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

Work it all out and make a song of it, the h2g2c2 might sell a CD!

OK, a summary post. I hope I've managed to capture the spirit of this thread. I have tried to differentiate between when there has been an agreement (pretty much everyone agrees), when there's been a majority agreement (therefore some people don't agree), and when we are undecided.

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Selection criteria for moderators:

1. Must be able to be impartial (including religion)
1. Must read context around the post (suggested ten posts before but able to use judgement)
3. Must be able to refer if a decision is necessary
4. Helpful if there are folks from as many time-zones as possible

It has not been decided if the names of moderators should be kept private or not. All the work that they do would defnitely be private though.


Basic choices for moderators:

1. Remove
2. Reinstate
3. Refer

Context should always be involved in any moderation decision. For simple posts, ten or so posts around it should give a clue.

If a post was removed, and email must be sent out stating why.

A record should be kept of the Researchers or the IP adresses of those who are doing the Yikesing in order to spot patterns of behaviour.

Malicious yikesing is a kind of trolling in its own right.

Aside from the section on foreign languages, keeping the outline of the current House Rules (but enforced the way the used to be 5+ years ago, not the way they are now) has been accepted as a good start, perhaps to be reviewed later once we're on our feet.
Two House Rule terms that people would like to see changed are 'offense' and 'sexually orientated'. It is felt that there are better ways to define these behaviours.

We want to get languages other than English back on h2g2. It might be that only languages where there is a trusted Researcher who would volunteer to moderate would be allowed.

It has not been decided if we should have a profanity filter. So far there appears to be a slim majority in favour of getting rid of it entirely, relying on the Yikes button when someone takes it too far. However, if we do have one Pastey has some fantastic tools at his fingertips.
Any auto spam filter has to take ACE messaging into account!

There is a majority opinion that a record should be kept of who is doing the yikesing as well as the author of the post (by the moderators, not publically).
Several people would like to see this information public
e.g. Posted written by Researcher X, Hidden by Researcher Y but several have spoken against this on the grounds it may prevent people yikesing a post as they may feel they'd be targeted by the author (in nasty cases, obviously). Those who are in favour want to be able to see if the person doing the yikesing is doing so releatedly, and maliciously.

It has not been decided if a click of a button should hide a post. On the one hand, hidden posts really ruin the flow of a good debate. On the other hand, if someone has signed up in order to post links to pornography or libel, their posts should be hidden immediately.

It has been suggested that different procedures should be used depending on the reason the post is hidden, and that members and non-members' yikeses are treated differently.
Another suggestion is that one yikes and the post is referred to the moderators but not hidden. However if several (say, 3) people yikes the post then it is hidden until a decision is made.
All of these decisions could easily be changed by the legal implications of how we could be sued.

"The BBC is not responsible for the content of any external sites referenced." - we should have the same thing.

Masterly.

B

I like it, entirely!

Excellent Vip >Any auto spam filter has to take ACE messaging into account!

What does that mean?

>>
It has not been decided if a click of a button should hide a post. On the one hand, hidden posts really ruin the flow of a good debate. On the other hand, if someone has signed up in order to post links to pornography or libel, their posts should be hidden immediately.
>>

I think we could take our lead from the bbc here*. If they, in all their make sure we don't get sued stuff, allow posts to remain until a mod has seen them, then I think we could too. Assuming we have mods reading the controversial threads and/or following the controversial postings.

This is one thing that would be very useful to find out from the Eds - to what extent the bbc has the moderators following specific things. It's seemed like that to me, although lately it seems more automated.

*The 3 yikes and you're hidden thing would be a good back up.

All of Vip's ACE messages were hidden because the BBC computers thought it was spamming.

>> allow posts to remain until a mod has seen them, then I think we could too.

That may just come down to cost. If we get insurance against being sued, then the premium varies depending on how long it takes to hide a post that's complained about.

We could of course not get insurance, that is a viable option.

B

We are skint so there wouldn't be much point in sueing us for cash Would it be that we were individually liable?
Or is it one of thoses where no-one is really sure who is libable cos no-one has yet taken Twitface to court

It probably also depends on how many mods we might have.

I think educating researchers on the legal issues with defamation etc is important too, and putting that in the context of the site having less of a legal budget than the bbc.

I can't imagine that there isn't legal precedent on this for smaller websites.

Sorry Vip, I got distrated with the sueing.

Great summary, hats off to you

Yikesing compromise, having discussed it could we either have it anonymous to start and see if it continues to be an issue under new management

Or if we go down the open route if something is particulary nasty then I think there would be someone confident enough to yikes. If it is something more borderline and there is a pattern of more insidous behaviour (for example) and the person targeted is too scared to yikes then the community team/mods could yikes on their behalf.
If they had raised the issue through email or it was something that had been spotted posts would kept a special eye on anyways

I think I was the one to suggest that yikesing should not be anonymous. I've changed my mind. I believe in transparency, but I don't think we should have tools that people are afraid to use.

Good point...

Education good but you would still be making an educated guess at whether what is legal or not (with regard to defamation and libel) unless your education was very indepth

Ignorance or misjudgement is not a defence in defamation and libel. Says me who made a genuine mistake on the footballer thread so now I know. (I didn't break the injunction but I did possibly make a comment that defamed Imogan Thomas) Defamed is that the right word?

I'm in the hidden camp

Having named mods may limit the number of people that volunteer for the job.

Peanut, I wasn't meaning that people needed an indepth legal understanding, more that researchers need to understand the very good legal reasons for not letting a post stand. If we are to rely on researchers to yikes then we need them to understand what libel is (in general terms).

Kea I was just showing off my new found knowledge really

I agree we need to know more in general and be more aware of the issue given our status but if we make a genuine mistake we could still be sued, to what end I don't know, we have no cash, closure would be my only problem or damage to reputation

That said I think it would be really unlikely that we would be sued but not impossible.

I suggest that the moderators have designated accounts, which do not reveal the identity of the individual researchers who are using them. However, these moderators and their individual actions would be answerable to the tier above them ( ie those who appointed them). This would mean that they could still carry on as normal in day to day life in noohootoo without fear of harassment, or worse people being falsely nice to them.

This would also allow a moderator to just drop a friendly note of advice into a heated thread on the odd occasion where needed.

I think intention is important. If a site is taking due care to not allow defamatory posts to remain then I think the chances of being sued or prosecuted are probably very low (but yes we'd need UK legal opinion on all of this).

That's just based on watching what's happened in NZ. The big issue here has been breaching name suppression orders. One blogger did so deliberately, got charged and convicted. But it's not like the Crown or the police went round every website in NZ and charged people.

In previous cases bloggers have posted the names that have been suppressed by court orders, and when those bloggers were warned they took the names down and no-one was prosecuted.