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

I've just updated it with my Percy Jackson book. And it's automatically moderated and waiting for release.

If it's a bug it's an old one - I wonder why it's not fixed.

Apart from that... what the heck?

I've seen a lot of complaints about moderation lately, I've had a couple of posts removed, and heard nothing from the Eds. I've worked out what word it is doing it. It's all over h2g2, but is suddenly unacceptable!? Something not right somewhere.

to be charitable I suspect that it's a glitch - certainly the 2nd message I got when I saved it was of an automatic nature. Which is annoying if it's all part of the same bug.

ah - it's back now.

In days gone by, I did have a lot of posts stricken and mostly without any e-mails explaining why. The most recent hit still has me confused, mentioning a criminal case in this country. Nothing specific, no names or even locations, just circumstances. And I am told it contravenes a British Act of 1981, and while it may be far reaching to guess that it would even relate to a Canuck case, ... It could only have been zapped by attentive eyes and fingers as there was nothing to trigger even the most harmless seeming of word-traps

I had a post modded which quoted from, and refernced too, a BBC news article... I just can't be bothered to follow it up anymore seems so ludacrus...

the "sticky" content here is actually losing its grip...

Let's distinguish between postings and entries, here. I can't comment on postings, but I know that every time you change an entry, it is scanned for:

a) offensive words - if these are found, the entry is immediately blocked; you won't be able to save your changes, so you'll have to cancel, leaving the entry as it is.

b) semi-offensive words, which may be offensive in some contexts and not in others. An example might be the word 'cock'. If there are these, the entry is silently put on a moderation queue and looked at later. If you make a second change to the entry while it is still on the moderation queue, the entry is hidden pending moderation, and will be looked at soon. Normally, it will then be reinstated.

The Eds will not publish a list of rude words, but admitted that the list contained some fairly odd words - at one stage the word 'cole' was on the semi-offensive list. Don't ask why, because the eds didn't know. It was something to do with tracking some offensive posters on a football site hosted by the BBC.

Various people have talked about 'the moderation bug', but as far as I can tell, there is no moderation bug. The system is working exactly as intended.

it just seems very strange even though it is a really very minor annoyance indeed. Miniscule.

But - I hadn't changed any text - just moved one thing from one section to another. It's never happened before which is why I think that really, it would be a good idea to know about what triggers these things.

What's the entry number of your diary?

You don't have to have made any changes to it. If you Edit it and save your changes, and it has a suspicious word in it, they'll have to check it.

It could be your use of your phrase "the F-word".

And by the way, you can put ampersands in your GuideML text by putting in the code &

hmmmm
they should take a leaf out of parenting books if it's really the F-word that is triggering it. That's my PS and that is changed every time I start a new book (so at least 3 times a week generally... and that reference has been in it for at least a couple of years.

Thanks for the & tip though


to be honest I don't really care one way or another, it was back within hours anyway

but you know how it is: one person is modded, and then you notice a lot of people talking about it

it's almost irresistable to fan the conspiracy flames

There is a moderation bug. Every time I edit my PS it is hidden: not silently flagged for later checking by the mods, but hidden. Furthrmore, my message centre is also hidden, as happens to yikesed entries. Further, the Eds can restore my PS, but the message centre every time remains locked until the technical staff have unlocked it. The last time, they were all out with the flu so it took a week.

This rather puts me off editing my PS.

TRiG.

That certainly sounds like an irritating bug, Trig. But most people talk about the moderation bug when all that is happened is that they've used some potentially dodgy word.

that's very annoying TRiG.
As I said - I edit my page every few days or so, because I usually put what I'm reading on there.

I've edited it 3 times since it got modded - my subject line is wrong, it was the PS - but it hasn't been modded since.

It's one of those strange things. Like where do the go?

Every time I edit my PS it is hidden - mine has also done it Trig, about 3 or 4 times

My PS is way out of date. I keep meaning to update it but this has rather put me off, so it will stay as it is for now.

Websailor