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

The BBC mods react to the notifications they get from the complaints button. I believe that there is a malicious person, greatly bored, who is using clever language to convince the innocent moderators to take action. Otherwise - how else would they find stray words in our journals to take offence at?

*Gasp* Do you mean... the Phantom Yikeser?

*DUN DUN DUUUUUUUN*

well - it's a bit weird Unless you think the BBC mods have a subscription to your journal Mr D?

Weren't in my Journal... it was in a thread over at the Doctor Who place.

I think I'll change my tag to indicate I'm Not Safe From Moderation.

NSFM.

I've recently seen a rash of needless moderation. Nearly every time the post was eventually cleared by the Eds. My personal space was even moderated due to use of foreign languages... My gibberish Vogonesque poem that's been there for nearly 12 years now.

I think the Eds must be getting tired of having to reinstate posts that shouldn't have been removed in the first place.

I don't think it's the phantom yikeser. I think it's an overzealous outsourced moderator. Do they get paid hourly or piecemeal?

Zounds*, I forgot I can't see my own tag in brunel.




*Archaic exclamation substituted for very mild curse.

Well, I did find out recently that journal entries show up on the front page in Barlesque, so it doesn't necessarily have to be someone subscribed to any of our journals in particular.

Lanza, I got your message but can't reply till I get home- I can read FB notifications in my email but can't access FB from work (it's blocked on our servers for security reasons).

>I don't think it's the phantom yikeser. I think it's an overzealous outsourced moderator.

So do I. I wonder if they do get paid by the removed post. Someone's rolling in dough if that's the case.

I still think it's an automated thing. A word in a foreign language seems to trigger the filter nowadays, and your post/entry is *immediately' moderated and an email sent out. I was able to watch it where I linked to a google page (which had links with German words) and the other day where I had updated an entry withozt problem, until I added a book title which was half in Latin. Dang, entry moderated and moderation email received within seconds.

But whatever I posted didn't trigger the filter- because I went back later to see if anyone had replied (and they hadn't as of yet). I don't recall exactly how long between my posting and the email being sent was, but it had to have been an hour-ish. The filter can't take that long to trigger?

Also I wanted to say that when I say "no reply as of yet to my email", it's not like I expect that someone is sitting in front of a computer screen all day waiting to reply to inquiries or anything. I didn't mean to sound as sniffy as I may have.

PC, there is a secondary filther which flags certain words.

It's quite possible you got caught up in something that was happening on the BBC News Blogs...

Yesterday it was found that individual posts were being cleared through pre-moderation without being thoroughly checked. Some 'bright sparks' excuse the pun, were using the site to arrange other 'meets' for rioting

Are the BBC divesting themselves of of their communities, and moving to the model of suppoting "comments" by "members of the public"?

The modding we've got suits that sort of model, but not community-interactions.

Ben

Thanks, Lil. I didn't know that was how the secondary filther worked.

I still haven't received any reply from the mods or the eds, so I'm not going to bother editing the journal in question. I just won't be posting any more of them for now. It's not like I say anything all that important or interesting anyway.

It'd be a shame if the BBC did go to a model of "comments by members of the public". I've sworn off reading *any* comments on articles in places like Slate or Yahoo, because they really do attract a lot of the "lowest common denominator" sort of posts. A lot of concern trolls, a lot of drive-by flaming. It about gives me an aneurism. I'd hate to see all of the BBC having only that kind of interaction- they've been one of the last bastions of non-knuckle-dragging interaction on the web, at least for me.

Most of their Blogs are almost full of hidden, or yikes'd postings.

Then they close them down.