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

Deidzoeb, I think this is great. This petition is well-written, polite and clear, and I would (WILL) sign it. Meanwhile, I will continue to pursue my "Third Way" suggestion, and hopefully one of us, or someone else, will manage to be heard.

The petition does have one small, grammatical error. The sentence: "If other languages were reactively moderated as most other webhosts and online communities do, then h2g2 would still be kept clean and BBC's brand image would not suffer" contains a parallelism problem. It should say either, "If the BBC moderated other languages reactively as most other webhosts and OCs do..." or, "If other languages were reactively moderated as they are on most other webhosts and OCs..." The latter suggestion is weaker than the former, because of the passive voice.

Let me know when the final version is ready for signatures!

GTB

I'll second that. An excellent petition, phrased with such sweet reason that it'd be hard for even the most determined bureaucrat to disagree with it - although I'm sure someone will try...
You've got my signature whenever you want it.
BTW, I do heartily agree with you about that ugly corporate word "branding". My former boss was forever going off to "branding meetings". I always thought the expression suggested some kind of weird S&M ritual...

GTB, thanks for the correction. Since this wasn't something that would cause ideological disagreement, I changed it without waiting for further "debate" on the matter.

Ormy, thanks for the good words.

Ditto, from me.... The Petition seems perfectly reasonable to me, if we can get them to agree to one thing to start with things would be better.

No GE discussion - Pfaw - I can understand why under the current regime, but.....

Here's my version - it's just a proposal, not 'live' - but I thought it'd be more constructive to make my own rather than sniping. *shrug* Steal what you wish.

One BIG issue - get feedback from the italics. Yes, you'll be sending a copy to them, but they'll be passing it on to their superiors, and they know stuff that we don't. No need to do that yet, but do do it before you make a final, live, version:
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PETITION FOR GREATET FREEDOM ON H2G2

We, the undersigned, desire the following freedoms on h2g2:
1) The freedom to communicate in any language we choose, whether common or rare, widespread or concentrated, alive or dead, without any discrimination against us based upon our choice.
2) The freedom to mention any URL we choose, in our conversations and our journals, on our home space and our entries, provided that URL does not break the BBC's standards or UK law.
3) The freedom to include any image in any entry, as well as on our home space, provided that the image does not break the BBC's standards or UK law.
4) The freedom to discuss any topic, legal or illegal, political or religious, rational or nonsensical, provided that our discussion does not break the BBC's standards or UK law.
5) These same freedoms, where applicable, on other BBC message boards, discussion groups, and conversation forums.

We believe that these freedoms are possible and feasable with a system of reactive moderation, as is used by many other publishers of internet content. We believe that such a policy would not tarnish the reputation of the BBC, nor damage it's aim to be fair and impartial. We believe that such a policy would be legal, and would not bring the BBC under undue legal risk. On the contrary, we believe that such a change would attract a wider audience to the BBC, and would make it clear that the BBC understands the difference between the World Wide Web and other media.

Thank you for your consideration.
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POST IT!
Print out this petition, and collect as many signatures as you can from fellow h2g2 researchers. You should collect the following information: Real Name, Location (eg, London, UK), h2g2 researcher number, email (preferably a permanent one, rather than from a 'hotmail' clone), signature, and date. They may also want to add personal comments.

Make two copies. Send one to the Director of BBC Online, send the other copy to Mark Moxon at the h2g2 'towers'. Physical petitions are more impressive that electronic ones, and get the best results.

EMAIL IT!
If you can not print it out and send, email it. Copy the text into an email, and add your real name, location, h2g2 researcher number, and email address to it, and that of any fellow h2g2 researchers. Then send it to [email protected] [note to squack: publically available]

NOTE: do not sign more than one emailed or posted petition - doing so is counterproductive as it makes us look shifty and unreliable.

SIGN UP HERE!
Please indicate that you wish to sign this petition in /This forum/. Give your Real Name, Location, and h2g2 researcher number. It would help if you gave your researcher number, too.

Please do not chat in this forum - doing so will distort the numbers who have signed up. Please use a seperate forum to chat - thank you for your help.

hey, i'll sign!

melissa d (are they going to moderate my last name? just as well, i won't give it) California, USA, U139689

Darn it, Lucinda, you make it so hard for me to stay mad at you! If you keep giving us such awesome suggestion, we might have to make you an honorary general in the Zaphodista Army, just like John Peel. Seriously though, do you believe what you wrote, or are you just messing with our heads? You seem to have caught enough details to show that you definitely put some thought into it, and I assume you really believe it. Would you sign the petition you wrote?

I almost totally agree with the petition you suggested, with minor quibbles. For one thing, point #4 seems to contradict itself.

"4) The freedom to discuss any topic, legal or illegal, political or religious, rational or nonsensical, provided that our discussion does not break the BBC's standards or UK law."

If a topic is "illegal," doesn't that mean that it "breaks the...UK law?"

In the petition I wrote, I consciously left out a few things that were in our demands, like URLs in message fora, because I believe the Italics when they say we're only in a trial period now, and that URLs will likely be allowed everywhere later. I wanted to keep the petition short and sweet, and it seemed unnecessary to petition for changes that are likely to happen without any effort on our part. For that reason, I think point number 2 could be left out from your petition. (Also, the more changes we request, the more likely they'll ignore the whole thing.)

I guess it would be good to get feedback from the Italics, but I don't know if I'm still on good enough terms with them to request anything like that. They might tell me to p**s off. I'll have to send some ambassador who still gets along well with them, maybe peregrin or one of the h2g2 Post staff?

I kind of like the way that your petition simply states the results that we want to see, less emphasis on the methods or changes that would be required to meet the results. In the version I wrote, I explicitly stated the details that needed to be changed (get rid of pro-active moderation), because I didn't want them to reply with their same response, that the current policies are all necessary under the universal BBC online policy of pro-active moderation. Also I gave a few sentences trying to justify how each change would be effective and would pose no extra risk, because the desired audience for this petition must be TPTB at BBC and also h2g2 researchers who might be undecided on whether to sign it. This petition must win them both over. However, I think yours does that very effectively in the last paragraph of it.

The title of yours scares me. "PETITION FOR GREATEST FREEDOM ON H2G2" somehow reminds me of "Move all zig for great justice!" All Your Beebs Are Belong To Us.

The fifth point on your petition is interesting, but is it one we need to fight for? Maybe I'm short-sighted, but I don't care what they do with the rest of BBC online, as long as we get h2g2 back to a competitive level. It would be nice, but it sounds like one step too far, more than they'd be willing to make. Asking for h2g2 to return to something near the status quo of pre-BBC h2g2 is one thing, asking them to make a global change to their own site is a much bigger step.

And anyhow, we have to be careful to pick our battles. After we win freedom within h2g2, then maybe we could move on to support an uprising in the rest of BBC online.

Lastly, you do bring up some very good points in the ways that we could possibly distribute or deliver the petition. I've discussed it somewhat elsewhere, but I really fear that email could be seen as harassment. The Italics already act like our protests on h2g2 are somehow too much, preventing them from doing their job, etc. I would worry that some official at BBC (Ashley Highfield or whichever person the Italics might recommend addressing it to?) would view hundreds of emails as something like harassment. From our perspective, it would be excellent to see this kind of mobilization of people supporting us. From their end, it might look like a campaign to spam their email accounts.

Then again, I suppose if their email addresses are publicly displayed, they may already receive dumploads of emails anyhow. Maybe this would be another good question to ask the Italics, in what format the petition should be sent.

Keep up the good work, Generalisimo L!

I too agree that the level of censorship and control is not worthy of having the BBC logo plastered across it. The rule against discussing the UK general election is stupid.
Consider me signed up.

Duncan, I thought you had left h2g2...

Subcom Deidzoeb, I think Lucinda meant that we should be able to discuss illegal acts. The discussion itself would not be illegal. For instance, we should be able to discuss legalizing LSD (for example), even though it is illegal to use LSD in the UK. Perhaps this distinction could be phrased better, though.

I think it is proper to include a part about URLs in forum posts and journal entries. If h2g2 did not use proactive Moderation, there would be no practical reason to disclude URLs from anywhere. If the Moderator is only responding after the complaint, it doesn't really matter what type of content they are checking for URL removal. It only matters with proactive Moderation because the Moderator has to look more closely to spot URLs while reading through all the content.

Just FYI, I would consider signing this petition even though I am not a Zaphodista. However, I wouldn't sign it if it including scathing remarks about 'branding' that would likely cause hard feelings among BBC employees. Perhaps you were planning to remove that anyway.

You caught me - this is all part of the Discordian "Operation Mindf**k": you are now in a classic Erisian double-bind..... unless you aren't, of course.

There are essentially two reasons for point number five...

1) By broadening the topic under discussion you get *many* more signatures - there are people on other BBC message-boards who are annoyed at the moderation stance - a BBC-wide petition will be more effective than an h2g2-specific one, if it can get more signatures.
2) It is the wider BBC Policy that causes us to suffer postmoderation - and the BBC appear to decide to have the same policy across the board. Hence, any change to h2g2 will probably be reflected across the board any way.

As for explanations for the benefit of h2g2 researchers - I suggest you put this in a section seperate from the main petition - that will allow you to give the explanation without making the petition itself unnecessarilly wordy. Alternatively, you might use footnotes.

You can be sure that Mr. Highfield has a secretary to read his email (and mail) for him, and a seperate, private, account for personal email. Mark Moxon probably doesn't though, and it may indeed piss him off, so it may be better to just send a copy to Mr. Highfield (or some other designated 'target').

Oh, and it was GREATER, not GREATEST...

Fragilis,

Branding rant, gone. I never intended it for the final draft petition, just as a footnote to current discussion. But I ought to view this current discussion as campaigning already. (I still say BBC brand image is now suffering, associated in my mind with censorship.)

"I think Lucinda meant that we should be able to discuss illegal acts."

That makes sense, but could we clarify the wording? "Topics of law" maybe? Lucinda, could you recommend a clearer way to phrase what you mean?

"Discordian "Operation Mindf**k": you are now in a classic Erisian double-bind....."

Actually I don't feel much cognitive dissonance right now. For some reason, these faceless relationships with people on message boards allow me to scream bloody murder at them one moment, then forget about it a day later and thank them for becoming the Thomas Jefferson (that's you, darling) of my anti-fascist revolution. (Okay, they're not fascists. They're just bureaucrats. Which is still intended as an insult.)

"It is the wider BBC Policy that causes us to suffer postmoderation - and the BBC appear to decide to have the same policy across the board. Hence, any change to h2g2 will probably be reflected across the board any way."

I thought it would be more likely that they would allow changes to h2g2 without changing the rest of BBC. Anybody else got an opinion on this part?

Without any input whatsoever from BBC Online, I don't feel qualified to judge.

'twas just a guess - they changed the entire BBC Policy on who owns the contribution (IE, it all has the same dual-ownership as does h2g2) when h2g2 came in: it *seems* as a result that they want to keep a common set of policies and guidelines.

But sure, I'm wildly speculating here...

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Discussing the illegal:

How about "... discuss any part of Life, The Universe and Everything. We wish to do that whether those things we discuss are legal or illegal, political or religious..."

Okay, then I need to add this to the list of questions for Peta. Would we be better off to request changes made exclusively to h2g2, or should we aim for all of BBC? On the other hand, it might be a good idea to try to publicize this throughout BBC online. I'm not sure if people who use those fora are as committed as h2g2 researchers, but who knows.

Just a thought on distribution. Instead of p*ssing off anybody by "mailstorming" their Mailbox would it not be better to collect them all together in one place (i.e. one E-mail box) and send the resultant petition in one chunk....

I think its a good idea to get other BBC Fora contributors to "sign" this, as well as just being good advertising for h2g2, alternatively if we get the freedom we so rightly deserve, we could have a massive influx of people from the other Beeb fora (yay!) when they realise we have freedom they don't!

I will sign this...

Have u read the journals of Peta and Mark Moxon?

Some, but not recently I'm catching up on the thread Smiley Ben started over <---- There.

About Half way through..

IS there anything new/useful there?

My two zlottys worth...
I think the reactive moderation section should be the first point. The other two points pretty much follow from the presence of reactive moderation, as indeed do most of the other problems (political discussion, links in fora etc). You could maybe stress the resource implications a bit more as well (esp. if people keep joining at the rate they seem to be). For a large organisation that is meant to be cutting expenses, this could be a powerful agument.

(I wonder what the moderators get paid?)

I doubt they get paid a great deal. Peta has described them as college students working a few hours here and there.

The financial argument is a good one, but you also have to be careful not to preach at the BBC. I'm sure they wouldn't appreciate it. Instead, the tone should be polite, along the lines of offering benefits and incentives to BBC Online.

Another possible benefit, besides the financial one, could be that reactive Moderation would instill a healthier sense of mutual trust and respect between BBC Online and its users. And another might be that legally, BBC Online could not be held accountable for content it knew nothing about. Therefore, reactive Moderation may be more legally safe.

And so on...