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

Sorry, I was busy writing mindless and subversive filth for my weekly column, which no one seems to read let alone censor.

Did I miss something?
Or is it the same old Brownian motion in a tea mug?

Is there truly a crisis?
Should I make a sign or something? Boycott someone?

I'm serious. I have no idea what's going on.

TR.

Several of the edited guide entries that have passed Peer Review have been deleted by the Editorial Policy Unit. This included the entry on how to make "Home Made Pornography", but it did only affect a very small number of articles.`The authours of these articles understandably became upset.

Personaly I would go for a "hurricane in a coffee pot" status, larger than a storm in a teacup but still not a full blown crisis. If you would like to read the full story this is a thread that kept me informed -> F19585?thread=288228 .

Thanks.

I'll take your word for it.

I no longer grab my musket every time the bell rings.
Wasted a lot of time doing that in my early days on the site.

Let me know when something important happens, okay?

I'm going back to my stupid novel and subversive column.

Hopefully I'll get censored some day and if they actually read it, they might learn something.

*Sits back and waits for flames to hit*

in summary, the problem is not that they got deleted, it's that they got to edited status, then deleted, and still nobody will tell us what was wrong so it can be fixed.

not editorial policy, not the editors, no-one.

A side-issue which has arisen from this is the faceless and uncommunicative nature of EP. If you try to find their contacts using the BBCi search facility, *every* page that is returned as having contact details for them turns out to have been deleted or "moved". (same thing in effect) The woman on the BBC duty desk told me that their telephone contact number wasn't to be released to the public. The people who found the e-mail and snail-mail addresses had to jump through hoops to do it. And those who e-mailed them hadn't had as much as an autoresponder for over a month. (Not that an autoresponder would have helped, unless it contained details for how to "escalate" a problem if the e-mail went unanswered...) All this despite the fact that the BBC says it strives for "transparency and accountability".

Although not the original issue, it's something the BBC should be addressing. It affects much more than just hootoo, or even BBCi.

Another point along those lines is that any department with the apparent power of EdPol is unlikely to consist of just one person (unless it is a pseudonym/euphemism for the Director General). It is very likely that more than one person exists in EdPol and knows what is going on but they deliberately choose to be uncontactable in order to be unaccountable. Also a whole department is unlikely to be on holiday all at once - that simply isn't permitted in any company beyond the one-man-band level. The BBC is big. Very big. We may just have discovered the real lavatory labelled "Beware of the Leopard" to which DNA was alluding.

...and it smells very bad.

A157349




pedboy

Thanks for that link pedboy.
A157349
That statement from DNA seems so long ago and far away now.

For those who never found it or have forgotten what DNA said:

>> "And here is the idea: to make a Guide which is created and compiled by the people who use it. Real people, in real time...

An online guide should be absolutely live, voluminous, self-organising, and individually responsive to each user...

You can create your own Guide Entries containing anything you want, from your opinions of world events to a description of your home town, and it all goes to make up the h2g2 Guide, the sort of guide which was not possible before we had the means of live, shared information resources.

Help us build it.

Douglas Adams" <<

We do seem to have wandered quite far off the path of the original destiny and into the shadow of the BB(Big Brother)C's tenderised mercies.


~jwf~

Thank You ~jwf~, that was my intention.
I firmly believe this world(and this tiny corner called h2g2) would be a better and...(who knows what would go here) place if U42 was with us.




pedboy

"You can create your own Guide Entries containing anything you want, from your opinions of world events..."

Unless those events are both important and current, in which case the BBC will remove any reference to them.

(i.e. Election, War...)

well, it's not their faultthey don't understand communications mediums, after all, they are a communications company, and anyone who has tried to get through the robot phone system of such acompany to talk to a human knows that they really don't have a clue.

And despite all the effort we made to ensure no comments were made about the war online, the BBC *still* got accused of bias.

Perhaps the BBC should have applied the online war guidelines to its broadcast output - it might then not be in the situation it's currently in...

I think it might have been a bit strange if the BBC hadn't been allowed to mention the words Iraq or war etc at all in broadcasts and reporters/staff had only been allowed to post on the Great Debate board or wherever it was in order to be censored. Good advertising for BBCi though: "the news headlines at 10 [bong] troops have been sent to [bleep] (logon to BBCi for full story) [bong] the [bleep] is all about [bleep] says [bleep] (logon to BBCi for this story) [bong] ..." etc

Even more, with sending all of us to the garbage dump, the BBC lost the opportunity to get comments and discussions from all sides.

A157349

This is the first time I am not sad DNA isn't here anymore.
He would have left the BBC completely disgusted.