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

S'mae heddiw
U158627 'nette (user of rocking horse brains) here - I'm sure I've done this before, but can't find it at the moment.
OK, so the greeting isn't in English it's in Cymraeg (or translated into Saes [English] it is Welsh), one of the few ethnic languages native to the British Isles) and means "hello" or "good day". Put me on your list please

let me join, please

ringo - U121497

the beret will ruin my haircut but they try to ruin the song of today

Sergeant Mushroom and Cleo- U161997

Please stick us on the list- do you do berets for cats?

Oh, I got censored! (#193 above)

And I'm even more that I neglected our leader's advice and didn't keep a copy of the post. Here's a summary:

I went to the bubblish site (which performs translations BOTH ways, and to which the moderators DEFINITELY have a link), and I translated "VIVA ZAPHODA POR SIEMPRE" ("that the Zaphoda movement live forever") into bubblish. That was in my post, followed by a very careful and thorough translation, into Spanish, and finally into English. I offered not only an English translation, but an explanation of the issues involved in translating certain expressions.

(Virginia Woolf wrote an excellent essay on the impossibility of translation from Greek, which I won't attempt to find, because I couldn't link to it anyway! Try a Google search.)

I thought foreign language stuff was ok if a translation was provided in context. A lot of entries would be impossible without - for example, in my own entry on Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA (http://www.bbc.co.uk/h2g2/guide/A516755), I include the official name of the city, which is in Spanish. Immediately after, I provide a translation, and that entry passed muster under the new system!

So, Mr. Moderator, what gives? Bubblish IS a /lengua franca/ (common tongue) here, and it's not difficult to get the translation done. Just copy the text and paste it into the link provided in #177 above, and presto! - a translation from the bubblish alphabet back into the one you know and love.

GTB

They are trying to silence me. They've moderated my name. They see me as a threat. I must be doing something right

If you visit the site linked to from my space you can find out more. There's no point posting it here as it will just get removed.

Long Live The Revolution!!!

DrGoofLithium

Dr. Goof, you too? This is getting ridiculous!

I have a plan

I'll be nack in a minute

Hmm, nothing changed. I'll see what happens but my usermname is now different from the one shown above my posts. Very strange.

Looks the same to me...

It does to me now, very strange

I concur.
Psybro @ U106513

This week's language is German.

I'd like to sign up... Peregrin U40382

just go to my space and follow the link to see the whole site in German(yippee!). I can't tell you who to thank 'cause it would get removed by the moderators.

Wumbeevil, a boycott on submissions to the edited guide sounds like an interesting idea to explore. It would send a message, yet it doesn't really hurt anybody on our end, because we could just "recommend" our entries for the edited guide a month or two down the line.

What about boycotting for one month, meanwhile writing lots of good entries, then submitting them all at once in the following month? Unfortunately this would have a nasty impact on the editors.

I'm also thinking of ways that we can frig with the workflow of the moderators. Got me thinking last night when I wrote a long rambling entry, asking the moderators if they would have to keep reading every disgusting, repetitious detail. If we were really nasty, we could bombard a forum with ten copies of the same 2500-word short story all within a few minutes, just to give them a nasty load to check over.

And I think their workload is already tricky, since there are URLS left untouched in the middle of a certain 500+ message long forum right now, where the external URLs have not been removed for hours or days.

Unfortunately, this kind of tampering, if they saw it as intentionally breaking their system, could get us booted too, one way or another.

Just something else to think about. I think we should give a hard look at the possible areas we can boycott though, maybe the edited portion of the guide as you suggested.

Nitpicker,

BAD IDEA. Falsely clicking the LINDA/YIKES button is grounds for getting booted. We can't very well fight the system if we're all booted out of it. I don't recommend playing with it unless you honestly believe something should be removed. Even using it as a playful protest (someone clicked the button requesting that the stupid DISCLAIMERS be removed from their pages, because they are offensive?) gives them grounds to ban people.

'nette,

OMG, forming this group is finally beginning to pay off.

GOO BUSTIER!!!!!!!!!!!

Wish we could get a smiley graphic wearing one of THOSE!

Hmm, I think that sort of thing would frustrate the human moderators themselves rather than the management. I see no point in adding to the workload of the moderators - I'd rather see them get through the backlog, which they only do when they've run out of real-time material to work through.

The most productive method might be to find the right person or group to complain to, and focus there. It's obviously not Peta and the other editors. It's probably not the moderators themselves. Perhaps the editors could give us info as to who, or what committee, in BBC management is responsible for keeping an eye on h2g2? Then, if we have an email or postal address, we can send formal written complaints to them. That, after all, is what they're used to; having worked on similar things on TV and radio. My opinion is that's what would actually catch their attention; after all, do you think they'd actually read h2g2 itself?

johnwfulton had his name removed also for having an email inside it. So they're not exactly singling you out, though they may be singling out n2g2. (Guess what the domain of john's email address was?)

Hmmm. What if I registered my user number as a url

How would they moderate that...