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

OK.

Today I received an email that one of my entries had been moderated and removed. Here's the exact text of the failed entry:

______
testing testing:
123 123 123 123
later tater tots!
______

The reason for removal -- "personal information".

Now, obviously, this entry was not necessarily near and dear to my heart, and thus I am not overly broken up about its removal.

What *does* bother me is that I can see absolutely no connection between the entry and the phrase "personal information". This, in turn, makes me afraid that the moderators might be removing things on the premise that "if I can't understand it, it must be against the T&C".

I'm not here to complain about censorship (after all, he who pays the piper calls the tune, yada, yada, yada) -- I'm perfectly willing to follow the rules, but that's difficult to do if I can't understand them. And obviously there's something I don't understand here.


mikey, the mouse who has stopped humming out of utter confusion.

Obviously the moderator considered the words :' testing , testing, 123, 123 ec to be strictly the copyright of ugly roadies at rock concerts and therefore removed it. Either that or they'd heard those words at a gig once too often and reading them caused temporary insanity. I suspect you are a vicitm of the safety first policy: 'if it's gibberish it might be offensive to someone somewhere so we'll remove it because we don't understand it.'

Another possibility - that it, like your post, was a test? After all, we've got to test that the tools will successfully send emails after posts have been removed...

I don't know if this is actually the reason, but it could be. No doubt you'll find out tomorrow.

Hi there Mickey the Humming Mouse

Your entry shouldn't have failed on the grounds of the content. As you probably know we've been testing the email moderation system, particularly towards the end of last week. I can only presume that because of the wording the moderator assumed that the entry *was* a test written deliberately, and failed it. We've been testing each of the failure emails in turn, so I expect that it was failed because it was assumed that the entry was a *Personal test* rather than an entry containing personal information, which is obviously doesn't.

Oh by the way, an entry will be failed and sent a 'Personal' information email if it contains personal addresses, telephone numbers and specific contact details (except for email address, ICQ addresses and so on). We hope that the Researcher will then remove the personal information and then resubmit the entry, and then it'll pass and be fine second time around.

I hope this explanation helps...

Are you allowed to post a link on your h2g2 page which points directly to a page containing personal addresses etc?

I'd have thought so. Every page eventually leads to contact info; my URL,[URL removed by moderator]this'll probably be removed by the mods - shows how to contact me and has links to pages which contact other ppl.
Try pointing ppl to a URL then asking them to go to a certain link on that page.
Have a fish or two

Jim

I'd have thought so. Every page eventually leads to contact info; my URL, [URL removed by moderator] - this'll probably be removed by the mods - shows how to contact me and has links to pages which contact other ppl.
Try pointing ppl to a URL then asking them to go to a certain link on that page.
Have a fish or two

Jim