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

How will this policy change affect e.g. groups such as the Nordic Researchers Club, particularly where NAMES [of both people and places] could be affected?


Would you accept 'Liverpewl' for Liverpool?
Lundun instead of London?


Why should it be acceptable to write about
Nykoebing instead of Nykøbing,
or Roedby for Rødby?
Even our UK tabloids don't write about Sven Goeran Eriksson .....

Warning: sarcasm follows.

Ah! Oh! Please!
One language at a time!
As a poor, hapless, American-typing American-type, I am still learning English from this site!
You don't know how many times a day I have to ask for a translation of a perfectly utilitarian English word that my poor provincial upbringing has kept hidden from me!

Warning: that was sarcasm.

Oy, vey!
Mon Dieu!
Holy Lexicon, Batman!

Pity the poor moderators. They are probably dealing with a greater vocabulary in English than they have encountered in their education.
Let them learn their native tongue with our noble help before you force them to start over again in the polyglot jungle.
Which reminds me,
what does "Pop! Goes the Weasel" mean, again?

(Richard-shaped Mohican...titter, giggle)
So Happy Together!

Hi, Tonsil Revenge!
Just so there's no misunderstandings, this researcher could cause an argument in an empty room (and I've got certificates to prove it!!)

I deliberately picked on the topic of Proper Names [you know, those defined as normally requiring a Capital Letter, viz. people & places].

I am hopelessly addicted to the principle of correct spelling, and especially getting someone's NAME spelt correctly, as to me this is a minimum civil courtesy!

I don't seriously expect this to be a real problem, anyway: sooner or later the Rule of Common Sense (a commodity which unfortunately is less 'common' than it ought to be) is bound to prevail....

Talking to weself, now, are we?
Bit of pedant meself.
Half-worn out dictionary at feet,
spelling champion oncet upon a time,
the more words I know, the fewer I know how to spell...

Previous comment not directed at you.
Just, um, oh, I don't know, a bit of...sarcasm, yes, that's it!

I have to correct my spellchecker on a regular basis and the way the Word programme is wrotten, it has become spellchess!

Besides, I bain on die site fer munths, undt Aye cain't get thise peepholes to splel my nickednommen right!
They keep adding a apostrophe 's' to it, making it possessive...

Warning: not sure if any of that was sarcasm. Will get back to you.
Having vents installed in my spleen...

Kaz - The Isle of Man is not part of 'The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Island'. Like the Channel Islands it is an independent Crown dependency (how’s that for an oxymoron?).

Gnomon – Manx should be included in your list as the Isle of Man falls within the BBC’s remit.

Now I have to ask have the Ed’s considered the legal ramifications of banning British minority languages, are they not risking a breech of “European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages” (which the UK government has signed up to) by doing this

A copy of the “European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages” can be found over at http://conventions.coe.int/Treaty/EN/Treaties/Html/148.htm

What a downer. I saw the subject heading "Non-English Language Postings" and prepared to rejoice that they had finally dropped or eased the silly restriction against languages. This shouldn't come as a big shock to anyone. It was in the rules all along, just not always enforced. Like the recent announcement by Southwest Airlines that they'd had a rule whereby overweight people of a certain size could be charged the price of two seats if they didn't fit entirely into one seat. (No mention of extra tall people with bony knees, or how some handicapped people fit into their usual seats? Just overweight people, because it's not understood as discrimination.)

Southwest Airlines and H2G2 are both making new announcements about enforcing old rules. And in both cases, they're telling certain groups of customers/users that our custom is not wanted.



Jack Naples,

"...but it's a terrible indictment on our language skills as a nation if we can't manage even a few words in any foreign language."

As a Yank, I don't hold it against the UK. You can't hold the whole country at fault for a decision made by the BBC. And it's not even a question of how well-educated Brits are, but a question of what and when to censor.

Que?

From the Preamble of the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages; “Considering that the right to use a regional or minority language in private and public life is an inalienable right conforming to the principles embodied in the United Nations International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, and according to the spirit of the Council of Europe Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms”.

Now surly by banning British minority languages the ED’s are preventing use a minority language in a section of public life


And by banning British minority languages are not the ED’s making an “unjustified distinction, exclusion or restriction” which at the very least is against the spirit of Article 7 section 2 of the Charter

Article 11 relates to the media but as it was written in 1992 makes no specific mention of the Internet, but a testament to its spirit is the prolific output of both BBC Cymru and ITV’s SC4 (Welsh as the first language that the British government listed under Part 2 of the Charter).

Hi Kaz,

Other people have made your suggestion before. "We shall promise to type in English with [translation of] the foreign language of choice underneath..." The problem is the BBC doesn't trust us. With thousands of researchers, there are bound to be some who will lie when they promise to correctly translate what they write.

Latin:
Translation into English: Often have I enjoyed Gascony in the springtime. My name is Slim Shady.

English speaking moderators wouldn't be able to stop obscene language that they couldn't understand. The only way they would find out would be when readers of that language complained. Then the moderators could remove the objectionable material, or at least hide it until a qualified translator approved it. The site would be reduced to Reactive Moderation! Just like h2g2 worked before BBC bought it.

You have to consider it from their point of view -- if a lot of bad words got through the system, then angry parents and legislators who already hold grudges against the BBC would have fuel to complain. Suddenly they would have to shut down h2g2, in spite of all the other websites and online communities that get by with reactive moderation.

In fact, they had a much more detailed plan called the "TransVol" scheme (Translator Volunteers). See A617320. Looks like it was just being tested. Not sure where that thing will go from here. It was a cool idea, although it's doubtful they could have volunteer translators working on more than a few dozen languages. Even if membership of this site expanded monstrously, there would always be some minority languages that would be excluded because BBC would be more concerned about protecting us from ourselves than they are concerned about letting people talk and form communities. None of this would be necessary if they switched to reactive moderation. BBC wouldn't be sued or hounded out of existence by the same fanatics who have likely complained about them for years (and probably find or fabricate reasons to complain even without something as innocuous as h2g2 giving them fuel). The pieces of the sky would not fall down and crush h2g2.

can I point out we now have the yikes button - if somebody sees something they do not like its very essy to bring it to the attention of a moderator.

Ho hum... I don't even know where to start...

...but basically this seems, to me, to be a question about money - now the BBC can cut the cost for Moderators with knowledge of so called 'foreign' languages

This will mean we can't talk Scandinavian food any more - not by their proper name, but some awkward attempt of translating it into English - when some of the food or combinations do not even exist in the UK! <./>F34211?thread=108057&skip=40&show=20</.>

And how am I as a foreigner supposed to know exactly which Scandinavian food names that have been 'imported' to English? I know that smörgåsbord and gravlax have, but are there others?

Oh, and the ACE using Spanish in her greeting is Kristina the Flamenco Dancer, who begins all her ACE greetings with Hola

So now I suppose I can get moderated yet again for 'talking' with a foreign accent? There was this conversation some time ago, where several of us 'foreigners' fooled around, trying to type English the way someone with a very heavy foreign accent would pronounce the words, like typing 'Sviidisch' instead of 'Swedish'.
<./>F74799?thread=134429&skip=780&show=20</.>

At one point the Moderator didn't even regocnize my postings as English (although anyone with the least bit of imagination and a little bit of effort ought to have figured out!) and my postings were hidden at the time, although they were put back up later - but then I had already flewn into a fit of anger.

Who is to decide when an accent is too 'heavy' to be considered as English? How grave errors is a researcher with poor knowledge in the English language, who might have joined to improve their English, allowed before their postings get moderated?

As for TransVol - I and many others have signed up for it, but haven't heard anything - and now it seems it is never likely to happen!

And could someone PLEASE do something about the problem with diacriticals (those things above letters like å, ä, ö) in the title of edited entries? I'm not sure why they work in ordinary entries but not in edited ones. My entry on 'Glögg' is listed as 'Glogg' and I have currently an entry pending - 'Icehotel®, Jukkasjärvi, Sweden' but I suppose that the edited title would be 'Icehotel®, Jukkasjarvi, Sweden' - but the name of the place IS NOT JUKKASJARVI! IT'S JUKKASJÄRVI for crying out loud!!!

*stomps off to calm down before posting anything more*

I haven't read all the blog, sorry, so I could be entirely wrong when I assume that the majority of the initial moderation is done by software which searchs for words not matched in the OED or whatever dictionary is regarded as standard.

In which case common sense isn't applied when postings are first moderated. Going by what I have seen recently of the increasing use of other languages there are a lot of postings being hidden which means an awful of trawling through for the flesh and blood moderators when following up the software.

I do think there is room for 'foreign' language usage and that there should be forums where this is allowed. There should be no reason for banning the ocasionally word, as Titiania says, some words don't translate well and I for one like the exchanges and discovering new things about other countries, especially when it comes to food and drink!

scrapes his troat

secret note

there too many language used, but can not hide them all. can you please start a thread that we are saying that we removing any with non-english. the researcher will probilly show us lot of non-english threads. they are so smart. we will remove those as warning

end of secret note

scrapes his troat again

i'd just like to point out that other than moderation in general and foreign languages, the other main bone of contention round here was links in forums. we had a trial run, no one was naughty, and we are allowed to use them. so the community CAN proove itself to be reliable. yes, someone will try to abuse the system, but yes, we have a yikes button to catch them with. we have had researchers in the past that have been banned. it's not nice and causes a great deal of contreversy, but it has happened. surely between the yikes button and the option to ban researchers we could get something working. perhaps as previously mentioned by so many people place names, researcher names, food names etc should be considered. what i would like to see is a trial period for limited foreign language useage, (maybe including the english translation underneath as suggested by several others) perhaps with conversations totally in a foreign language banned for the moment until we see how things go. it would be nice to have an extra message added to the system as well so that if a foeign lanugage posting is hidden due to it not being understood it does not say ---post hidden pending moderation--- but instead, ----post hidden pending translation--- just to make the distinction. Of course, yiksed foreign language postings should still have the ---pending moderation message---

I would be very dissapointed if the community gave up on this one, especially as it's such a useful place to come and find out language pit holes before going on holiday or doing business or just doing homework. For example I never knew the German word for poison was 'gift', but apparently it is and I found that out here.

I'm sorry for the length of the rant, and I do appreciate that the Towers point of view this must be a logistical nightmare.But it is something the community does appear to feel strongly about.

FABT

The TransVol scheme is still on the cards, but it requires, among other things, extensions to the moderation tools to allow TransVols to have access to some of them through their h2g2 accounts. The policy changes implicit in such a scheme are also hideously complicated, I'm sure. Therefore it's not going to happen tomorrow, because there's simply too much to do in order to make it work, and there are many other things which also need doing Right Now. Setting up all the other DNA sites isn't a particularly simple business, I gather.

Kaz, I'm glad you asked that! I've started an entry on the British Isles, which will hopfully provide the definitive answer to such questions. Haven't got very far yet, but any contributions are welcome.

Jack

There goes my dream of a pig-latin thread....

Not to mention the "th-guh" thead..... Oh, you've never heard of "th-guh"? It's sort of like pig latin, only you stick "th-guh" in every syllable of every word. Totally un-understandable to the uniniated, but a fun code language..... but definitely not english sounding at all. Not that I'd use it here now, since it would be removed immediately, you understand.

Ok, just a little levity to break up the serious discussion, here's my serious comment:

A volunteer translator scheme would work quite well, and quite easily - questionable foreign language posts could be sent to the volunteers while the post is marked "pending translation", who would then report the translation back to the mods. The yikes button should already catch most stuff of a truly offensive nature to begin with, but if they simply don't want to trust us to use that......

Happy Dude, see the above entry...
And the reason why Manx wasn't included is because it's extinct. Unlike 'Cornish' once dead but now revived to confuse the tourists.



Subcom,

>As a Yank, I don't hold it against the UK. You can't hold the whole country at fault for a decision made by the BBC. And it's not even a question of how well-educated Brits are, but a question of what and when to censor.<

that&#8217;s a 747 from me

Titania, I quite agree about the loss of diacritics. Even in some supposedly 'intelligent' British newspapers, diacritics are virtually non-existent. But in h2g2 they are all available on the Special Characters page A266951 - I presume the other sub-eds know about this.

A volunteer translator scheme would work quite well, and quite easily --------

lady scott....the IDEA of the TransVol sceme is indeed very easy,...but I don't think it would be at all easy in practice. I am not a techie but as I understand it the issues of controling researchers access to the site and material on it is a logistical nightmare and the setting up and administering of a system to parcel out certain numbers of posts to the appropriate translators would be a headache beyond imagining....even worse than the sub eding process!

FABT

From what I saw of the German leg of the TransVol scheme, it used to be that the posting eas taken away by the Mods, transferred to the Eds and then posted at the TransVol Yahoo-group. There it was picked up by the TransVols, read and then either failed or okay-ed by them. They would not generally provide a full translation.

Th whole process could be steamlined to let the Mods post directly to the Group.

Haven't heard of the scheme for about half a year by now... and as I said before: This move does not make the scheme very likely, eh?