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

Well, Hooovooloo, this proposal is certainly interesting. It has a natural appeal to me because I like well-defined procedures for dealing with problems, and this looks clearly defined and easy to implement.

I'm a little concerned about the possibilities of the 'For' and 'Against' pleadings. I can see that both For and Against advocates could scour the forums for supporting evidence, and the results could be fairly nasty.

From my own experience of posting in the Lifetime Suspension thread, I would add a point 5 to your RefLeKZion - the pro-ban postings would have been more wide-ranging. I know that if the decision had still been in the balance, I would have defended the business of interpretations and statistical likelihoods much more thoroughly. I would also feel that the 'don't criticise people who can't defend themselves' restraint would not apply, since the 'For' advocates could be considered appointed defenders.

One much smaller and more trivial point: I feel that the 'return all unedited Guide entries by email' provision is really rather silly. If an editor has a handwritten manuscript of someone's article, then returning it by post is certainly equitable. But if work is entered through a computer program, sent through the web, and stored electronically, there is no original in the sense of an actual artefact which can be bought, sold, or given back (as collectors of authors' manuscripts have long ago realised). More experienced writers will probably already have their original version in wordpad or some similar program that doesn't mess with the punctuation settings, especially if they do any work off-line, or have ever had glitches in entering their stuff onsite.

A 'return all unedited entries by email' requirement has these disadvantages:
1 It creates a lot of unnecessary work for some staff member. For exanple, I have 24 or 25 unedited entries at the moment, some of them quite long. I don't see why any staff member should have to paste or attach that amount of stuff to email (and I wouldn't particularly want it cluttering up my inbox).
2 The possiblity of errors or misunderstandings could leave the staff open to all sorts of accusations of misconduct (they never sent the email; the data was corrupted; changes had been made to the original, etc. etc.)

I know that my first reaction to getting an email copy of an entry would be to check it against the version on my own hard disk - I imagine that if I didn't already keep a copy my first reaction would be to go to the site and check it against the version there. So why bother with email? I think a suspended researcher should be told that the week's suspension will allow them to copy any unedited entries they want to keep, and that if a ban is confirmed their unedited entries will be deleted. That leaves the responsibility up to the researcher, who can't put the blame on anyone else if they don't end up with a proper copy.

Anyway, it's an interesting proposal, and if I have any further thoughts about it I'll get back to you.

Azara

A couple of points in reply:

Good point about the unedited entries. Now I come to think about it, that's probably a better way around it: leave Researcher X's space fully functional during the week. I simply don't know whether LeKZ's space was gutted immediately - the only time I ever saw it in its original form was in Google's cache - as I joined the discussion rather late.

Regarding "For" and "Against" pleadings getting nasty: fine. But anyone posting to such threads should be trying to achieve something, and the Italics would have to be trusted to look at the tone and content of a pleaders posts in relation to their record on the site. For instance, if I were to be banned, there are certain people who I think would, if this scheme were in place, think very carefully, then post a rational, polite post asking that I be reinstated. There are others who may, if that is their mood today, prefer spweing vitriol (sic). I would hope that at the end of the week the italics charged with making a decision would not simply count posts, but would consider that my defenders are researchers in good standing with rational arguments, and my attackers are "a bunch of mindless jerks who'll be the first against the wall when the revolution comes". Their decision may be difficult, and it is theirs to make, but I would have to trust to my defenders' judgement for their use of language.

Of course, I may have defenders I don't want. In which case I can simply send another email to the italics within the week saying "Please ignore postings from Furry Hotlegs, they're doing me no favours at all and I don't want them to be considered as acting or speaking for me."

I've already started refining this in response to comments, so please, keep them coming.

H.

Nicely done, Hoovooloo.

I'm of the opinion that LeKZ would have been banned after the one week period, but the process would have been perceived as more fair and wouldn't have left quite so bitter a taste.

Regarding the return of unedited entries... why not make it at the researcher's option? The 'one-week suspension pending banishment' and the 'banishment' emails from the editors could include wording to the effect that 'all unedited entries will be returned via email unless you inform us that you do not wish this to be done'.

NBY

Another point about the deletion of entries:

I gather some people can get a bit confused about the way that journal 'entries' are actually stored as conversation postings, whose threads can be detached from the researcher's space but not actually deleted. The obvious example is a poem by LeKZ which they posted twice, once as a journal and once as an entry. While the entry has been deleted, the journal still shows up in the forum search engine (as I mentioned a long time ago on the Lifetime Suspension thread), since it is actually stored as the first post in a conversation thread.

There seems to have been a general policy up to now that once a post passes moderation it's never pulled, even if the poster badly wants to remove it. When I first heard of this, I thought it was reasonable, if the editors wanted to keep threads readable, but I think now that there are limited circumstances where deleting postings would be justified. I'm sure, for example, that if it turns out later that a posting had been defamatory, the editors would be obliged to delete or hide it, so the rule can't be completely inflexible.

Perhaps that is worth putting into your scheme? Something on the lines of 'The first post in all Journal conversation threads will be deleted at the same time as the unedited entries'. If there's some technical reason why the post has to be there to keep any following thread attached, then presumably the first posting can be hidden in the same way as a moderated post.

Azara

Hoovooloo,
your, usual high quality again.
I cannot say much about the event itself, I somehow missed it completely, until there were suddenly references to it everywhere.
Your proposal will bring the not direcly involved researchers quickly uptodate, so they can make up their mind about it, and decide in time whether or not to join the discussions before something irreversible happens.

In my mind the period of a week may be a bit short, especially with all the time-zones involved. Two weeks might be better, but that's for the powers to be to decide.

One of the places where the announcement of the temporary ban can be placed is the frontpage, maybe even a new temporary button can be added on the standard bar.

A last point. If a ban is lifted after the week, and the "culprit" is warned to be under extra survaillance, this period of probation should have a definite end-date. A repetition during this period should then be punishable by immediate banning. A completely different violation could start another temporary ban.

Marijn:

"usual high quality again." Flattery will get you everywhere

"I cannot say much about the event itself, I somehow missed it completely, until there were suddenly references to it everywhere."
Me too, but it struck me as so pivotal (and interesting) I spent 30 hours online reading the backlog before I felt qualified to venture an opinion (and I badly wanted to venture an opinion, obviously...)

"a week may be a bit short" - possibly, but ultimately the aim is to show that the PTB have *thought* about the decision. It is emphatically *not* to have a talking shop. That just makes the decision harder. A week is long enough for a reasonably active researcher to realise they're in the doo-doo, compose a reply and send it, and copy any stuff they want to keep. It's short enough that you can reasonably expect the italics to read everything that's been posted to *JUST* the "Remand" conversation thread, before coming to their decision.

"One of the places where the announcement of the temporary ban can be placed is the frontpage" - I don't like that, and I can imagine the italics reaction. You might as well put a sign on the front page saying "HI! Welcome to H2G2! Home of people so nasty, we're considering chucking them out!". Front page is NOT the place for announcing stuff like that. Interested researchers *will* find out, I think...

I *completely* disagree about immediate banning. Immediate banning is what brought us here. The *whole point* is that immediate banning NEVER, EVER, happens again. EVERY ban should go through this process, for a first, second, or twentieth offence. To my mind you simply have to give the person you are considering banning the chance to defend themself, always. Of course, if you've given them that chance before, and they reoffend, that week's suspension "pending lifetime ban" is going to be a formality unless they can come up with something truly spectacular as a defence. Criminals in the real world get a proper trial, no matter how many times they've offended before. Repeat offenders get less leniency. Both of these things are as they should be. I think this is covered in the Proposal. Thanks for bringing it up though, I do think that the ABSOLUTELY universal application of this system, even to previously "suspended" people, is key to its success.

As for a period of "probation" - it's possible to suspend an account. When people come back, I don't know whether they've got a fixed period of probation or not. That's bad, that I don't know. Someone needs to clear that up. But if my Proposal were adopted, and someone were suspended "pending life ban" and were permitted back - for me they're on probation for life. You've been very, very bad to get there, but we let you back. Now BEHAVE! Of course, this requires that the judges of behaviour have very rigid ethics and standards. So does a single moderated post merit a repeat of the threat of a life ban? Perhaps not. But if you're threatened with a life ban (assuming you like it here) wouldn't you tread carefully in future? And I mean, forever? (bearing in mind that this is an online community and in those terms "forever" means "probably five years, maybe less").

Thanks for giving me food for thought (*your* usual high quality ) and another excuse to type drivel

H.

We do seem to inspire each other.
Maybe I was a bit fast, but I just returned from the first pages of the 800 entries.
Hopefully banning will be an extreme rare event, but I am not quite happy with only 2 possibilities: a week or life. Should a month or a year make any difference? I don't know.

That a button or link on the frontpage will give a bad impression on newcomers is right, but I find it difficult to think of the best place. If it had been there, I would have found out in time.
The Post might be another place, but as a weekly magazine it mostly will be to late (no offence meant, Shazz!).

I just don't know. At least it may be the begining of a better way.

Best place for the announcement is a tricky one. Link from the homespace and a short announcement on Community Soapbox with a link to the "Remand" entry would, I think, probably be the most that could realistically be expected.

What I'm aiming for here is NOT a perfect solution. What I'm aiming for is something with a realistic chance of being implemented soon, which could make a difference. I think I'm fairly close, going on the comments so far, but on the other hand, no italic comment yet. Patience, H. Patience...

H.

Hoovooloo,

I'm curious about these policies on what BBC will do with the writings of banned researchers. In this proposal, you wrote that Italics should send an email reading, "If you have any unedited entries you wish to keep, your space will remain readable and unaltered for the duration of your suspension. Unedited Entries may not be retrievable after that date, and we will delete them from our database."

Is this your suggestion for how contributions be handled, or is there a current policy anywhere else described by the Italics? Having signed away even "moral" rights to our contributions, I can't see why BBC would be so cooperative as to give anything back to a banned researcher. Technically, if LeKZ became a world famous figure tomorrow, and publishers clamored for a book of her writings, wouldn't BBC still have the right to publish it? It's a silly example, but I'm trying to illustrate that this kind of matter is really wrapped up on Day One when researchers read and agree to the Terms and Conditions. I don't believe that this part of the T&C would be (or has been?) turned off suddenly when someone is banned. To put it another way, a researcher's status as active or suspended or banned has no impact on BBC retaining copyright to our contributions.

Again, I don't think they'd do any of this maliciously, like posting embarassing entries on the front page just to taunt someone, whatever. But I do think they have the legal and even "moral" right to do anything they want with it because of the T&Cs we agreed to.

It's really more of a courtesy thing, actually, Subcom. If you're banned, your space disappears *instantly*, and all the Unedited entries you had disappear completely. It would be nice if you could at least take copies of all that stuff you've written. You may have no other copy than that on H2G2. The BBC has a non-exclusive right to publish what you right, so in other words, you retain the right to publish as well. But you can't do that if they've made your writings inaccessible.

The original version 1.0 of the Proposal suggested that the management email any entries back. It was quite rightly pointed out by someone that this was an unnecessary addition to the management workload, hence version 1.1 and the "leave the page up for the week" approach.

It's nothing at all to do with legal rights and everything to do with the simple courtesy of saying "you wrote all this stuff, and just in case you don't have another copy, we're going to give you this chance to take one before we delete it".

Good idea?

H.

Actually, Hoovooloo, only her space disappeared when LeKZ was banned - all her unedited entries were still there, and could be found by searching, or by any links that other people had already set up.

I think one problem here is that various researchers may have completely opposing views as to what should be done with their unedited entries: some people might actually want them left up, as evidence that they spent some time here, or to present their views. The same with someone who leaves voluntarily - some people appear to clear all their entries, others want to leave a dramatic closing statement behind them.

LeKZ apparently wanted most of her entries wiped, but one kept, which the staff seem to have done as soon as she got around to asking them.
I would agree with Subcom that none of that was required by the terms and conditions, and with you that it is more a matter of courtesy.
Azara

Hi Azara...

The idea behind suggesting the space be left up is simply to allow the "remanded" person to get to all their unedited entries easily, from one place - and to get at any writing which may form part of their personal space. It's also, again, less effort for the management. They simply flick the switch on that person's ability to login. No other action necessary. At the end of the week, assuming the ban goes ahead, the page comes down and the entries are wiped. Very simple, and the minimum of effort.

Voluntary leavers are in quite a different position. You can't expect the management to have a policy on lifetime bans which takes into account the different possible desires of someone in that position. You must, if you are to be fair, be definitive.

I have chosen to suggest that the definitive policy in such a case should be *very* similar to the apparent (unwritten) present policy, which is to say: if you're banned, you get no dramatic final statements, no parting shots, and no personal space still here after you're gone. A banned person by definition has, in the opinion of the management, abrogated the right to have their views expressed here any longer - so comparison with voluntary leavers doesn't really work. Evidence of your participation, if you want to point to it, remains in your Edited Entries and every conversation thread to which you've contributed. The only suggestion I've made for an addition to what already happens is the week's delay - which as I say in the case of LeKZ would have actually reduced the Italics workload by allowing her easy access to all the stuff she wanted before that central hub was taken down.

It's absolutely true that none of the above is in the T&Cs. Perhaps it should be? That's one for other schemes. I'm trying as best I can to keep this proposal so simple and reasonable that it makes more sense to adopt it than not. It seems fairly robust so far.

Any more for any more?

H.

Hoovooloo,
there may be an interesting loophole for banned people to go on posting. Have a look in the thread 'I do not want to be a spoilsport...' of the Hermes Messenger service. http://www.bbc.co.uk/h2g2/guide/A472501

Actually, If a banned person had the sort of ethics that would let hir ignore the ban, there wouldn't be the need to do anything but delete the h2g2 cookies from hir computer, set up a different email address and open a new account under a different user name.

If the ethics of a banned person don't allow for that, they also wouldn't allow for the use of the Hermes Messenger Service.

Personally I would not have a real problem with a banned person coming back this way, provided it will be a really new person.
You cannot stop that anyhow.

My problem is with persons using this way for posting comments that had them banned if they had posted it 'in person'.
Will HMS be banned in that case, because they did the actual posting?

Basically I think you've identified a potential problem with the HMS, rather than the Modest Proposal. But thanks for the note. Gratefully received as always, Marijn.

H.

Hoovooloo,

I agree that it would be courteous if h2g2 editors allowed suspended or banned researchers to retrieve their contributions. But there are a lot of little suggestions for policy changes in this modest proposal, to the point that it does not seem accurate when you say, "It requires no change to the site rules (although a clear explanation of the suspension/remand/life ban system would be required if it were implemented)."

Not really a major point. It sounds like a reasonable proposal.