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

"The site should be home to reasoned debate, but not a platform for political activism."

Could you clarify this? Suppose I were to say that the bombing is wrong and everyone should protest against it; would this be seen as using h2g2 as a platform for political activism? If I were to mention that there was an anti-war demonstration at such and such a place at such and such a time, would this be OK? If I were instead to mention that such and such an organisation is planning anti-war demonstrations and provide a link to their web site on my user space, would this be OK?

If none of these are OK aren't you in effect saying that no attempt to encourage dissent is allowed, but discussion that is not dissenting is allowed. In other words, by your moderation policy aren't you taking a partisan position, which is, I believe, exactly the opposite of the intent of some other BBC rules?

Very well put, Dogster. Under this policy, you will soon have to encourage people to "visit H2G2 P******s Forum."

Also, will commenting on examples of pro-war propaganda fall foul of this sytem?

This sounds highly likely to be misinterpreted in a heavy-handed manner.

Hi Dogster.

Perhaps it would be instructive to try to define the sort of thing meant by 'political activism' in this context.

All of your examples are fine, assuming that these were your own personal views and expressed as such; because we want a balanced debate, we very much encourage all opinions to be voiced, providing they do not incite racial hatred, cause offence and so on. If you expressed your examples rationally, then there wouldn't be a problem.

However, if you were posting on behalf of a political organisation and trying to rally support for them (rather than expressing your own opinion and trying to get support for that opinion), or you were spamming popular areas of h2g2 to get people to sign a petition you'd set up, then you'd run the risk of breaking the rules.

This would apply equally whether your stance was pro-war or anti-war; the rules apply equally to everyone. We are in no way saying that discussion that is dissenting is not allowed - far from it. We want all sides to be represented if possible, as long as all sides show respect for each other's opinions and don't try to turn h2g2 into a home for serious political activism.

Does this help? We're happy to clarify things further if you like...

xyroth: "Also, will commenting on examples of pro-war propaganda fall foul of this sytem?"

If those comments don't break any rules - inciting racial hatred, causing offence etc - then they're fine. Ditto comments on anti-war propaganda.

"However, if you were posting on behalf of a political organisation and trying to rally support for them (rather than expressing your own opinion and trying to get support for that opinion)..."

So personal views are OK, but those of a political organisation are not? Suppose I were to say that such-and-such an aid organisation says that the bombing should be stopped so that they could deliver food to millions of starving Afghans. This is clearly not my own opinion, as I have no idea if that is true or not; would that be acceptable? What about if it were not an aid organisation but a political one?

"... or you were spamming popular areas of h2g2 to get people to sign a petition you'd set up, then you'd run the risk of breaking the rules."

So if, for example, I found a report by a journalist or aid worker working in Afghanistan that said something not being reported by the mainstream media, and I thought it was important that this message was communicated to a lot of people, and I put a link to it on my userspace and cross-posted to many of the Afghan crisis conversations on h2g2, suggesting people read the piece, would this be acceptable?

Perhaps a few specific borderline cases would clarify the policy?

"Suppose I were to say that such-and-such an aid organisation says that the bombing should be stopped so that they could deliver food to millions of starving Afghans. This is clearly not my own opinion, as I have no idea if that is true or not; would that be acceptable? What about if it were not an aid organisation but a political one?"

It would be fine if you said that this was the aim of this particular organisation, that you wholeheartedly agreed with what they were trying to aim, and that you recommended that everyone join - this is an honestly held opinion, and is fine. But if you said this by jumping into people's discussions and trying to persuade them to join, or you simply brought it up at every opportunity, then it would not be acceptable. Essentially, it's not OK to try to drum up support for something, but it's fine to state facts about what organisations or people are doing or thinking, and it's OK to put forward your opinion too in the hope that people will agree.

Basically, it's fine to have opinions, and to express them, but it is not OK to foist them on people, especially in the current climate when sensitivity to others' opinions is more important than ever.

"So if, for example, I found a report by a journalist or aid worker working in Afghanistan that said something not being reported by the mainstream media, and I thought it was important that this message was communicated to a lot of people, and I put a link to it on my userspace and cross-posted to many of the Afghan crisis conversations on h2g2, suggesting people read the piece, would this be acceptable?"

No - you would then be spamming those Conversations with links to something that may or may not be relevant to the specific topic ('related to the Afghan war' is too general). It would be OK to post a link to Conversations where the specific topic was relevant to that report, but not to *all* Afghan crisis Conversations.

More importantly, you would also have to ensure that the report was accurate (quoting sources if necessary), that quoting it didn't put anyone's life in danger (including the journalist), that it didn't incite any racial hatred or cause offence, and that the message wasn't effectively a promotional one for a charity, for example. You would also need to convince *us* of these facts, or we would not be prepared to publish such content, and we have to err on the side of caution.

"Perhaps a few specific borderline cases would clarify the policy?"

Every case has to be taken on its own merit, so we can't really do this... but if you want to run things past us, we can comment.

You might also like to read the BBC's guidelines in this area:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/info/editorial/prodgl/war_index.shtml

At the bottom is a section on message boards, which applies to h2g2:

"Message boards may need to be pre-moderated given the risk that a message board could be hijacked for extremist views or misleading or untrue reports. Hosts of message boards need to be alert to the increased editorial care needed at a time of hostilities."

That's the gist of the guideline: no hijacking for extremist views, or we may have to move to pre-moderation. It's very unlikely that anyone is actually going to come up with extremist views, but the guidelines have to warn of the fact we can't tolerate it.

Now I'm even more confused. The first message seemed to clarify a few points (and another link provided somewhere else clarifies the point about p, the second one is strange. "... hijacked for extremist views or misleading or untrue reports." I can understand wanting to crack down on misleading or untrue reports, although I don't really think that the BBC should feel responsible for this as it's qualitatively different from censoring potentially libellous or defamatory posts.

However, cracking down on extremism per se is rather dubious. Unless you can connect extremes of opinion with potential harm to individuals or countries (and to assert this would be to make a very biased and strongly conservative, with a little c, political statement), then this policy is unjustifiable.

However, I suspect that it's just sloppy wording - I'm guessing that you want to convey the idea not of extremism but of, for example, advocating violence against people or property. Hmmm. Given that this is exactly what our government is doing, you'd probably want to change that to advocating individual violence against people or property.

Perhaps a clarification of what is meant by extremism would be useful, as if that statement is taken at face value it is absurd.

Where it says "p" in the previous post, it should be read "political activism)". Sorry about that.

"But if you said this by jumping into people's discussions and trying to persuade them to join, or you simply brought it up at every opportunity, then it would not be acceptable."

This example would constitute spamming, already outlawed in the House Rules.

Dogster wrote, "Perhaps a clarification of what is meant by extremism would be useful, as if that statement is taken at face value it is absurd."

I don't want to put words in their mouth, but I'm afraid your interpretation of this policy as dubious and absurd is consistent with the h2g2 Guidelines during the UK General Election. At that time, we were told that any "heavy" political discussion would be removed from h2g2 and should instead be posted to a separate BBC board devoted to politics. At that time, it wasn't a matter of "extremist" views but any political activity, advocating one candidate or another.

If they meant that only "extremist" views (advocating non-governmental violence) were unacceptable, then they would not have said that anti-war activism would be rejected the same as pro-war activism.

Not trying to speak on their behalf, but assuming this crisis necessitating censorship is similar to the last crisis that supposedly necessitated censorship.

"Not trying to speak on their behalf, but assuming this crisis necessitating censorship is similar to the last crisis that supposedly necessitated censorship."

Perhaps equating a UK election with a war is not quite fair? No lives were put into serious danger through reporting the elections, after all.

"Perhaps a clarification of what is meant by extremism would be useful, as if that statement is taken at face value it is absurd."

Defining 'extremist' is obviously hard, as it's rather subjective, but we'll have a go at clarifying it as far as h2g2 is concerned. The sort of thing we have in mind while moderating are ridiculous claims like 'the whole terrorism campaign in the USA is being orchestrated by the Israelis because all the Jews in the World Trade Centre left before the planes hit.' This is clearly not acceptable, unless it is backed up by so many unassailable bits of proof that we believe it's true... which is generally unlikely with extremist arguments like this.

Basically we're trying to avoid conspiracy theories, paranoid racist rants, personal vendettas, and all the other bizarre and insidious arguments that crawl out of the woodwork during a war like this (and they're especially prevalent on the Internet). Those wanting debate about the crisis really don't need to worry; it's the wartime equivalent of the troll whom we're trying to prevent from taking over healthy discussions.

That's how we're interpreting it as far as h2g2 is concerned, anyway. We hope it makes sense - if not, keep on probing!

Well, you sound like reasonable people so I'm not going to worry too much about it for the time being. However, I think the policy statements are sufficiently loosely worded that almost anything could be interpreted as unsuitable and modified accordingly. This always has been, and I guess always will be the problem with limited censorship, it's impossible to define the boundaries. Thanks for the clarifications anyway.

Pleasure.

It's always difficult to be definite with any kind of rule. 'Thou shalt not kill' could mean flies, vegetables and time, after all...

But we're always happy to explain what our rules mean in practice. Just ask.

you mention trying to avoid conspiracy theories and paranoid racist rants, but in one of the threads about the terrorism, I point out how the various governments were trying to sneak things through that they would never get away with under normal conditions.

this included things like the isrealies trying to depth charge the peace process with the palastinians (which they have almost succeeded in doing) and both britain and america trying to get lots of anti-freedom legislation through under the banner of necessary tightening of security.

this thread could have been viewed as racist, as it firmly accuses the isrealies of nasty practices, and could have been accused of being conspiricy theorist and a paranoid rant, as it points out various synchronicitous timings of events in the us and the uk.

how would this be dealt with under your proposed policy?

"Perhaps equating a UK election with a war is not quite fair? No lives were put into serious danger through reporting the elections, after all."

Claiming that you need to censor people because lives are at stake is not quite fair, when the real motivation is so clearly protecting BBC from lawsuits or accusations of unbalanced reporting. How could the rule about "barracking" possibly have anything to do with saving lives?

It was censorship when h2g2 imposed restrictions during the UK General Election. It's censorship today. The only difference is the excuses that we are being given to justify heavier-than-normal censorship.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/h2g2/guide/F76594?thread=143211 You appear not to have moderated this post, despite it being very similar to the precise example you gave above. Does this hint that the rules are not being applied as strictly as you're saying here? Or is it something that the relevant moderator missed? On a side note, surely any such 'extremist' view should need to provide only sufficient proof to make you believe it *might* be true?

Xyroth: If the discussion was conducted maturely and cited facts that lend creedence to the argument (in the eyes of a *reasonable* person) then debates like this are fine. Note the word 'debate' there; one of the problems with some extremists is that they simply refuse to debate or concede any points to the opposite view. Healthy debate is one thing; people 'going off on one' and refusing to respect the views of others is a different matter. Your example sounds like it would lead to rational debate, which would be fine, and as long as any accusations against countries were expressed in a way that wasn't obviously trying to incite racial hatred, but was trying to spark off an informed debate, there wouldn't be a problem. It's not so much the subject matter as the manner of debate that is the main concern.

Subcom: The rule preventing barracking is not a new one, it comes under the normal House Rules (if the barracking constitutes antisocial behaviour, causing offence, spamming and so on). A while ago there was a discussion about campaigning, the result of which was that campaigning per se is OK, but sticking campaigns in people's faces is *not* allowed, irrespective of the situation with elections and wars (though we might be slightly more sensitive in a war situation, of course). The additional war guidelines that are not covered by the normal House Rules (specifically the rules about quoting) *are* to do with protecting lives; all the others guidelines in the 'crisis' page (respect for others, impersonating key people) simply follow from the existing Rules, we're just clarifying them because they're even more important in this situation.

Lucinda: That particular Posting was referred to us, but by the time it was reviewed people had already responded in the thread, pointing out that it was stupid propaganda. Seen in this context it was obviously a load of drivel, so we decided to leave it standing. It demonstrates that silly rumours on h2g2 are likely to be put down by the Community members themselves, and it's an example of how we take every Posting at it's own merit, and in context.

(Small point: Mark, Peta and Abi are off to the Dutch meet tomorrow, so apologies if this is the last you'll hear from us for a while; there's lots to get organised, but we hope we've answered your main concerns.)

Editors,

Thanks for the frequent replies. I'm sure everyone who has quibbles or disagreements about these new guidelines at least prefers that y'all have been discussing them, much better than if you had remained quiet.

Later,
Deidzoeb

Pleasure!

If you need clarification on anything else re the new guidlines, don't hesitate to ask. (Best to start a new Conversation, as we're subscribed to both the Community Soapbox and the Afghan Crisis page.)