net. That and the fact that it's allied to a great community, so that people from all over the world can share aspects of their lives with other people; and a great central idea : to build up a Guide to life, the Universe and Everything.

What I would love to see would be more features in our journals and even our PS's - perhaps the ability to add photos to both so that friends and onlookers can get a better idea as to what we are about. I'm not convinced now that space is a real issue any more (especially if there were a KB size limit to the photo's uploaded), and I wonder if the worries about inappropriate photos being uploaded are overblown. A premod scheme for all photos might prevent this. Copyright I suspect is trickier, but how do other sites get around this issue I wonder?

And by the way, I would not advocate at all the placing of photos into forums. I find them terribly offputting when I see them on other internet sites.

Sounds pretty darn good to me!

B

Count me in Many's the time I've wanted to add a picture of something to one of my journals.

If this is adopted, I predict more pictures of pet cats than anything else

You'd get pet dogs from me. I never pass a moment when I can share http://cat.rutgers.edu/~delaphant/images/DressedUp.jpg

Other sites get around the copyright problems by declaring that they are not responsible for the content - anything posted by their users remains their users' property and responsibility. h2g2 takes the opposite approach, anything we contribute to the site becomes partly the BBC's property, so they can't shirk the copyright issue by simply saying "it wasn't us, we just provide the space." The whole editorial process changes the standard of responsibility, and it's hard to work around that.

The same way they get round the worry of copyright breaches - just stick a complaints button on each photo. People who want to keep the feature are the ones most likely to let the Beeb know if someone is playing up. Being able to stop someone uploading photos would be needed though - or just an outright ban for offenders!

I've worked on moderating pictures, not for a community site, but for a competition, and out of the thousands I saw, I didn't see any copyright pictures, and I didn't see anything inappropriate for a family site. Although someone did try to sneak in a photo of 'some curry and a pint' which was quite funny (and not in the rules!).

I've had a think about this and after previous nay saying on another thread I think being able to upload photos would be quite nifty as long as there's a proper way of policeing it (such as, as suggested already, the option to yikes photos).

As for what I'd upload, it would mostly be LARP stuff.

I think this would be really cool - it would be great if people could post pictures from meets and that sort of thing on-site.

As long as no pressure developed on people to display pictures. I have been on some sites where I was hounded for not wanting to put my picture on-site. But idealist that I am, I can't see that happening on h2g2.

I've never really understood the supposed copyright issue with photos on the site. Yes, someone could post a picture they didn't own, but surely they could just as easily copy a text entry from a book, magazine or newspaper?

They could, but if it's discovered, then they'd have to remove the text if it's a substantial chunk, as that also infringes copyright.

Precisely my point. The same would apply to pictures and graphics (or any other content), so why is a distinction made?

Yes - if a picture is found to be copyright violation it could be yikesed, just the same way text can.