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

A link can be made to a commercial company as long as it is editorially justified. It's reasonable that an entry discussing DVD's and their worldwide availability links to sites that supply DVD's, particularly if the reviewer is discussing the availability of range by stockist, or their performance on delivery for instance.

Equally, it's okay to link to a commercial company like Intel for instance, if the entry is about one or more Intel products, or their position in the global marketplace, although in the latter instance I'd also expect to see URLs for their competitors in the marketplace.

Corporate/commercial URL's should not ideally link directly to a 'shopping basket' part of the company's or organisations website. It's generally more appropriate to link either to the front page or to an area of specific interest. For instance the other day I passed a link to a seaside stick of rock manufacturer, they did sell rock through the website, but the Researcher wanted to link directly to the page that showed how they put newly-weds names through the rock as unusual wedding gifts, that was acceptable, linking directly to the 'buy this product' page would not have been.

There will always be exceptions to the above guidelines, moderation has shown us that there are a thousand possible variations to every rule. Questionable URL's are referred to us, and we make the final decision as to whether it's editorial justifable. In the interest of sharing information and knowledge, we do try to incorporate appropriate URL's whenever possible.

Phone numbers; are are slightly different case. We can automatically pull all URL's out of h2g2 in order to create a list that can be re-checked at a later date, we have currently agreed to re-check all URL's on a regular basis, to make sure that they haven't changed/aren't broken, etc. We can't recheck telephone numbers on site, and numbers, local codes and international codes all change regularly. If you can give the name, address and URL, the number is publically available, and this means that we're not giving out unreliable information on site.

Peta,

Thanks that seems a very helpful response (although I'm sure somebody will attack it soon). Are you intending to collect all of the 'guidelines' that arise out of discussions on moderation and make them available as an article somewhere? I think that would be a good idea although I'd avoid making such guidelines directly a part of the house rules as they are complicated enough already.

Z

Someone will probably attack it - yeah, LOL You're probably right, but then Guidelines can only be just that, there's always an exception to the rule.

Collating them all together would be a good idea, I'll see what I can do. I may be gone some time though, there are an awful lot of them out there! Thanks for the suggestion Zathras.

Thanks Peta, I think that makes it a lot clearer - and these rules seem very sensible. I'm glad it's not as Draconian as Mikey's experience had led her to believe!

In fact, this is another case where h2g2's rules are more determinedly balanced than BBC Online's - they tend to link to one site without ever mentioning that other companies may provide similar products. Or to put it in BBC-speak, "other listings magazines are also available"

GVI

Sorry if I confused or frightened any one -- just goes to show what I get for making assumptions....


Mikey