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

A bit confusing is why the URL's have been removed by the moderator from the entry http://www.bbc.co.uk/h2g2/guide/A516223 but not from the forum posts for that entry (e.g. http://www.bbc.co.uk/h2g2/guide/F63210?thread=100057#p836610), considering the BBC's moderation policy: "We do not allow URLs to external websites to be included in Conversation Postings, but we do allow them in Guide Entries, so if you want to link (say) to your own personal website, please do so from your own Guide Entries, and preferrably your Personal Space. Any links to websites we consider unsuitable will be removed - if you are considering adding a URL to an entry, please make sure that it adds value to the subject of your entry, and isn't, for example, purely commercial." Maybe the ones in the entry were for images and not the pages they appeared on? Natalie

As we haven't completed the move yet and I don't have SQL access, I can't tell you whether the forums on the page you refer to have been moderated... but I suspect not. As we are not live yet, the time taken to moderate things will be long, as the tools are still in development.

I'll check when I get SQL access.

Whatever, the ones in the posting will be removed by moderators - or at least they should be. More info later - thanks for pointing them out, Nat.

All the pages for the h2g2 get together (all linked to from http://www.bbc.co.uk/h2g2/guide/A493706 ) - they are available so they have been re-ativated or moderated.

They all contain linked footnotes urging "If you want to buy a copy of any of these photos, they are available from Fotango. Go to Fotango and register (if you haven't done so already), "

;^)#

So, have I got this straight: all external images are out. But referencing external links is still okay?

Sniff - it's good to be back (getting all emotional now)!

Yes, at the moment, external pictures are out. And they're not being moderated - the GuideML won't allow them. We're rather hoping that with the BBC's slightly better resources we might be in a position to offer some picture hosting in the future. When in the future I can't say, sadly. We've only just arrived, so it seems a little forward to demand 100 terabytes of storage so that our researchers can upload pictures of their cats. But I'm keen on the idea. It would have to be moderated, but for the kinds of uses people had on h2g2 I can't see that being a problem.

I agree!

Both that demanding 100 terabytes of space right now would be a bit excessive (although certainly very, very nice) and that some form of h2g2 internal picture storage would be good. Thinking about it, it would be a quite considerable amount of space required even if limited to only, say, 5MB per Researcher.

Bearing all this in mind, I took pictures at last weekend's Edinburgh meetup, posted them on my own webspace, and included a link (to the index page, not the individual jpg files) in my latest journal entry. The URL has now been removed from the journal entry. They're my pictures and I'm not asking you to buy them, so what's going on there?

That might be because journal entries are stored on the system like forum posts - which is why smileys work in them.

Well, I think they are anyway - I seem to recall something about that coming up back in the dark days before Ripley 1.0

Hi EV

You can't put links in Journal Entries or in Postings, but you can put them in on your Personal Space. I hope that clarifies things a bit more?

Are we allowed to include "directions"? IE, 'go to amazon and search for "cool book".', or 'it's on my website - follow the "Hear me Sing (badly)" link', or 'check out the 'isn't MS evil?' link on my home space'. Or, worse, 'put "http://www." before a domain name, and then something like "blatantly-commercial-section.html". Or simply 'domainname.com/made-up-dir/' (without the http that makes it clickable). What about URLs in usernames? (evil idea, but someone'll try it)

But you can put links to h2g2 pages in forums, yes?

If so, then can EV create an entry with the links to the pics & post the entry url in forums.

If so, that's a good way to stimulate the ad revenue - 2 page displays to get 1 bit of info across. Oh wait, you don't get ad revenue anymore - still I guess the servers enjoy the extra workload

;^)#

There's an edited entry on boredom, and I think that the entry should be updated to include a ref to the boring men webpage. On the old site, I'd post the link in a comment, and then wait patiently for the appointment of the updaters and the fixers, and them getting round to fixing it. In the new site I do what? Create an entire entry solely to contain a single URL? Huh??

It seems rather arbitrary to make the distinction between forums and entries. You have "Please note that the BBC is not responsible for the content of any external sites listed." at the bottom of every page anyway, so it's not as if the lawyers are going to descend like a flock of vampires and start sucking your blood out...

Btw, can you get rid of 90% of the legalese for people who've regged? Surely once we've regged we've agreed to such a large amount of longwinded ToC that we don't need to be constantly reminded every ten seconds?

"I Martin, acknowledge that I'm not a complete idiot, and understand the principle of URLs and who is responsible for what content." - I'm sure it was somewhere in the somewhere...

The arbitray distinction between URLs in forums in entries & forums is even sillier when you think that the ones in forums are *very* explicit about where you're going to end up & they always open in a new browser window.

;^)#

True, true all very true! Restricting one but not the other does seem a bit arbitrary...

While I'm on a roll for dumb questions - what about other commercial stuff, which doesn't involve URLs? IE, snail mail/email/phone numbers/addresses of commercial companies. Or ISBN numbers for books. That kinda thing - purely commercial, but not URLs. What about AOL keywords, come to that? What about URLs/phone numbers/whatever that don't actually exist? What about newsgroups? What about IRC channels?

I can mention newsgroups by giving a n*ws://uk.jobs.offered URL, or by simply saying that the NG is called uk.jobs.offered - if I read right, then the first would be banned, and the second ok - is that correct? Simialrly for email - m*ilto://[email protected] vs 'just email me - [email protected]' - the first is yikesable, but the second isn't?

Reminds me of this week's Angel (Sky 1, Frid*y, 9pm) - Cordelia gets to say: "Naturally: you're just evil bloodsucking creatures of the night - they're lawyers!"

E-mail addresses are fine - they warn against them because of the evil spam. Although if they're clearly being posted for commercial purposes, they're not.

I think removing all URLs in forum posts is a bit extreme... they shouldn't be gotten rid of if they're not commercial.

oops - I can answer my own question:

"We do not allow URLs TO EXTERNAL WEBSITES to be included in Conversation postings"

Which means I'm allowed to write URLs to emails, newsgroups, ftp sites, and so forth. I'm also allowed to write stuff like http://www.this.looks.like/a_url/but_it_is_not/

And the censor will have to personally go to that URL to check that it is in fact NOT an external website, but a figment of my imagination. Better yet, they have to check back on a regular basis, in case I subsequently decide to register that domain name and point it to an external website... Can you say "unenforcable"? I can, and coincidentally, so can the ToC. Unenforceable stuff gets to be "severed"!

http://url_deleted.by/censor/

It seems rediculous... can't they add the same statement at the end of the framed page, and have all links in a conversation/forum open in a new window.

All external links should open in a new window anyway... I think they do on BBC News, but I'm not entirely sure.

All links in forum posts currently open in new windows. And, as it says at the bottom of (alabaster) forums "Please note that the BBC is not responsible for the contents of any external sites referenced."
Except, of course there aren't any external sites referenced in forums, are there?

;^)#