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

Oh and Trillian's Child, does your name extension refer to this kind of discussion? If so, why?

Here is how I intend to deal with URL's, until a better solution can be reached. Note that this is *not* an acceptable permanent solution, as it will soon become a major pain in the gluteus.

The ban is in effect on conversations, but not on guide entries. Therefore, I will create a guide entry that will be, as its sole purpose, a repository for the external links which I feel the need to share with the rest of the community. In conversations, I will post the link to that guide entry. Once the researcher has reached that page, they can enter the thread number from which they were referred into a "find in page" field in their browser of choice, and it will take them to the links I've posted in that particular conversation. The top of the page will contain instructions on how to use it.

My friend, I think you will get yourself in some serious trouble doing that. So far it seems the staff have resolved to uphold the regulations concerning this policy quite firm, and your creation of an entry for the sole purpose of referring to for external linking will be exactly the 'blatantly beating around the bush' I described earlier.

And, just because I feel the new policies need to be tried and folded and tested and crumpled up and unfolded and stretched and tried and folded crumpled again, I wish you the best of luck! Go forth, and make that entry. Refer to it like you have never referred to anything before, and make sure that your referrals make sense, and that it is realised throughout the site that your example proves that external linking should be allowed for its relevance, and that the ban is softened. Hasta la revoluciòn siempre!

The president has it right. I shall go from this place to a lecture on "clear communication", and this time I will attempt to stay awake during the boring bits...

I was also thinking of the other cases where
- They did write the original article, but the article is now in the "edited guide", so they can't do anything to it except prod the sub-ed in forums... (they can still fix their own version, of course).
- They weren't around when the original article was going through peer review, and are neither the writer, nor the editor, but wish to suggest that a URL be added.

I'd give an example, but the square brackets were going to get thick...

Abi... had you something to add?

Oh and from here I move to refer from now on to moderators as 'square brackets' because of the format they use...

Ooh - that's a nice idea. Goes with 'Italics'...

I'm going to wander over to the welcome to the bbc page and start up an appropriate thread...

Just one question; and I know the last post on here was 4 weeks ago, but how come on one of Lentilla's posts above, the moderators left in the Amazon.com and Sprite.com addresses?

Apparently because they are names of actual companies - like lastminute.com and such - we're also now allowed to say bigot.com, because it was used as a forum title well before the squacks arrived and doesn't refer to a website as such.

Not a lot of people know that.

Aha! Useful info...

According to http://www.bbc.co.uk/h2g2/guide/F63567?thread=100476 "Subject: Moderation of dot coms Posted 3 Weeks Ago by Peta This is a reply to this posting Posting 4 This is a difficult point Bruce. The company has called itself that deliberately so that it's name *is* an URL. I think I might advise the moderators to drop all dotcom suffixes, even it is part of a name, it would seem fairer and easier to administer that way... I'll discuss it with the teams here first though, just to make sure we're handling the issue in the best way possible." So it's a bit hard to tell what the deal is supposed to be with dot com company names. ;^)#

it doesn't look like I'm going to get in trouble for my little workaround after all. I've come across messages from the Towers saying that they support that solution, and have suggested it to others.

More power to you then

what page did you put your links on?
I might have a browse, for fun.

Well, the page isn't particularly impressive, since I've only felt the need to post one link since I first proposed the page. It's over here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/h2g2/guide/A532289