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

whats the deal with the zaphodista and the censorship....been away a while and dont know whats going on.....(im one of the two who joined after uncle H left....how serious is the moderation and have we exhausted all reasonable methods?

Well, the main Zaphodistas page at A520769 describes most of the problems we've seen. Anything written in languages other than English may be removed or "hidden" until they get an adequate translator of your language. No more off-site pictures in your guide entries because BBC is afraid we'll use offensive or copyrighted pictures.

If you want to get a feeling for how good or bad the moderation is, you can click on "FEEDBACK" and look for the Moderation Help Desk, where you can read the complaints and questions people have been posting there. Some of the problems are just glitches or accidents, but some of it is just heavy-handed censorship. For example, last week, one guy created an ASCII art drawing for a Zaphodista propaganda poster. The image was taken from an old Cuban revolutionary poster, a soldier aiming a rifle. Apparently images of people with guns are too violent, so the page was deleted. (Since then, I made a new version of the image with a sunflower sticking out of the barrel of the gun, and emailed to one of the editors to ask if it would be acceptable.)

There are also a lot of people who are frustrated because the moderators often give vague feedback. They send email messages to researchers with stock messages to explain why their guide entries have been removed or deleted. But sometimes the stock messages are not clear enough, and other times the moderators send no emails. The result is that people don't understand why they've been censored. (Sometimes it's simple things like song lyrics, which the BBC now considers sacred by copyright law, that get a whole entry deleted.)

"have we exhausted all reasonable methods?"

I hope the petition we're working on is a "reasonable method" to get the BBC to change. But we've certainly communicated our objections to the h2g2 editorial staff. They seem to be friendly and well-intentioned, but I sometimes feel like they're playing Good Cop/Bad Cop with us, claiming that their hands are tied, that they have to do what the BBC says. Meanwhile, we've heard no response from any representative of the BBC higher than the editor of h2g2, Mark Moxon.

I hope that we'll see some kind of response to the petition if we can get a few hundred signatures. If we don't see a response, it will be our signal to use some other kind of civil disobedience.

You might also be interested in checking out
Petition (Final Draft?)
http://www.bbc.co.uk/h2g2/guide/A539877

Guerrilla Tactics
http://www.bbc.co.uk/h2g2/guide/A529517

Zaphodista Communiques (latest news & announcements)
http://www.bbc.co.uk/h2g2/guide/A526060

By the way, I added your name to the bottom of the Zaphodistas page as "jack." Must have done it just before you changed your nickname. Is it okay to leave it as "jack" or do you want it to say "A Girl Called Jack"?

you carnt really complane about the block emails can you??
I mean any thing just has a standerd letter that they will send out to no matter what it is,complats overdarfts notices opologies they are all the same with the name changed

I wouldn't complain about the standardized emails if they did a good job of clearly telling people why moderators removed things. Judging by the complaints on the Moderation Help Desk, there have been many people who did not understand what they had done wrong to deserve their guide entries of messages being removed. What's worse is that they sometimes remove things without sending any email. You could write something one day and forget about it, and never realize that it was deleted if you didn't check back on it.

So no, I'm not really complaining about getting an automated response. (Although these automated responses are each selected by human moderators. Wouldn't have taken much longer to have them write custom messages if they kept it down to two or three sentences in length.) I'm complaining because even if you accept that moderation is necessary or good (which I don't totally concede), then it's a separate issue whether moderation is done well, whether people get feedback clearly telling them how they have broken the rules and how to avoid breaking the rules in the future. These things have been unclear, inconsistent, sometimes absent.

I am not shure on the forum (I think it was intituled insane maderation) but in one of them pet said that the moderaterds did not got much to do and perhaps where overzelious about some things.
and I supose you are right. haveing had the odd mail because of my copious use of Galic it does not explane a thing only gives you the post that has been removed and tells you to read the rules. I wunder though how many people actually do before they ask why it removed and how many just complane straght off?
and of corse moderation is necessary espechally now we are part of a big corperation. a little site running itself people are unlikely to be botherd with but stick the BBC logo on their so people realise it has money nad then they will just look for an excuse to start a law sute. if that happens the BBC will stop the sites funding (because it will be to expencive) and then we will be in the same mess that got us her but unlikly to be picked up by anyone els!