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

Everyone,

I have invested a major portion of my time for the last few months into h2g2 and have gained somewhat by it. I made some good friends and I wrote a few things here and there that I am proud of and a few that will never be more than notice that I had
passed that way.

Now I find that there are qualities to h2g2 that I find personally unacceptable Clearly, these are things that do not bother many others here and it would be improper for me to attempt to impose my standards on those who do not wish to share them.

I have issues largely with the lack trust the editors show the researchers in the control of the shape of their community These are largely concerned with the individual rights of those whose presence and contribution are responsible for the growth of
this community and the guide.

The editors have been forthcoming with their position I cannot fault them on this However, their position and mine are based in such divergent standards that I cannot bring myself to continue to contribute to a cause that I no longer can feel a part of

Since it is unrealistic of me to expect their standards to change when they have complete control of what is or is not allowed to influence the growth of h2g2 and have not demonstrated any indication that they hold any respect for opinions that run contrary to their own goals and plans, it seems best that I should leave rather than feel a continual need to remind them of my sense of their improper behavior and biased treatment of the researchers.

I still hold high hopes for the cause that is h2g2 and I am sincere when I say that I hope that the editors' resistance proves to have been the best course for realization of a continual and growing guide.

I intend to look in from time to time and it may well be that I or the editors may change enough in our goals, expectations, and understanding that I may feel able again to participate in this community as fully as I have tried to in the past.

Till then, I wish you all well.

Good bye.

Barton Rolsky

Bye Barton - I hope to see you back some day - along with others who have left pending changes at h2g2. It's been good to know you and talk with you

Barton,

I will be sorry to see you go, and you will be missed in the forums, and elsewhere. We are lessened by your leaving, and the community is the lesser that it is not able to include you.

But I respect absolutely your decision, and the process which has led to it.

*Wishing I could say or do more, but knowing I cannot*

Ben

Belgium, man, Belgium!

Another star winks out.

And still I haven't seen a reply to post 355:

"Abi,
If postings 297 and 298 were "unhidden" as you said in posting 339, then they are "now" (10 hours later) "rehidden".
At least they are to my machine. Mind you it is very old and slow - as indeed am I.
Perhaps you can shed some light on this singularity."

I posted a similar but more detailed message to Abi's message centre and received exactly the same reply. Mind you it was only two months ago, so there is perhaps still a chance.

OK, in the scheme of life, the universe and everything, being ignored by a bunch of people whom I shall probably never meet is not life threatening in any sense of the phrase, but the failure to answer a question about why a thing was not done when it was said to (have) be(en) done does not inspire confidence. Well, not in me it doesn't. It seems to be further evidence (if any were needed) that the LEFT hand doesn't know what the LEFT hand is doing.

I am sure that I am expected to "move on". Onward and upward! The problem with that is: unless you have a firm foundation nothing else can be trusted. That applies equally to friendship, business relationships and building construction. Somewhere amongst those must be a reflection of the Italics / Researchers association.
If those don't fit, then we could use the analogy of "make up".
By this I meant, originally, decorative facial adornment where, if the foundation isn't right, further improvement makes the wearer look clown-like.
It could be extended to include "kiss and" but would need some work before I would choose to be one of the parties.
It could also indicate "invent", i.e. reverse engineer an explanation to justify a previous decision.

Now look what you've made me do. All I wanted, back then, was a simple answer:
"Oops, sorry. Here are the hidden postings."
"Oops, sorry. Got it wrong - you can't have the postings back because of ......"
"Oops, sorry. Got it wrong - you can't have the postings back because you can't."

Belgium, man, Belgium!

Good bye Barton,
thanks for giving as much as you did whilst trying to make the guide a fairer place... I look forward to seeing you drop in again sometime.

Whilst I am here, I would also like to thank the SBVM and all the others who have worked so hard on this thread and many others to try and avoid bad situations similar to the things discussed at the start of this thread.

You're all great

vogonpoet -grateful member of the non vocal majority, hoping myself and others find our voices too.

Hoovooloo 1071: "Is it then time to up the rate of additions to the Guide? Five per day creating logjam? I'm not in any of the volunteer schemes, so I have no stats, but if someone who is sees that as a problem, isn't it time for a change?"

Before we increase the rate, we need to automate as much of the editorial process as possible, or we won't be able to cope in-house. We're in the middle of writing a completely new Review Forums system, and are hoping to automate the deadlining and chasing of Scouts and Subs. All this will help immensely towards avoiding all the manual work we currently have to do to, and then we'll be able to look at the figures and consider things like increased throughput.

xyroth 1078: "ps to editors: any chance of an update on the moderating of older hidden threads? A timescale would help."

A timescale is very hard to give (though we have given one in the past) because the same team works on legacy content as on new content. This means that if the site gets busy (which it did after 11 September, for example) then the amount of legacy moderation goes right down. Also the rate of posting is constantly increasing, so any projections we make are pretty meaningless, to be honest.

We're currently moderating postings from mid-September 2000, but that's the only reliable stat we have on this... sorry.

Barton 1079: "Here's a prime statistic for you all. The guide has, as of this posting 3098 entries. Even Mark Moxton who has written 158 edited entries (by rapid count -- I will not raise the question of quality assurance here, it's beside the point.) can only claim slightly better than 5 percent of the guide as his own. And that number drops a bit every day that more entries are added to the guide that he didn't write."

Mark used to do all the subbing, before the Subs scheme started up, so he's in the Editor slot for quite a few older entries, but he didn't *write* them. Visit the Space of any Sub who's been around, and you'll get similarly bizarre statistics, but they don't mean that the Guide is only written by Subs, just edited by them.

plaguesville 1084: "And still I haven't seen a reply to post 355"

Both those postings were yikesed again by the author, who requested that we remove them. First time round, Abi was on her own and decided not to remove them as they didn't break the House Rules. The author yikesed them again, and the second time round, when Peta had returned to the office, we decided to hide them after all.

This is rumour control, here are the facts:

"Both those postings were yikesed again by the author, who requested that we remove them. First time round, Abi was on her own and decided not to remove them as they didn't break the House Rules. The author yikesed them again, and the second time round, when Peta had returned to the office, we decided to hide them after all."

Not strictly accurate. 297 and 298 were identical, accidental reposting due to dropped line. They were written by me, and contained an intentionally sinister-sounding reference to the fact that I knew the name and home address of another researcher. That researcher understandably interpreted that as a threat (although since I live (or claim to live...) on a different continent, not a particularly serious one). He yikesed the post, but it stayed up, inferred threat and all. I became aware that he had interpreted it thus, and tried to have it taken down and been refused.(It is worth noting that the only reason I became aware of this was that I was able to read The Other Place I Cannot Access directly from here any more). Since a threat was not my intention, I asked for it to be removed, which it was at my *first* request.

Other requests of my to remove another eight posts were refused on the grounds that I might, despite being completely anonymous, be under some kind of pressure (note: despite being considered to be under pressure, I was never offered the option of posting an offensive parting shot with a warning from the Editors not to discuss me, then leaving to come back under another ID - no idea why). I repeated the request to remove those posts, explaining the impossibility of applying pressure to me. I was completely ignored, and the posts remain up. I've given up on that.

You aren't missing anything constructive in 297/298, believe me.

H.

Barton, I'm sorry to see you leave, but I can understand your reasons for it.

Hope to see you here again!

Tube

Thanks for the correction, Hoovooloo.

Message



received.

H.

Thank you for that informative reply, I apologise for having caused you the trouble, although I fancy that the apology is, by rights, due from elsewhere.
"O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!" I was right not to have given up hope of a reply from the Italics.

"You aren't missing anything constructive in 297/298, believe me."
The fact that there was no reply to my two enquiries irked me almost as much as my being in ignorance.

It doesn't seem likely that you are one to bow to pressure, real or perceived, but that shouldn't really be a factor in an equal opportunity policy.
Somebody once said:
"It can't be easy to be even-handed when you are biased or incompetent."
(OK, I own up. It was I. It went down very well with my friends when I said it, but it didn't make me any new friends.)

"Move on, plaguesville, move on."

Heck, this is not how I remember H2G2.

I remember masses of us posting daft entries with Peta offering advice. I remembering being a complete beginner and begging Mark for help (DON'T PANIC!).

Dedicated people started this thing off. They are still dedicated.

To the H2G2 team: Keep up the good work.

It is often said that Nostalgia is not what it used to be.

The age of innocence has passed; we have been escorted from the Garden of Eden and that flaming sword looks rather menacing.

How many have come to this page and told of their desires to leave? In many cases I can see what they say and agree, but while I may agree that there are elements which since the takeover have not been made for the better, if anything worse, I also believe that the guide provides a valuable service in its attempts at dispensing information which if not always entirely correct was good in the intention of the researcher concerned. For each researcher lost from the guide, more are gained, but we should still feel a great sense of loss with each one that moves on. It has been said "I never met a man so stupid I could learn nothing from him". In this way we can all contribute to the guide, and that makes it worthwhile. The petty arguments, censorship of postings however do much to counter the free spirit and free speech that the guide was surely created for. While I accept there are limits to acceptable free speech and the BBC wishes this site to be accessible to all ages, it should also note it needs to provide for those already present, in doing so cater for the needs of their expression despite what the consequences may be. The disclaimer already claims does it not that these are the opinions of the researcher and as such not the BBC necessarily. The people they are so concerned with protecting should have read and accepted this in registering.

St Patrick, you wrote: "The disclaimer already claims does it not that these are the opinions of the researcher and as such not the BBC necessarily. The people they are so concerned with protecting should have read and accepted this in registering."

You're right, but unfortunately disclaimers do nothing to protect us from being sued for defamation, for publishing plagiarised content, and any other issues that may produce a liability. We have *always* had to remove defamatory material (and other material that may get us in trouble), even before we joined the BBC, but obviously people are more likely to sue the BBC than a small dot.com company, so we have to be more careful now.

Restrictions that are a consequence of editorial policy, however, are different; they exist to protect the BBC's editorial values, and as such are potentially more negotiable (though changing BBC editorial policy is never a quick job). The restriction on URLs in Conversations is the most visible example of an editorial policy rather than a legal one, as is the checking of links for quality (and removing broken and unsuitable links).

So when making comments about censorship, it's good to be aware that some types of censorship are essential if the site is to avoid being sued, but other types are more to do with the BBC trying to ensure that its customers' expectations of quality are not affected. We are always happy to discuss the latter - and those who have talked to us about the latter know that we'd like to see some of those restrictions lifted too - but the former is always going to be a factor on h2g2... unless the law changes.

Thanks Cannon Fodder.

We're still here; happy to see the Guide continuing to grow. Welcome back!

We have posted some interesting statistics on contributions to the Edited Guide that may help to answer the question of active Researchers, how many of them are there, and whether they are leaving.

You can find the statistics at http://www.bbc.co.uk/h2g2/guide/A640333 and it would be interesting to see your reactions!

5 minutes?!

Done! Sorry - when we put it up we realised it was only showing the first digit of any figure, which kinda ruined the effect.

All up now, though. Interesting reading.

Interesting reading indeed. My last Edited Entry (of three for which I didn't share the credit) was on the Front Page less than twenty four hours ago.

Twenty points and a cheap cigar to anyone who can spot my ID on the stats page. http://www.bbc.co.uk/h2g2/guide/A640333

To save you some trouble, look in the "referred researchers" list. My ID number is bigger than that of "Lear" and smaller than that of "Bright Blue Shorts".

Good to see the Italics upholding their usual standards of competence and accuracy.

Hoovooloo has left the building.

H.