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

I used http://www.bbc.co.uk/info/contact/com_email.shtml

Hati,
Unless i mistaken (which wouldnt be the first time) the idea of self moderation is for everyone to maintain the house rules, not just ACES. We all keep this site free from inappropriate behaviour and maintain it to be the respected site it is.

[IMSoP]/Hati

I know the history of the site.
When you have been here from the beginning it can be hard to see it as anything other than a continuation of what it was when it started.
(no patronisation intended)
While many of those original concepts, ideas etc are still here, the truth is, it is now part of the BBC and falls under the umbrella of their guidelines which are applied to all their sites. It is well designed and well run because of the original concept and the researchers and italics, not the BBC, but nonetheless they now have the responsibility to 'manage' it.

Just as you needed to accept terms and conditions for 360 or sense of place etc then you do the great debate, but your login and password are valid. (i believe that there are some probs logging in it but due to a tech prob.)

This is a difficult time and i would rather the situation was managed as it has been, than some over excitable person posting offensive material which was then blown out of all proportion in the press (you know what they are like for creating scandal from a blip) and then the whole site returned to full moderation.

Mort

Hey get this, the house rules over on the message boards say that if someone wants to post long messages of over say 500 words that they should come over here and post them to h2g2. Ooops!

http://www.bbc.co.uk/cgi-perl/h2/h2.cgi?x=y&board=greatdebate&state=houserules

I would yikes any post I thought was offensive, and have done so in the past. This has no bearing on my being an ACE, nor on this policy - I do it because I think offensive posts have no place here.

The fact that the BBC has provided an alternative forum for debate is not the point, in my view, and I disagree with the policy. I think it would be perfectly possible to continue to debate these matters here as we always have. If posts were made that were inflammatory, or some kind of threat to somebody's safety then they could be removed in the normal way.

I understand that the BBC would want to take great care that they had sufficient resources to moderate their websites and would not wish to spread their resources too thinly, and I also understand that our italics have no choice but to go along with BBCi's editorial policy. If our self-moderation is worth a damn, however, I think we could manage it perfectly properly ourselves.

I have always obeyed the rules of this site and will continue to do so because I agreed to the rules when I registered. It is not a problem for me personally not to debate this here anyway - I don't use h2g2 much for political debate.

However, other people do, and I personally am not prepared to yikes a post simply because it expresses a political view on Iraq.

I'm not somebody who normally makes any waves and I keep my own counsel on h2g2 policy, but this is important to me. I have tonight emailed the PTB to inform them of my position, and I am publicly stating it here. I have not resigned as an ACE, as some have, and I hope I don't have to - I feel I can still continue to contribute in my own way in good conscience. I have asked the PTB to tell me whether they believe my stand is inconsistent with my continuing as an ACE, and I await their response.

Actually this alternative forum is only open from 9am to 9pm GMT and less at weekends

Lets call it the "Great part-time Debate"

Eeepp - no external URL's there either - I'd forgotten how fare we'd come in negotiating our little corner of the beeb..

Yes I know, not much of an 'alternative forum' is it

It's probably contractually satisfactory.

I'm puzzled by this 9-5 lark. or whatever it is. I thought one of the beautoies of the internet is that it's always daytime for somebody somewhere ?

the unfortunate thing is there are now so many policy threads springing up that not everybody is getting the whole rounded view of everybody ie for against, not sure etc and this means that some posts may not be answered. (although i hastened to add that at least we can discuss the policy as much as we like!)

too many seperate discussions about things doesnt open one up to different opinions that may be able to add another view into the conversation. For instance, so far i have only posted in 2 threads so i will be missing out on valuable input in others (although i am avoiding the one where 'toys are getting thrown out of pram' - sorry unnecessary comment but felt i needed to make it)

To those to say that h2g2 is not, in there opinion part of the BBCi website I would like to point out that it may not be in there opinion. But if a defamatory comment was posted, or someone encouraging violence, or even say in the worst extreme someone saying "here is the address of the forgein sectreary, here is a recipe for a bomb send it to downing street" Then the headline the next day in the press would be "BBC website has bomb recipe!!"

There are some sections of the Uk media that vermontly hate the BBC because it has a balanced view and does not spout the kind of right wing nonscene they do.. (not mentioning any names the Daily !!)

The fact that this policy was implemented today
just makes me wonder if something happened somewhere
in the real world that I didn't know about.

I don't watch TV anymore, and I listen to a radio
station that gives very little news coverage. I'm
careful what I read in the newspapers. So, I'm sure
there's plenty going on that I'll be late in hearing
about. But much of the news lately has been
pretty downbeat.

Yes it "something has happened" just as I was getting heartly sick of the whole "war not war affair"

In the spirit of the discussion can I direct you towards the

relevant page on BBC news website...

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/2857789.stm

Oh, my!

err maybe a time to start listening to the news, or just popping over the that side of the website.. this is not a time to ignore foriegn affiars..

I think that often we, as the lowest of the low so to speak, are not privvy to information that others may be and while some may feel this is in some way a censorship, we can never know if there is a bigger picture. this is true in life of all things. I had experience of this in my job, i had to inform the staff of a decision that they found appalling but had to take the stick from them and support the decision whilst pacifying the staff. The reason for the decision was necessary for the safety of something but i could not explain the details to them, which had they known them, they would have accepted the decision without question.

Its not always easy to see or even look for a bigger picture

I usually get around to reading the newspapers.
I just read some stories more thoroughly than others,
depending on what I find more interesting....

I've been reading everything I could find on the horrible
nightclub fire in Warwick, Rhode Island. I marvel over
some of the new advances in caring for burn patients.

If I can find something upbeat, I want to go with it.
But I'll read the downbeat stuff, too. I'm not planning
any trips abroad this year...

Please for those of you that are screaming about censorship, do try to see the bigger picture, this is the smallest of issues. The BBC (because this is the BBC not h2g2 isn't trying too censor debate they're just asking you to move it to a different part of the website that's all!)


Can I just remind you of a certian researcher who arrived and started to post her views very loudly to peer review, and when gentely asked them to post them to a different part of the website accused us of censouring her free speech.

Is any body in the tinest bit guilty of acting like that??

This policy is unacceptable, especially as no acceptable alternative has been offered. The "Great Debate" page is, as others have pointed out above, a very poor substitute technically. In addition, it is as if we are being told we are allowed to discuss the war with those people over there, but not with these people here. Not everyone will care to monitor the "Great Debate" page even if they are interested in discussing the war. Further, the possibility of discussions reaching people who are not going to go out of their way to discuss the war is ruled out by this policy. This amounts to de facto political censorship. The practical upshot of this is that people will be less exposed to real debate about this war.

"Discussions are being directed to this board in order to enable BBCi to concentrate its moderation and hosting resources, thereby ensuring that conversations can be carefully monitored and editorially balanced." (from A735275).

The argument that this is necessary for technical reasons is ridiculous. Exactly what has changed that makes it necessary to do this now but not yesterday and why does this increase the technical problems? Have any efforts been made to find an alternative technical solution? If not why not? If moderation is necessary, why not simply moderate those threads that discuss the situation in Iraq? Since you are presumably going to have to be on the lookout for people sneakily discussing it anyway, it is presumably about the same amount of effort to flag these threads for special attention as to delete them?

Even accepting that there are increased technical problems, censorship cannot be introduced for this reason. This matter is too important for that.

"It will also ensure that users can easily find other people interested in debating the same subject." (from A735275).

If the BBC wants to help people find others interested in debating the same subject, they can simply provide a link to the "Great Debate" page. By forcing us to use this page, they are NOT providing a service. To suggest that this censorship is for our benefit because we find it so difficult to find people to talk to about the war is an insult.

This policy is also an affront to the idea that the BBC is interested in creating online communities. By telling us that we are not allowed to talk about the war in this online community, but only in that one, they are in effect telling us that they do not in fact believe in the idea of online communities at all. Perhaps I don't want to talk to all of the people on the "Great Debate" page, but only those on H2G2 (for whatever reasons, perhaps because they're a pretty froody bunch).

I've put a copy of my letter to the BBC on H2G2 in case anyone's interested: A1001791