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

Seen it?

Not only are they throwing out loads of kids, they want any 'questions' directed by email. Not out in the open. Hidden away. Well, I want to know what everyone thinks, so I think it should be discussed on site!

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Can anyone point me to the BBC policy on under 16's registering with BBC sites?

Thank you.

Very sad. The hand-wringing of public sector panic strikes again, and completely misses the point. Where else would you expect young people to find a healthy environment to communicate online? Drive them away and they'll find far less regulated environments than those they're left with on BBCi. Infantilise them and they'll be tempted away by God knows who.

Damn I knew coming to the Beeb was a bad idea...The freedoms we had have been eroded year by year...

It is very sad I was 14/15 when I first joined hootoo, and now I'm fast approaching 21.. It was certainly the most healthy online community I was ever a part of, and provided a safe environment for me then. If I were to recommend a place for a young person, it would have been here.

Exactly! People here a friendly, helpful, and respectful as a rule - what better place for a child/teenager to learn the niceties of interacting with people who are very real, even if you can't "see" them?

'As a rule'

Sad, it is - but we ourselves are at least partly to blame. So much bad language etc, without pretence of humour. Was this not intended to be a family show?

Without us, BBC could screen a few quality Reality episodes per year.

Disappointing.

Segregating children from adults is not going to make them safe. It might make them stupid. Bad move.

I fail to see how this makes children safer. The ACE system basically gives younger members a Guardian Angel, something lacking on other sites. The fairly close community nature of the site (which imo encourages more women to join) ensures responsible adults are always around. On a number of occasions I've seen ACEs & adults step in to help younger members.

Particularly sad is that a site created by (and in some senses an homage to) an author whose books are enjoyed by younger people is now closed to them by the state broadcaster.

Moronic.

Both of the little Tricians have 'grown up' using hootoo and are a lot better for it.

This is the sort of stupid rule that is simply asking for mass circumvention.

Look for a number of researchers 'new this week'

alec.

There much bad langiage on the site what is is asterixed and no worse than school stuff.



Belgium to that!!!!

A shame about the policy...just shows how the BBC is being strangled by faceless. humourless administrators who have gone on too many courses. I doubt whether the italics are doing this from choice but from an on-high edict.

SWL< On a number of occasions I've seen ACEs & adults step in to help younger members.>

I would have thought this site would have been VERY safe for youngsters. It's pretty obvious around the site that we back each other up against abuse and being picked on etc and would spot anything untoward.

Don't you understand? The very fact that you're typing messages to strangers means that you're all despicable perverts!

Best that the under-16s stick to MySpace. I'm sure there are no sexual deviants there at all.

at this age limit thing. This is the only forum that I feel safe enough to invite my daughter to. Doesn't that tell the bbc something?

They've explained that it is to bring h2g2 inline with other BBC services of a similar nature. That's how real life works in a big organisation like the beeb. Can you imagine if something untoward did happen here, and of course however generally safe something is,it's not impossible, and then it was shown that this site operated a special policy different to the rest of the beeb. The public outcry would be deafening. The BBC is a British institution of longstanding and held in great affection by the whole country, by millions who have never heard of h2g2. So of course if it's a decision deemed appropriate at the highest level for public confidence in the BBC in general, h2g2 has to come into line.

We gain great benefit from being part of the BBC and shouldn't forget that. It's the way the real world works.

I'm presuming everyone here who is just so angry will be writing to the BBC at the highest level then, about it, if people really *do* think it is an entirely inappropriate decision for a public institution like the Beeb, known and respected worldwide for it's media brilliance, to make. I think they are being pragmatic given the current climate.

It's not like some flaky johnny cum lately organisation like Facebook , just doing social networking. The BBC is a gigantic complex organisation, doing a million different things in media, that is pretty unique as a whole.

Yes it may seem a bit ridiculous from our narrow perspective. The hard reality alternative? Oh yeah, lets go it alone or be taken over by facebook.

I think it's just tough t*tt**s, in real politick.

I have recently joined, I know not of your history or of any future mission statements
If I was required to write a review , it would be mixed.
Unfortunately progress!how every unpalatable does not stands still for no man or women

I'm absolutely certain it wasn't the h2g2 Eds who came up with this idea. It's ridiculous.

I had a quick glance at mbblast (another dna community, and one that's mentioned in the announcement as a possible place for the youngsters to go), and I'm sure that many of our young people would feel out of place there. It's a grand place to drop into occasionally, no doubt, but hootoo is home.

Can we club together and buy h2g2 back from the BBC?

TRiG.

Fanny, you might find this a more appropriate place for toadying - https://jobs.bbc.co.uk/fe/tpl_bbc01.asp?newms=info24

And there was I thinking, putting different points of view about things was what makes this place great. Call it *toadying* if you want though. But you couldn't be more wrong.

I'm all in favour. I have to spend my real life fraternising with teenagers.

B