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

A friend posted on Farcebook the revelation that Douglas Adams wrote the BBC moderation system... which I immediately questioned. Apparently his source is the head of Aerian , my views on it have opened a and "as far as we're concerned DNA wrote code that was eventually ported over to the system we now call DNA."

So, the question is, how much of this is actually true? Did DNA code any of DNA before he passed away? Was any of this what would eventually become the BBC moderation system? Pastey?

I don't know the answer, but I'd be surprised if he didn't specify it or contribute in some way to the design of the one used on h2g2.

What was the state of the BBC Messageboards when the BBC took over h2g2 - did they exist? If they did, they must have had some pre-existing moderation.

Traveller in Time on his head
"The BBC did have message boards and did have premoderation before h2g2 was included.

As far as I understand DNA did not code the WEB-site he did write some code for his own however. And he was present at many meetings about the structure and development of the site. Even the button and code for the Inprobability drive was not his idea. "

Digital Village was Adams's brainchild, and he was remarkably capable in digital work. I'd be surprised if he wasn't involved in some major part of it.

And if he did code the moderation system, so what? I'm sure lots of other people worked on it, too. After all, it takes a village...

Pre-mod poster in a thread about the design of the moderation system!

The 'so what?', paulh, is that I'm interested. That's why I asked.

I have no special knowledge, just a curiosity. I know DNA was fascinated with all things tech, and designed things like the Infocom games, but I'm not aware of him being much of a code monkey. I wouldn't be surprised it he tinkered with some coding, but I suspect he left that to others.

I can't remember now if there was a moderation system before the site was sold to the BBC. But dna isn't just the moderation system, it's tge whole entry and posting system.

Yes, I know.

Pastey is the person most likely to know, although he's not around as much as he used to be.

Or Robbie Stamp, who's here even less frequently.

"The 'so what?', paulh, is that I'm interested. That's why I asked." [Mr.Dreadful]



I wish I could give you an answer, then. Unfortunately, at the moment I have answers for everything but questions.

Hi!
This is an interesting thread, and I wasn't sure about any of this, so checked in with Robbie Stamp, who said this:
'Moderation was part of the site from day one. We had had an interesting experience with forums which we set up for Starship Titanic and it convinced us all that we needed to keep a good close eye on h2g2, when we launched. In the end all we really ever wanted were great Guide Entries and great conversation, lively, provocative but respectful. One of the basic rules was and still is 'no spitting!' The Beeb operated under entirely different pressures and they introduced other rules but we have been able to unlock a fair few of them. I still think the 'no spitting one' is good though! As far as coding is concerned, Douglas was indeed fascinated by it and very respectful of the great programmers we had who build both ST and h2g2.com but he didn't write code for the site itself. He was however closely involved in every aspect of the site's development including moderation policies'

Now I get morbidly curious about what actually happened on Starship Titanic, but I suppose I don't really want to now if I think about it...

Hope this helps

Which reminds me again of the email I lost on a long obsolete desktop PC inviting me to h2g2 from the folks at TDV.

Thanks Milla!

Do you mind if I copy that over to the FB thread?

I don't mind, and I suppose Robbie wouldn't either, since he gave me the text to post

Thank you so much for explaining that, Milla.

You're welcome. But really, it's Robbie we should thank - we're really lucky to have him back running h2g2 with us

I certainly don't remember any moderation being implemented before we joined the BBC. The Yikes button was not introduced until then, because it caused quite a fuss.

However, something may have been going on in the background, because things got rather spiteful on the (unmoderated) Yahoo thread that we had in the interim period, in a way that I had not seen on the site till then.

As for DNA, he was notorious for jumping from project to project and I don't think he was the sort to spend hours of his life learning to code, less still actually painstakingly writing the code for a project of that size. We benefitted from his intelligence and his proliferation of ideas.

Oh - and I remember on one occasion, shortly after we had joined the BBC, I once felt the need to report something. It wasn't a particular post, so I couldn't Yikes it, but a general uncomfortable feeling I had about a researcher who had joined us. I spent quite a while trawling through the various help pages as to how to go about it, finally finding instructions to post a message to Abi on her page. I did as instructed, but my post was yikesed. That help page has possibly now been deleted - I can't find it for the moment.

If the help page wasn't much help, then it probably deserved to get deleted.