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

I suspect the Italics have left us to our devices in this thread, and are off editing entries, devising smileys, negotiating with the Powers Behind the Towers, and doing other italicky things

7rob7 - it's your scheme... why don't you sart another thread here called something like 'Proposed Arbiter Scheme' or whatever?

***B

I am not anti moderation. I never said I was. I would like as little of it as possible though, and I think that if a posting is considered offensive in the eyes of the person who posted it, that ought to be taken in consideration. Who gets to determine what is offensive anyways? For me the offensiveness that matters most is when someone posts something that really hurts another person, and badly. Saying f**k is not offensive in the slightest compared to that.

As I have said before, but not in so many words: 'what the f**k does "otherwise offensive" mean?'

You said "I think that if a posting is considered offensive in the eyes of the person who posted it, that ought to be taken in consideration." - well I tend to apologise. I have been doing a lot of that on site recently;

I apologised to LeKZ in the few brief days she was back, (she accepted my apology which was very nice of her, and we continue to exchange emails which express kindness, respect, and differing opinions).

And I apologised to Lucinda in this thread.

And while I am at it, I'll apologise to you for the snappy tone of my previous post, I did feel a little uncertain about posting it.

"Who get's to determine what is offensive, anyway" - well, the Italics on behalf of the BBC, it is the Beeb's site, and they get to call the shots. I don't like it, but I have to live with it.

***B

Wow... Ben swore and it's still there! Bring your children, cameras etc...

I doubt the efficiency of the new post-helpdesk moderation scheme. If we have to complain formally about everything, surely there will be less available time for any truly unpleasant stuff.
Still sore about my moderation for being 'tasteless'.

If you get *really* cross, Mandagora, you could try spitting!

*grin*

***B

That's it!

hehehehehe

Don't you REMEMBER what you agreed the punishment for THAT sorta behavior should be?

Hope you've got a stunning raincoat in your emporium, Mandrake.

Well, speaking of the formal complaints system, I've asked three times on the official email system about the same issue.

Still no reply.

agcBen - That is the plan, I just wanted to stick my toes in the water a little bit first (hence the 'Telephone Sanitizers' nickname... though *I* think it a particularlly brilliant bit of fatigue-inspired cheekiness). My question, then, would be: where would be the best place to open such a forum? "Ask the H2G2 Community"? "Feedback"? "Some Other Place Entirely"?

all - I have briefly mentioned the problem of defining "offensive" in the 'Arbiter' proposal, but have no good suggestions at this point. Even something as obvious as "racial slur" gets fuzzy when members of a racial group (and this happens within other groups as well) adopt words and sayings as 'self-identifying' and/or 'empowering' amongst themselves, yet considered grossly insulting when used by others outside that particular group. I often refer to myself as 'white trash' because that is my background - but it might annoy me if someone else called me that. (It wouldn't, but it might...) (At least, so far...)

How could you deal with this in a public forum?



You can see how complex this can be. And the problem with trying to 'define' "offensive" is twofold (at least). In the first place, such a definition would have to be so fluid and accepting of new shades of meaning as to eventually implode from its own ponderousness. Conversely, any time a definition becomes so specific and exact that it becomes rigid, it becomes nothing more than stratified dogma and no longer useful by anyone; offender and offendee alike.

So I don't know that anyone could ever agree on a workable definition, only broad guidelines at best. And be flexible enough to accept someone's feelings of being 'offended' on a case-by-case. Huge undertaking, I know, but I can't think of any alternatives. Help.

(This doesn't answer any 'moderation/non-moderation' questions, but is might help suggest how fiendishly difficult the problem can be.)

Thanks. I'm off to see what's been going on the the 'Telephone Sanitizers' thread during the past 24 hours. (I have *got* to conquer sleep and get one of these computer things of my own...)

-7rob7, who never means to offend except when it's done on purpose

Another example I just thought of:

I appended "Friend of LeKZ" to my nickname not too long after the start of this fracas. Some may find that to be confrontational, belligerent and/or 'offensive', but it is intended only to be a clear indication – up front – that I am one who questions the severity of their punishment. But I acknowledge that there is possibility for misinterpretation.

Just thought I'd toss that out for what (if anything) it's worth.

-7rob7

7rob7, your "white trash" example is an easy one. If it might offend you if someone else calls you it, don't use it yourself.

Slightly trickier is the case of "new f*** words", and the simple(ish) way to deal with these is for the moderators to keep an eye out for emotion laden wording, for example ni***rs, etc and if any post is full of these sort of words, then it is pretty obviously an attempt to flame, and almost certainly offensive.

The problem here is that currently and for the foreseeable future *someone* has to be the final arbiter of what is and isn't acceptable.

xyroth wrote:
"if any post is full of these sort of words, then it is pretty obviously an attempt to flame, and almost certainly offensive."

Those are the easy ones. The difficult ones, the ones which will cause problems, are the ones where:

(a) there's only *one* such word, perhaps in a long post. If it isn't offensive to the moderator, how can they accurately judge whether it's offensive to others?
(b) there are such words but they are in a context which could allow a justifiable defence (different media example: Brass Eye Paedophilia Investigation - tasteless, sick, appalling? or spot on satire that needed saying?). Another example: would it be acceptable, here, to refer to the fact that WWII pilot hero Douglas Bader had a dog called N****r? (we'll see...)
(c) there are *no* such words because the post has been self censored to the point where it takes a crossword expert possibly with mechanical help to infer meaning from a post which, *as posted*, is just nonsense. (obviously we have an answer to that one already...)
(d) there are *no* such words and the tone of the post sounds perfectly reasonable to a disinterested observer, but the author and recipient are equally aware that there is an offensive subtext. Personal experience suggests that there is *nothing*, not even a yikes by the author followed by a detailed explanation including an admission of trolling, will get such a post taken down...
(e) the post is full of such words but is intended in an ironic context (e.g. for f**k's sake, xyroth, you utter pimhole, any a******e knows that if some c**t posts a load of p*****g swearwords, even a t**t will be able to tell that the b*****d is trying to wind some w****r up!). Context and a knowledge of the relationship, if any, between two researchers would be necessary knowledge for deciding whether such a post was intended in seriousness (xyroth's credited as a co-author on at least one of my entries, and we've conversed civilly elsewhere, so obviously the above message is a joke - are all jokes this obvious?).

These are the places where moderation, whether by italics, moderators, volunteers, ACEs, GURUs or whatever will continue to be a difficult, time-consuming process.

Any additional examples anyone?

H

Re: What is offensive?
Any Judge(ing person) is faced with that, when there's a case of libel or slander. And I suggest that the rules we have here can't be any more specific than the ones in RL.
What it boils down to is that the moderators will have to use their discretion to figure out what is offensive.
It would seem that they rather go for checking for naughty words than taking the context into consideration (might be wrong here). If the content's naughty, the Yikes process should fix that. But if not ....?

Tube

Hoovooloo included the following in the list of kinds of offensive posts:

(d) there are *no* such words and the tone of the post sounds perfectly reasonable to a disinterested observer, but the author and recipient are equally aware that there is an offensive subtext. Personal experience suggests that there is *nothing*, not even a yikes by the author followed by a detailed explanation including an admission of trolling, will get such a post taken down...

It seems to me clear that this should qualify under 'otherwise offensive' or 'no trolling' or both.

It seems not.

a confused person called Ben

What about this: in my own case I said something that did not look too bad written here in this post window, but when it actually showed up in the forum after being posted it 'triggered' me into a serious negative reaction, and I was consequently concerned that it might do the same to other people who I know might be reading this forum. The PTB will not know about such things, but I know about them, and I wish that they should respect it when I tell them that a thing I myself posted can in fact be seriously *harmful* to people, which goes a bit beyond mere offense.

for Grief
***B

And another thing - the House Rules just got changed again. The 'Suitable URL's in Entries' rule now has this bit tacked on: "or sites which may offend our users."

Who gets to decide what constitutes offense? This is related to what is written above. For instance suppose I have an external site I want to link to. If TPTB decide that site is offensive, can I appeal against their decision? Or suppose someone else has a link to a site I consider offensive. Can I complain to TPTB and will they respect it?

We are back to 'what the f**k does "otherwise offensive" mean?' (Sorry if I am repeating myself in this thread, I cannot remember if I said it here or not.

7r7, Tube, possibly Mikey and certainly I are doing some brainstorming and drafting on an arbiter scheme. http://www.bbc.co.uk/h2g2/guide/A603596

Imho arbiters should *only* work between researchers, and *not* between researchers and the towers.... But... But... I cannot help wondering if HVL had taken his posts to an arbiter and if HVL, his trolee, and an arbiter had jointly requested the post be removed, whether this would have resulted in a different outcome.

*Ambles off to start a thread, give away books and do the chores, thinking all the while*

***B

Just started a thread on 'otherwise offensive' http://www.bbc.co.uk/h2g2/guide/F55683?thread=131937&post=1194696#p1194696 B

hey ben, that link won't work, try http://www.bbc.co.uk/h2g2/guide/F55683?thread=131937 hoovooloo, I take that comment how it was meant, but that was not the main sort of emotion laden words I intended. I mean stuff where for example my side is painted as enlightened, moral, generally right thinking people, and the other side is painted as bigoted, immoral, pagans (in the christian sense of the word), where one side is being refered to in glowingly positive terminology, while the others are being refered to in consistantly negative versions of the same sort of thing. In this sort of situation, the intent is pretty clear, but the likelyhood of it being upheld when yikes seems to be negligable.