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

I've been surfing around, avoiding housework (as you do) and I ran
into this: http://www.cracked.com/article_16765_5-ways-to-stop-trolls-from-killing-internet.html
#4 talks about moderating, though #5 and #3 are both somewhat relevent
to this thread, to a lesser extent (#1 and #2 are just interesting,
and since the list counts down from 5, might as well finish it...)

That is a very interesting article Amy

"I do think that hate-speech should not be allowed though, so no racism, homophobia or sexism."

I think we're just suffering from a name difference; I'd class all the above as offensive. What name we call it is irrelevent though as long as we can stop such behaviour.

In the member/non-member yikesing argument, if a non-member came across a link to child pornography hidden in some backwater unedited Entry I would want that non-member to be able to tell us about it so we can remove it as soon as possible.
I know that kind of sounds doom and gloom, but it worries me that if we were (unknowingly) hosting illegal content I would want us to be both vigilant but also responsive to whoever pointed it out.

Perhaps the member and non-member yikesing procedures are handled differently? Or posts with URLs are given priority?

We certainly don't want Joe Bloggs reading a thread and interrupting an otherwise good debate. That's a completely different issue (I just am not totally sure how to make it a seperate issue in terms of day-to-day moderating).

How about non-members can yikes for spam and porn (maybe only child porn), but not for something that's part of the cut and thrust of debate.

So a non-member could yikes a link to child porn but couldn't yikes a post in a thread about biscuits because it uses words offensive to people with auburn or strawberry blonde hair.

As I recall, in the early years the BBC wouldn't let you do protective yikesing to protect other peoples' feelings. So I could yikes a post that said I was a fascist, but I couldn't yikes one that said you were. Not sure if I am remembering this right though.....

Ben

How about anyone can yikes, but only registered users yikes can auto-hide? Or something like that?

Are you suggesting that something stricken by a signed-in member would immediately hide and be referred to Mods, whereas the other sort would simply be referred? I like that idea, if so

Not immediately hidden, but more on the points scale I referred to in an earlier post, possibly in a different thread :/

It's hard to keep track these days.

But essentially yes, registered, signed in users would be able to yikes a post and it'd be brought to the attention of the mods. If a few yikes'd it, it'd be automatically hidden.

Non-signed in users could be able to just yikes it to bring it to the mods attention.

I think that is all just too overly complicated. Surely if a non-registered member came across something in the backwater that is overtly pornographic or otherwise indecent, then the pop-up report box could have a simple message letting them know that the registration process would only take a moment or two. If the person felt strongly enough about it I am sure they would take the time to register and then report the post as offensive.


We mustn't get bogged down in too many details at this stage. We should be able to take the ball and run with it, if the h2g2c2's bid is successful. Some of the thoughts and suggestions in this thread will be an excellent start and it is good to hear of all the permutations that people think might be possibilities in the future.

If we had good enough search software, we could run the whole site through it periodically and clean out any pornographic nooks and crannies that were not in the broad mainstream? Just a thought...

I think most of the ideas so far seem to be able to be incorporated into the basic operating software. Or atleast that is how I read Pastey's informative post about versions he (?) worked on.

As to a search-for-bothers, I can't see that happening. The total database must be massive by now, and even a separate server picking through it would slow down the whole system quite a lot. I seem to recall that being a large part of the reason that the primary search function essentially died some few years ago. Too much impact

I've not actually worked on h2g2 itself, but on other social networking systems where we've built automatic moderation.

As for an auto-searcher that can run, well, if a points system was introduced for each posting/entry that calculated the *potential* offensiveness as it was made, then it could work as an on-the-fly yikesing tool, where it doesn't auto-hide (except in extreme circumstances) but does keep a list for the mods to look at.

The h2g2 database is huge. But, I believe it's also exporting to cached XML files, so querying the database itself wouldn't/shouldn't slow it down too much. If it did, there's always the option of creating a snapshot of the database, querying that, and then archiving that off as part of the automatic backup process.

A lot of this is pure thinking allowed, and if we win the bid we may well try and get some of it in place. The main thing is to have ideas, and to know that we'd be comfortable with them

And yes Nick, I'm a "he" just look at some of the photos from the earlier meets and you'll see a much younger version of me enjoying beer a bit too much

I was fairly sure of the he-ness, but I have also been known to blunder really badly. My ACE was Unc, who I referred to as 'Old Man' several times until she told me she was a 22-year-old student in Nottingham.

Bouncing ideas is great, and perhaps a lot of them can be incorporated as time passes and great enough minds tackling them.

Are the voluteer moderators going to be in charge of the filters?
If you look up this address http://www.blurtit.com/q734778.html
it talks about animals.
One Idiom says I haven't seen Jeff in a ~~~~'s age.
You notice I have to use tildes to work around the filter on the word.
context would usually tell you whether this word was a racial slur or not. Preset lists of unacceptable words can't tell so they err on the side of caution and say: "This post has been blocked as it contains..."

At the moment, we don't even know if we'll *have* filters. Pastey has done some work on them in the past, but several people think that having a filter rather detracts from h2g2.

So far, no concensus. Which means yours truly who is attempting to write up this thread is getting a headache.

count me in the list that say once we are cut free- no more filters.

by the way inpost 132 I was going to use a link to an idiom dictionary but since the URL included c o o n (with spaces omitted) I couldn't get it past the filter.

I suppose it depends on the filter. I think the amusing thing ( and you have to see the funny side of it or just plain cry ) is that a lot of people for whom English is a second or third language have learned a lot of new meanings for seemingly innocent words. I refer to Tav's comment about those cold weather cats and the other saga over earmuffs.

Do you think this was the intention of the BBC when they added those words? I mean, we are an educational site aren't we?

And in some circles, a symbol of Canada as being so industrious and is even on nearly every 5-cent coin since the 1940's ... Could be dropped because of its occasional association with ear-coverings mentioned a moment ago

(How many did I confuse with that post, about an over-sized water rat with a great flat tail and a penchant for building dams?)

The english language is a wonderful thing. I can't speak for other languages as I seem to be an incurable monoglot. But I do love to read about the words we use and where they come from

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