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

What a relief, although the damage at H2G2 cannot be fully restored.
In my Journal I've expressed the effect on me of this policy as follows;

Since talking about the ... has been centralized by and at the BBC, thoughts, feelings and opinions about it cannot be shared at this H2G2.
Even postings with comments about that policy at h2g2 were/are deleted.


And because of that silence, h2g2 feels now to me as an impotent and sterile Disneyland, where we are alowed to spread black cats all over the place, but can't share a word about the ...



When the harsh life of the ... is kept outside h2g2, it seems to suggest that h2g2 is only playground for digital irrelevance.

This kind of policy kills my passion to write here, even if it has nóthing to do with the ...



Because fantasy needs real life as much as real life needs fantasy.

The other possible permanent damage is to the volunteer groups. Some ACEs and Gurus who felt forced to resign may not return. Then again, the staff may not want them to return - though I assume that is unlikely.

Abi- you say thgat exisiting conversations will be moved to a specific page.

Two questions:

a) Does that mean we can only disvcuss on that page?
b) What about, for example, my two deleted journal entries?

Hi Egon

We and all the DNA sites have been asked to create dedicated Iraq forums for discussion of the conflict and to move the conversations over there.

With regard to your journal entries, can you clarify what you are asking? Are you asking whether they will return and by extension whether they will be moved to the new forum? At the moment there are no immediate plans to return all the Iraq postings, mainly because at the time they were posted they were against the House Rules. But that is a policy that might change. Personally I would feel unhappy about moving journal entries to the new forum, unless they had turned into a major conversation. They are, by their nature, very personal things.

I'm not sure about moving threads at all... if there is an entire thread that is about the conflict, then fine. But few of those were started, and most mentions were just in passing/off-topic, so what are you actually going to move? And if you aren't unhiding hidden posts, then surely there aren't any threads that need moving...

Tango

What I meant was whether they, and other postings which got removed during the ban, would be replaced.

I would considering reapplying for my voluteerships but only on the proviso that should it happen again there would be so strongly worded to force complyiance.

After all the groups are officially still under no obligation to do any thing specific. This is the real grating that I got. I would have happily have remained if the wording of those two emails I recieved had been less dictatorial.

Hi Tango

Well obviously discretion is the key. There will be a lot of threads that mention Iraq in passing which it would be silly to move. We won't delete occasional postings or journal entries relating to the war but the aim is for conversations to be moved to one area.

Hi Egon

As I said in my previous posting 'At the moment there are no immediate plans to return all the Iraq postings, mainly because at the time they were posted they were against the House Rules.' Most of the postings were made with the Researcher being fully aware of the policy, but posting anyway.

Fair enough.

Ah that's better 4 weeks of pent up journal entries written in a clear concise way with reference to the previous unmentionable.

Abi, as a semi-professional pedant, I should point out that the postings weren't against the "House Rules", but rather against the "Iraq conflict guidelines". The first posting of the implimentation thread contains the paragraph:

"The Iraq Conflict Guidelines at A735275 will help to explain the moderation policy that has just been implemented. They should be read in conjunction with the House Rules."

This shows that the policy and the House Rules are two seperate entities, further reenforced by their characterisation as "Guidelines" rather than "Rules"...

So, on that basis, the posters weren't actually breaking the House Rules, and their postings should return to their original locations.

Brilliantly put! N

Hi Abi,

I scanned the backlog and might have missed this, but I'll ask anyway: Why are all Iraq conversations being moved to one place?

This is good news by the way, I just hope it hasn't left any permanent damage. Time will tell.

Ste

It's another 'higher' policy decision AFAIK.

Whoami?

So its over, but not quite

bout time too.

xx

Give it a couple of weeks, and i expect it will sort itself out. Until the next conflict, that is.

Tango

YAY!

Did I hear a voluteer step forward?
Yeah, who said "lazy" ?
Are they volunteering to review all the moderated posts for you?
*Could reread them all first* submitting the appropriate ones!
That might be a big help

Although the person did clarify; the human race is kinda lazy
That redeems them Unfortunately it's not redeeming to the human race

Now is this or that, irony or sarcasm? Is this a rhetorical question?
The Americans will not get any of it you know!
*American*
Not a newbie any more!

Yay! I hope this expanded freedom lasts, for all our sakes!
This means I'll be here too much again.

Well, the logical (there's your cue Rho ) thing to have done would have been to mark all the posts that were hidden because of the conflict, and then pressed a big red button (being careful not the press *the* big red button) and they would all come back, and everyone would be happy!!

Tango

That's not exactly an issue of logic though. It is a matter of coding. They would have had to design the site with the concept of a temporary change to moderation policy in mind. I wasn't around at the start but I don't think the site had much moderation then at all did it? Even without having a built-in button they would still have had to design a system for recording different categories of moderation (which they might well have though the emails which go out don't necessarily seem to match) and have it immediately expandable to add any new moderatable topic as a value. Then a little prog could be written afterwards to trawl through the posts reading these reason flags and reversing the hidden flags. Unless the human moderators could be relied on not to have pressed the wrong moderation button in the first place, these reversals would still have to be checked.