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

Perhaps an explanation or two will help to stem the flood of unsubstantiated theories kicking around. :-) I will also consider incorporating the following points into this page; the only reason this page is incomplete is because it's still a work in progress (which is why it hasn't been announced yet). As always, with a little help from our friends, we can make it read better. 1. Please take time to consider why we have decided to take this line. Lucinda spotted it here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/h2g2/guide/F64597?thread=106136&post=891272#p891189 ...and a bit of further explanation might help. The BBC has to be absolutely rigorous in following its Election Guidelines, and in particular there's this section: "All moderators and hosts should know how to use BBC Online's escalation strategy where appropriate, to protect a postmoderated message board from e.g. nuisance or abuse. For example, they should know how to switch a board from postmoderation into premoderation, at short notice. This will ensure that if necessary an organised campaign can be blocked." This scenario is quite real: if we get people spamming us with political opinions, or we end up with h2g2 publishing what the press perceives as an an unbalanced debate, then we will, in the worst case scenario, be put into pre-moderation mode. Pre-moderation means that everything you contribute - whether new content or edited content - is hidden until explicitly passed by a Moderator. So it boils down to a choice: * Ban all election comment. As most people on h2g2 aren't from the UK, and plenty of people in the UK aren't political, we believe that this is the least troublesome path. As soon as the election is over, the restriction disappears. * Risk being shut down. This wouldn't just infuriate people, it would potentially destroy this Community forever. We are not willing to take this risk at this time - if you can persuade us that we're just being paranoid and overprotective of h2g2, that's fine, but right now we see this as the best way to protect h2g2 from a potential disaster. Anyone who can think of other choices, please tell me about them. 2. Please look at this within the wider context of the BBC. The initial reaction from those already wound up by our moderation system is to say 'This is censorship - they are stopping us from talking about the Election!' But we're not stopping you from talking about the Election - we've given you a place on the BBC that is *dedicated* to discussing it, so we're actually just channelling the debate to the right place on our website ('our website' meaning the BBC website). Looking at h2g2 as an isolationist website that's not a part of BBC Online is not helpful, really. 3. It is temporary. As soon as the election is over, the restrictions will be lifted. 4. The rules are unambiguous. Do you fancy the idea of trying to have an electoral discussion on h2g2 with a moderation team whose brief *has to be* to ensure that everything is balanced? With the current challenges already facing us with h2g2 moderation, an h2g2 which allows election discussions and has to follow the BBC guidelines will be even worse than one where it is banned. Critics will cry 'Well, sort out your moderation system, then!' We are doing exactly that, but the last thing we need is a whole new set of rules to destroy what we've managed to achieve so far. 5. h2g2 has never been overly political, so why fly off the handle now? Check out the Edited Guide. You may find a few political entries in the History & Politics section at http://www.bbc.co.uk/h2g2/guide/C4 (though not many), and a few in Current Affairs at http://www.bbc.co.uk/h2g2/guide/C182 (also not many). There also aren't many political movements on site or political areas in the Community - there are some, but they aren't overwhelming. One of the great things about h2g2 is the lack of political barracking - people come here and don't feel an agenda. It's good. 6. This decision easn't made by any 'faceless' people upstairs, it was made by

"As most people on h2g2 aren't from the UK"

As someone who has dipped into the world of h2g2 for a while now, I seem to remember that the US had an election recently?

Did you and your team happen to look at the site content around that time? I don't seem to remember seeing any of the problems you state may happen now. You have the data stored though and can prove me wrong.

Do you not think that by checking with historical posts in relation to other occurrences of this type you would have been better placed to formulate a set response SHOULD it occur.

I think you have dangerously stirred a hornets nest that lived happily at the bottom of your garden. If you had left well alone, having checked with historical data, then you would now be enjoying a coffee and laughing at the content being posted on this site, instead of desperately fielding responses to unhappy researchers who are only unhappy because you have made them so.

Too pro-active I think.

A happy site has become acrimonious now, which is a damn shame.

On a sperate? issue - Mark, as this is a site to aid BBC research as well, would it not have put you in a better postion if the URL had been left as www.h2g2.com instead of binding the site into the BBC as it has been? With only a small notice of BBC management? It may have made your life a wee bit easier in terms of moderation requirements.

I hope that good sense prevails in the end, and I look forward to enjoying h2g2 for many years to come.

Ah, but the first letter of 'BBC' stands for 'British', and we are funded by the UK public. This means we have different guidelines for UK elections than US ones.

Did you follow the link to the BBC Election Guidelines? And read them? Ah, thought not.

I have to be offline for the duration of this, because I will not be able to bite my tongue and will probably just end up getting banned.

I assure you that I am not doing this out of any nasty intent nor because I got out of bed on the wrong side, or what have you - I am doing this because I _believe_ that this rule is offensive to me.

Let me give you some background as to why I feel strongly about this: In 1979 I was living in Lesotho in a small expat community that was about 50% South African. Being as it was just over the border it was extremely dangeruous for these people to express their opinions about the "goings on" over the border. I was too young to have any understanding of the situation but still managed to get my mum into a bit of bother by not being guarded in what I said.
In 1984 I was living in Cameroon and being older was aware of the considerable political unrest that was going on there. That year, whilst my mother was in hospital, a coup d'etat happened, and we were forced to huddle in the corridor of the British Embassy whilst machine gun fire went off all around us. The coup only lasted for 3 days, but from then until we left the country it wasn't a good idea to discuss the political situation.
In 1989 I was at home in boarding school and looking forward to revisiting my mother in Shanghai where she was posted as a university lecturer. There was considerable excitement in that part of the world as her students were starting to find their political voice. On June 3rd this was all destroyed when the Chinese Army killed several thousand students -including some known to my mum in the Tiananmen square massacre.

During all this time (and as an enourmous credit to my mother and the other adults in my life) I was never prevented from expressing my political opinions despite of the very tangible danger this might have presented.

But now I live in a well established democracy. I have no less than three votes to cast this year and I intend to do so in as informed a way as possible. But you tell me that I can't discuss this on your site?
Now I do understand that the BBC charter prevents it from expressing political bias, and I fully support this rule. An independent media is one of the most important parts of a stable democracy. But - I don't believe that the charter prevents the BBC from carrying the views of people which do express bias, or the 9 o'clock news would be a whole different thing. How does my posting a comment on H2G2 differ legally from my phonming up a radio phone-in program? I believe that someone has misinterpreted the rules and I believe that H2G2 will suffer as a result.
Please take this rule back to the lawyers and ask them to reconsider. There must be another way to this.

Also - when you say that the BBC is paying your wages, try to remember that I am paying theirs!

Ah, so the B stands for British does it. Guess you don't understand that WWW stands for World Wide Web. Thought not.

This isn't a slanging match Mark, this is dealing with something that has given hundreds of people pleasure over the past couple of years. Go back to the BBC lawyers with factual historical data to show there is nothing to worry about, and with a professionally put together package to deal with the situation should it work out different this time. Did you do this before putting out your statement?

I see the same kind of misplaced idealism where I work, and believe me, it is a lot harsher than your situation.

This will be my last ever post on this subject as it only raises sour emotions and the sun is shining up here.

Aargh! Nobody ever reads what I write!

Duncan - this isn't something the lawyers have forced upon us. It's not a BBC-wide dictat. It's just that the tiny team we have here cannot cope with the extra stress and demands put upon us by having to follow the BBC's (perfectly reasonable and understandable) Election Guidelines, so we have taken the decision to deflect those issues by declaring h2g2 an Election-free zone.

That's it. It's not an attempt to restrict freedom of speech, as there are areas of the rest of the BBC website where you can talk to your heart's content about politics. It's not us trying to destroy the universal appeal of h2g2 by watering it down. It's not the BBC completely failing to understand the h2g2 Community.

It's because the h2g2 Team - that's me and my team, just to make the point that it's not some invisible management echelon - doesn't need the extra strain of implementing the election guidelines, while we're still trying hard to make h2g2 work within the BBC. By all means complain about the policy, but:

(a) Stop blaming BBC lawyers, BBC managers and BBC policy. It has nothing to do with them. They are responsible for the Election Guidelines for the whole BBC, but our individual policy is ours, and ours alone.

(b) Please understand that this rule is going to be enforced, because otherwise we might otherwise have to radically change the way the site works to ensure we don't get into trouble - and that means pre-moderation.

(c) If you don't like the way we're going to do it, then there are plenty of other websites where you can talk politics apart from the BBC's Great Debate. Feel free to go there for your political discussion.

I understand why you're angry, but in return, can I ask a very small thing? That people *read* what I've written before flying off the handle?

Thanks.

I know it's not a slagging match, but when people start hinting that I should resign (not in this thread, but elsewhere in this forum), it gets annoying. Anyway, you said:

"Go back to the BBC lawyers with factual historical data to show there is nothing to worry about, and with a professionally put together package to deal with the situation should it work out different this time. Did you do this before putting out your statement?"

Saying 'there is nothing to worry about' is, I'm afraid, just a personal opinion. The BBC is a serious target for political barrackers during election time, and this is also the first fully online election for the BBC. I would respectfully venture, therefore, that your suggestion, though wonderfully idealistic, is completely unrealistic.

The BBC has to be extremely cautious during elections. To think otherwise is to miss the seriousness of the situation entirely. I wish it was different, but it's not.

Anyway, the sun's out here too. And I'm going to stop arguing, and go and get on with running this site...

I'm very much afraid that you do not understand why I am angry.
OK - I've stopped blaming the BBC. Now what?

Did you read my response? Do you think I can, in clear conscience, pretend that you haven't told me what I can and cannot talk about?

What on earth is there to talk about that is not political? How is it that the wish to discuss the general election is "idealism"?

You have the I.P. address of everyone logging in. You have sanctions against spammers - political or otherwise.

Over the next few months we are going to decide what the future of the UK vis-a-vis Europe is. We are going to decide whether health and education are to remain free. We are going to decide on whether assylum seekers have rights - and which rights they have, whether cheap food is worth paying a hidden price for, maybe even whether the BBC should be more accountable to the licence payers. We are going to hear from politicians and political pundits, we are going to hear from hacks at the daily scum and high minded analysts from NBC. Then we are going to put an X next to a name and decide what we want the future to be. But because you don't have the time and resources to ensure a balanced political view we won't hear from our peers...people who we have grown to know and respect over the last few months. That is the seriousness of the situation, entirely.

Sorry , Mark, I understand your reasoning for doing this but there are a couple of questions I need to ask.

1) (and your going to think I'm being pedantic or being deliberately narky) But if the majority of your users are Non-British then the ban on foreign languages seems even sillier!

2) The only way that I am likely to talk about the election is in the middle of a conversation about something else - if I mention it in passing will I be moderated, will the complete post be removed or what? This is probably mentioned in the guidelines so forgive me if it is.

3) Are we allowed to discuss the Voting system? As an article on the way voting works in this country and the "first past the post" system could be very informative and "contemporary" (word I want means "up-to-date")

Although I have posted inflammatory stuff about this ruling on other threads, I DO understand why you are doing it (now).

Enough... as you say the sun is shining, and I'm melting with no A/C...

Oh, and Don't resign - that would be a Political gesture worthy of many a politician .

I won't resign, yet.

But I am removing myself from h2g2 forums for a while. It's explained in my Journal.

Au revoir.

I am not expecting a response from this due to what you've just said. But somewhere above you asked for recommendations. So..

Hows about making an official page of the guide and allowing its forums to be moderated by the people who moderate The Great Debate.
I know that the bbc and h2g2 are one and the same entity but conceptually to people The Great Debate is somewhere else.
I think many people could live with the idea that they couldn't talk too much about it within individual forums as long as they were given somewhere they could talk within the guide.

On this site, each user is uniquely identified and any attempt to pass yourself off as someone else will be pretty fruitless. On "the great debate" page this is not so.
Therefore I could use someone else's username from here and anyone from H2G2 would assume that it was this person that had said that.
In my experience the biggest problem with internet communities is precisely this "impersonation".
That is why I won't be posting to "the great debate". If you see anything proporting to come from me, assume it hasn't.

Still here DS - I'm Glad.

Did you mention on the other thread that the link from H2G2 isn't reciprocated on the Great Debate?

It would be nice if the BBC were to publicise H2G2 a bit more - maybe putting a link on the bbc.co.uk front page along with its categories...

I have heard a lot of "what's the big deal" type chat so let me just put this on paper.
H2G2 is the best site on the internet for informed discussion. Since I first joined it (over a year and a half ago) I can only remember once being flamed and that was pretty minor. It seemed to work very well policing itself...but it is true to say that in the real world servers need paying for and staff need wages and puny banner-ad revenue wasn't going to pay for that...so H2G2 joined forces with the BBC.
The BBC is a non-commercial operation, and as such it is funded by a fee taken from every person who owns a television or device capable of receiving television signals within the UK. I own a TV in the UK and pay my licence fee.
Because of the special nature of the BBC there are worries that the government of the day might exercise undue influence on it around the time of an election and so the BBC charter makes it the duty of the BBC to ensure impartiality from its output.
However, H2G2 is not BBC output - it is we who are writing the guide and it is therefore our output. The BBC is no more responsible for our input there than it is responsible for the opinions of someone who phones up a radio phone in - i.e. you have to bleep out the swearing and cut off callers who are just abusing the broadcast but you cannot tell the callers what to think.
Unfortunately this charter was written before the advent of the internet and it is difficult for the BBC to decide whether a forum stored on their server (with their logo on each page) constitutes broadcast material. Ditto because H2G2 is a very new and very minor part of BBC online no-one has taken the time to look at the rules and how they affect H2G2.
So what has happened is that the H2G2 team on their own have decided that the only way to prevent them tripping over the charter is to blanket ban all political discussion during the election.
This time limit is their own imposition - the charter always applies, not just during an election year.
However in their confusion and haste to get along smoothly with the BBC one small group of people got trampled on...the researchers.
You see the rule says I can't ask you about anything election related for the next month. If John Prescott started dancing naked on glastonbury Torr I couldn't pass coment - that would be showing labour in a bad light (actually given the size of him, I doubt there'd be any light at all ). If a special government bill had to be introduced to allow telephone polling of rural farms because of foot and mouth disease, I would be banned from commenting on it.
Do you want to know what my opinions on the Euro are? Sorry - I can't tell you on H2G2. Perhaps you'd like to know whether I think the house of lords needs to be changed in the light of their returning popular bills such as the hunting with dogs act? Nope - can't tell you that while there's an election on. Last time out I voted labour, and this time (if I vote in the UK) I will probably vote Liberal Democrat. I can't tell you why on H2G2. I can't ask you whether you think I should vote in the Bristish gneral election or the Irish one (or both) although I'd be interested to know.
Now I realise that quitting altogether might have been a bit of a knee-jerk reaction....but for reasons that I have stated on H2G2 I happen to believe very strongly in the freedom of the individual to criticise his or her government. I quite like criticising mine when they get things backwards - and why not? They work for me, after all.
So - hopefull that's that cleared up...

Mark,

Sorry if it seemed like I was saying that you ought to resign in that other forum. For all it's worth, there's a slight distinction. I was trying to say that if I were in your position, I would have resigned. I didn't mean that you ought to resign now.

By commenting on which party he voted for last time, Duncan has clearly violate the rule against discussions of the UK General Election. Ignoring the disclaimer at the bottom "h2g2 contains content that is generated by visitors to the site, and the contents of this page may contain personal views which are not the views of the BBC, unless specifically stated," a person might confuse Duncan's comment with BBC presenting an unbalanced endorsement of the party he favors.

Will the moderators be consistent here, or play fast&loose with the rules, as they do with the personal photos used by h2g2 staff members?

They'd want to be very chrulish to remove that - I mentioned the only two real political parties in England .

Oh yeah - and the Great Debate part of the site is now closed. Perhaps we don't want to hear what the rest of the world thinks about our election?

Hey? I thought this was all a joke to start with - but now they've closed the Great Debate? (I haven't checked this yet but I believe you DS). I 'spose we're meant to talk about this in RL are we?.

Just going back to Mark's original parralel to a Party - if H2G2 is a party - which one do you reckon?(actually I was going to make a point about how many times have you been banned from talking about a subject at a party?).....

Anyway who cares what the rest of the world has to say about our election - I mean what's it got to do with them? We're (UK) hardly a world power any more so who gives a fig! (another) . ......

Don't worry too much about the "Great" Debate closing. The place where it says "closed" also says something about "messages queued until tomorrow." So your messages will get up there, they just won't be as immediate as the web could potentially make them.

Instead, worry about why BBC/h2g2 does not trust the public enough to judge for themselves when a message board is overrun with one point of view. Beeb needs control over everything because it knows best what's good for us. You and I are too stupid to believe that "h2g2 contains content that is generated by visitors to the site, and the contents of this page may contain personal views which are not the views of the BBC, unless specifically stated."