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

I did mean specically party 'lines' and such. Quoted or passed along. I hate to use Roymondo as an exapmple or Ferretbadger, but each will have a nature to repeat almost verbatim party platforms that will support a certain party or cause.

Leave candidate, region or zone names out, and expound on what you feel is really BEST for a place. Nothing explicit to a county or city, but your really good gut feel.\

How does that sound? No one disenchanted politician can come back and say "Look at what you said, it swayed Kea and she WAS the swing vote..."

It's called astroturffing (should that have two Fs or one?).

There is currently no HR against posting political material except at election time.

And I'm not aware of any astroturfing here.

I think let 'em have at it Nick. Anyone who comes here and starts posting about party politics in an official way is going to get a thrashing IMO.

I've had some good conversations with Ivan about Australasian politics, including candidate names and policies (and sometimes non-antipodeans join in). I'd be pretty upset if I could no longer do that.

In fact, I'd say that the right to talk about politics is one of the fundamentals of this place.

As far as I am aware, the Beeb has put blockades on closer regional elections. I thought that was the current point, to not put up such "blank walls of silence"

So would you have house rules at all Otto? Call me old fashioned, but I like to operate with rules for the mandatory stuff, then guidelines for the ambiguous stuff.

It's not all about banning. It's a positive thing, to direct people towards the kind of social interaction we enjoy at h2g2.

I agree Icy. One of the things I like about the current HRs, is that it's not just a list of don'ts. It talks about what we want here and what we need to encourage.

>>As far as I am aware, the Beeb has put blockades on closer regional elections. I thought that was the current point, to not put up such "blank walls of silence"

My understanding is that BBC can't allow certain discussion at certain times because of its status as a public broadcaster and the responsibility that goes with that (is that right?). We won't have that restriction.

I don't know what you mean by 'closer'.

Closer being geographic. I don't know how many h2g2 folks there are in New Zealand today or in 6 months. I have a fair idea how many Canucks there are. Any region that has elections, it might not be best to get on about any party too strongly and yet expouse your own opinions?

This site, while perhaps 60-some-percent UK, is really quite international.

"So would you have house rules at all Otto? Call me old fashioned, but I like to operate with rules for the mandatory stuff, then guidelines for the ambiguous stuff."

Absolutely - we certainly need house rules. But what we shouldn't expect is that they'll solve everything. There will always be difficult cases where judgement is needed. I like the idea of 'positive' rules - that's worth exploring in more detail.

Re 'astroturfing'.... well, I've heard that term defined slightly differently (mainly about organisations and pressure groups), but yep, it's that kind of thing I'm talking about. We've never had it before, and I can't think of a single researcher who posts 'party line' stuff - everyone's more nuanced than that.

But having said that, we don't get 'astroturfing' here because the site isn't big enough or prominent enough, and because it's relatively recent phenomenon.

Is my attempt to disassociate the rules from the transgression process too difficult a concept, then?

It is clear that some actions will get you an outright ban, some maybe an instant outright ban. Others will trigger different processes - maybe suspensions, or "do that one more time, sunshine..." e-mails. Others still will only become problems when collated, or when someone complains.

What I was trying to do was to compile a list of all of these actions, however serious, and hold them up as being "Things we don't want to see" (or indeed we could portray some of them positively as "Things we want to see - or else"). The house rules seemed to be the level to pitch it at.

Something that I seem to have missed in all of the many threads

Who is the ultimate level of authority? For some time now, it has been one or two Italics, and who-ever could influence them. What is the hierarchy of the new structure?

Mrs Z is the best person to answer that. I think that the Community Editors will rule on matters of behaviour, but the Board of Trustees is the ultimate arbiter of all issues.

As the primary "line of defence", yes, I think the Community Editors is a good choice. They do see on a day-to-day basis the in's and out's of the site

That's how I've been reading it too, although to what extent the Foundation will be involved is unclear. It's something that should be made explicit sooner rather than later IMO.

I think there will be announcement about that, in due course.

They will be regularly replaced, lest they become the Board of Rustees.

I think the House Rules are exactly the level to pitch it. But recall that final decisions will rest with the Charitable Foundation which will no doubt want to take into consideration a lower age limit of membership cum participation.

I also think the Rules are the place for clear-cut statements of what is allowed while the place for gentle descriptions of what we want is under "Aims and Objectives".

We should also bear in mind that while terms such as "flooding" and "spamming" are fine for this discussion they're meaningless for the Rules themselves.

Just as long as they don't drop the other T and become the Board of Trusees.

The Bored of Rustees? That nearly sounds like a call for ...




Double-Ewe Dee Forty Man !!!