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

While I would not dispute the right of the bbc to set restrictions, most of the conversations I have been in about the problems of mederation have not been anything to do with the idea of sensorship.

the main problems have been with the poor implimentation of the idea.

The larger an organisation trying to restrict speech, the more inertia it has in trying to change it's thinking. in the case of the bbc with h2g2, it has a recurrent problem to do with the fact that the bbc still views the internet as identical with a magazine.

this has caused them to make a large number of mistakes, but almost all of the same kind.

for example, during the uk general election, there started to be some relevance of what was happening in politics to various conversations that were happening. instead of having a flexible attitude to this, they came in with a draconian mandate saying that all political comment would be moved to a different bbc site.

this meant that anything you said which could be taken as political was taken out of context and attributed to you. it also caused problems in various conversations.

another example is the way bad moderation can depth charge conversations that are only using the same terminology as used in other posts in the thread.

a good example of this would be in mina's dungeon, where anything kinky could be said, but some newbie moderator could see it out of context and hide not the word, but a long post.

in fact this is a recurrent complaint, where the entire post is hidden for the sake of one word or link.

Most of these sort of problems are further made worse because instead of reactive moderation, where only the bits that actually caused offense are looked at in context, we have proactive moderation where everything written is looked at, and to make things worse, they only get the posting, not a look at the thread.

As I have said elsewhere, I am not against moderation, it is required, but until they can get it right, I do think it should be restricted to only those cases which have actually caused offence.

Hi Xyroth

Thanks for your response. I don't disagree with anything that you say - the devil is always in the detail!

I had no idea that political conversations weren't allowed during the general election (I don't think I was here at the time) - that seems extraordinary.

I also think that there might be a case for having different "posting hidden" messages, as it scares and confuses people. I think there ought to be a different one for "broken link" which says just that. I've seen entries in peer review hidden because of it, and the author panic about it having been deleted, or having offended someone. I think it also scares newbies. I'm going to go and think about this some more, and maybe post some of this to the suggestions page!

Otto

FYI: <./>houserules-election</.>

Remember, these rules are no longer in operation. Don't Panic!
-myre

until next election?

Well, the Italics did say that they wouldn't be activated for the next election. So it depends whether you believe them, doesn't it?

Trust no-one...
-Lucinda