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

>>From a point of view, one needs insurance against being sued for libel and such insurance is a lot cheaper if things are hidden immediately!


I think we would have to get legal advice on the whole issue of liability. People were saying in the multilingual thread that if a website was removing defamatory posts as soon as it became aware of them then it was unlikely to be a problem (and yes, 'unlikely' is a problem).

The bbc can obviously afford to pay for reactive moderation in the sense that they do have controversial threads followed by the mods and posts are removed pretty damn quick. But also in the sense that they have big lawyers.

I think defamatory and offensive are two different things. Defamation is a pretty specifc thing and serious in legal terms. Offense eg racial is something we should be moderating because we want an inclusive and progressive community.

I am aware that the concept of offense is often hotly debated here though so a change of term might be good.

Z - I can positively confirm that at the moment, posts are not hidden immediately/by the researcher who yikeses them. Of course it might appear that way. Obvious posts that are hidden may well be reported by more than one researcher, A yikeses a post 3 minutes before B. B sees the post hidden 'immediately' whereas the mods had reacted to the referral by A.

The Gollywog entry isn't a problem because it is putting the term in context. That's a completely different thing than using the term as a racial abuse.

Likewise I could write an entry on the etymology of the C word, but that's quite different than me going round the site calling people after Quadruple Professor Adonis Cnut.

I think the BBC will have chosen its House Rules wording quite carefully, and with legal input. If we are going to change that we need to take some care I think.

More personal, and a technical issue, ... It would be nice if moderator systems saw IP addresses of those hitting the YIKES. For considerations when someone may come up for account review, due to volumes of strikes. Four and five strikes in a row by different e-mail addresses but a common IP (though they are not entirely static) might prevent a bit of abuse that has happened in the past

I think you have amplified very nicely the point I was trying to make Nick

It might also put to rest this "Phantom Yikeser" phenomenon, ... Thought she or he is almost as famous as NightHoover.

My ISP uses dynamic IPs, so everytime I turn my router off and on I get a new IP. You can still tell I'm in NZ, so I guess if I was up to anything nefarious the mods could guess it was me . Not sure how common dynamic IPs are in the rest of the world.


I always thought the Phantom Yikeser was a figment of hootoo's imagination - an outlet for frustrations. Until the Eds reminded me there was no such thing and I realise that people thought there really was someone going round yikesing people all the time.

I definitely think we need to have legal advice on hiding posts before we can make a decisions. My gut reaction would be for it to remain unless enough people yikesed it - say, three different people - when it would then be hidden. But legalities will have to come first.

Phantom Yikeser... it's a term I've heard but never experienced. But then, I tend to steer clear of threads that get heated.

Reminds me of an adage I heard somewhere: Just because someone is paranoid doesn't rule out the possibility that they are actually under a covert attack by someone.

Having a post disappear immediately if it gets yikesed three times is a good idea.

Kea, my ISP is the same. But in my case, aside from mains failures, my router and modem remain constant. The true bothers are those who will strike a single post 3, 4 and more times in seconds. And don't take the time to power-off/on their hardware.

And then of course, there is perfectly legal software that will do the same masking task. But that is a different kettle of and such peoples are beyond common moderation schemes

I'm with Z here. It can be a nuisance, but it is probably safest if postings get hidden automatically once they are yikesed until a moderator has had a look at them.

Who in their right mind would go to the trouble of using different accounts with different email addresses to yikes a posting?
I mean, except for those who seem to have enough experience with that to suggest it?

kea, what was in your yikesed post? ie number 24

I would guess that there are more than enough with experience and the vacant times in days to have enough addresses to sustain pointed attacks of YIKES things. There have almost been times that I wish I had the time and spare money.

I can't see what advantage there would be. If a yieks is justified, it doesn't matter who yikesed, and it it's not justified the post will be back, no matter who yikesed it.

To pick up people who yikes maliciously? I'm not sure.. I hated Ben and decided to yikes all of her posts then that'd cause disruption to the system?

When you yikes a post, doesn't it say that yikesing for fun is also against the house rules? So I always thought they could get you into troubles for wrong yikesing and so I assumed they know who yikesed what anyhow.

(what kind of a word is yikes anyhow? How am I supposed to spell that? I give up...)

It's a sort of trolling, isn't it?

If you were being a phantom-yikeser, then could we arrange it so the more you yikes, the longer it takes for a post to disappear?

Way back, I suggested that a hidden post showed specific data about itself so:


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It was posted by Mrs Zen
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