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

Good. I am certain I know all the swear words in Swedish. And I think I'm pretty good at recognising what language a text is in, whether it be in French, German, Dutch, NOrwegian, Danish, Swedish or Finnish.
I can't understand half of those languages, I could just tell you what language it is.

Good to see that someone thinks that my inane ramblings makes at least some sense.

And I think the GMC (GerManiaConnection) said somewhere (this thread?!) that they'd do the German bits. Actually I like the idea far better than the Mods doing the translation as this would involve *us* as the community.

My point exactly. And if there was a group of people nominated, like the Aces and the Scouts, the fishy-looking threads/entries could just be submitted to their collective User Site and could be checked frequently by the Users.
And as you said, Tube, the Researches would be responsible for it themselves, and I'm sure that they could be suitably harsh (or lenient, if you please) on the threads/entries in question.

Mark, are you following this thread? Does any of the Italics have a comment on this proposition?

Self regulation is clearly the way to go. After all, who knows best the meaning and context of a given phrase other then the people actually using it?

http://www.bbc.co.uk/h2g2/guide/F63567?thread=101228&post=857889#p857889 post 4, notes on he future of self regulation.

That is true. EU beaurocrats rejected the law making ISPs liable for copyright content on their servers if they didn't know about it, but accepted the law that makes ISPs liable if they did know about it but didn't do anything about it.

Thanks for that link, Happydude. Maybe I have been a bit unclear, but my proposition about the Translators group was that to help the moderators with the translating of posts and entries they think are borderline fishyness as they are in a foreign language. Earlier in this thread, Mark said that the reason for posts/entries in foreign languages being removed was if the moderators couldn't get a translation to see if they are offensive or not.
The part I found a bit worrying there was that since there are some languages that may suffer more from this, than others, where the Babel fish at Altavista doesn't cover everything in that language and the moderators may not be familiar with, it could take some time to actually get a proper translation of the text so that the moderator could evaluate it. After all, let's face it, German and French posts are more likely to be up and running again sooner than a Swedish or Finnish post if comparing the different posts, since it's more likely that the moderators can find a good translation in German and French than in Swedish or Finnish.

My proposition was merely to create a group covering the languages that are used in the Guide to speed this translation process up and deliver a quicker translation to the moderators, so that the actual down time of the text is minimised as much as possible.
I am not proposing a total self-moderation but merely helping the official moderators. It will be a limited self-moderation in a strictly objective way.

I haven't been as interrupted during this post as I was during my initial rambling post, so I hope this one makes more sense and clears up any misunderstandings.

Mark and Peta are both on much-deserved holiday this week so don't expect a response... Abi's a bit overworked.

Good for them. They do deserve it. They are doing a great job.

Reply to post 167;
I voiced similar fears myself much earlier in this thread, just to test the system I even made a post in a dead language & it got through (post 75). What I am now curious about, is the Welsh issue. Under UK law Welsh has equal standing to English in Wales so if someone in Wales posted in Welsh & it was removed (even temporarily) solely because it was in Welsh would the BBC be then open to legal proceedings ?

The Welsh Language Act 1993 places a duty on the public sector to treat Welsh and English on an equal basis, when providing services to the public in Wales.

Q1: Is the BBC part of the public sector ?

Q2: Is h2g2 a service ?

Answers on a postcard please.

Welsh Language Act 1993
=======================
Part II
Welsh language schemes
Duty to prepare schemes
-----------------------

 6.—(1) In this Part of this Act "public body"
means—
 (o) any person (whether or not a body corporate or unincorporate)—
 (i) who appears to the Secretary of State to be exercising functions of a public nature, or
 (ii) all or substantially all of whose activities appear to the Secretary of State to be conducted under an agreement, or in accordance with arrangements, made with a public body within paragraphs (a) to (n) or sub-paragraph (i) above or a person acting as servant or agent of the Crown,
and who is specified, or is of a description of persons specified, by order made by the Secretary of State for the purposes of this Part of this Act.
(the above is © Crown copyright 1993)

Would the BBC fall under this catogary ?

Welsh is recognised as one of the lesser-used languages by the European Community, and the UK Government signed the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages in March 2000.
Welsh is not the only minority language in the UK, and Part III of the European Charter will specify the Gaelic language in Scotland as well as Welsh in Wales. The Good Friday Agreement 1998 sets out a similar commitment in respect of Irish Gaelic and Ulster-Scots.
This is consistent with European legislation for safeguarding equality of opportunity and human rights which has now being incorporated into UK law in the form of the Human Rights Act 1998.

Similar to the protection of the Welsh language in Britain, in NZ the Maori language has equal status in law with English. Since the Queen of England is also the Queen Of New Zealand, then presumably Maori will be acceptable on h2g2, a division of BBC Online whose parent body, the BBC, operates under a Royal Charter.

I guess the same could be said for the native languages of all the British Commonwealth countries who retain Queen Betty the Second as their Head Of State - Australia, Canada etc

True. The slight problem with that is that there aren't that many Welsh-, Maori-, Gaelic- or Scots-speaking Researchers on h2g2.
Call me biased, but what then about Swedish, Norwegian or Danish? And how about Finnish, Dutch, German and French? They do not fall under that legislation, and may then be removed for moderation porposes.

But if the languages used are legal tender in the place they are written, whether it is Wales, Finnland, New Zealand, Sweden, Holland or Germany - am I allowed to sit and write this in English, as I am sitting in Germany and the accepted language around me is German.

Yes, because theoretically h2g2 could have said "we're only going to have postings in Cantonese for the time being until we hire some more translators" - I don't believe there's anything that would force them to use English, but since it happens to be the native tongue of (I would guess) the vast majority of h2g2 employees and the Moderators, and h2g2's based in England, it's the logical choice.

I'm hoping to see more languages catered for in the future... hopefully the near future... what we have is better than just unequivocably forbidding all non-English languages surely? At least there's the future to look forward to.

*Applauds MaW*

In deed, MaW. I totally agree with you. It is better to have monitored threads in other languages, as the threads and posts in English are being monitored as well. Therefor, letting all posts in German, Swedish, Finnish or whatever other languages that are present here in the Guide remain unmonitored would be as unfair as permanently removing all postings in those foreign languages.
The question is just how to cut down the time the suspicious postings are down while waiting for either approval or dismissal.

So I can see a work-around for us non-british researchers:
grant your homeplace to the Queen, ask for british citizenship and then either
- claim to be dealt with under the Welsh Language Act 1993
or
- call it racism if your language isn't supported and point the BBC to their own T&C.

Simple thing, isn't it?