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

Watch what you say, hvl. If you are going to make rude comments like that, you have to explain them.

Tango

>"it is his site, so he does know it all, at least when it comes to the status of the servers"

so, when people keep sending messages to volunteer groups saying the site is down cause they can't access it, and others are saying the site is working fine, is it down, or is it fine? sometimes the site won't work for some people while it will for others, so SEF probably wasn't able to access the dev server for some reason, perhaps his connection, or any number of other reasons, the dev server being slow, too many people using it, it could be anything.

so, SEF cn't access the dev server, so he goes along to the dev site, sees this entry by this strange character, hits the submit review to see what happens, and finds he's been able to submit it to peer review.

SEF then goes to bed, wakes up the next day and finds that loads of stuff has happened.

spook

It's funny. Mina and the italics are going to great lengths for new community artists, and yet they boot out SEF right in the middle of a drive, for an irrelevant reason.

Not funny. Maybe a little ironic though

SEF blamed it being down on the italics, when it was his ISP/Computer that had the problem. Anyway, as jim said, he should have waited until the dev server came back.

Tango

Jodan - they not only booted out a CA, they also booted out the best CA, who welcomed everyone to the group, told them a few things, and gave them help.

SEF didn't blame it on the italics, but simply said the dev server was down. whether it was or not we can never know unless we go back in time to that moment and check i ourselves using our pcs. the fact is that the dev server was not working for SEF.

maybe he should have waited to test peer review on the test site, but then the dev site may have differences to the online site, so to learn pr tools for guruing it would have been better to test on the real site.

also, the fact that it was a dev entry seems to be what annoyed Jim, as Jim doesn't go around pr removing entries. usually the scouts explain to the researcher what to do, and the italics don't jump in. It's this that annoyed Jim and got SEF into trouble. to issue could have been settled without Jim's involvement.

spook

A scout went to Jim's PS and specifically asked for his help.

Tango

It was all of those things, Tango. The dev server had been inaccessible when I had tried repeatedly on one day. I posted about it in Yahoo. Jim said it wasn't always available and gave no time when it would be. Someone else then posted implying they also took that to mean it was indefinitely available until the next round of testing. Perhaps you missed that.

Meanwhile h2g2 has been slow and crashing intermittently for over a week. I know that isn't just me because the error I get is a BBC one not a local one and other people have reported the same.

Also meanwhile, just as I had a visitor arrive who demanded much of my attention, my service provider decided to crash my computer somehow. It took me a while and a lot of effort in the spare moments I was allowed near the computer to get things going again. A few people may have noticed my comments on the strange effects I was getting.

I do admit that I didn't recheck the dev server that one last time before quitting for the night because there hadn't seemed much point and Roger was so clearly experimenting along those lines anyway.

I know. He was a very active guru as well. It bothers me a lot that someone can be kicked out for that.

Headaches..

You still used PR for a purpose other than that for which it was intended. You should have know better.

Tango

Right now, everyone is second-guessing the Italics' motives in removing SEF from the ACE, Guru and Community Artist schemes. We shouldn't unilaterally decide whether the decision is or is not correct until we have the whole picture.

My personal opinion is that the 'PR incident' isn't at all sufficient justification of removing one of the most prolific ACEs, Gurus and Community Artists from the volunteer groups, but I do not know the whole story. There may have been other reasons behind the decision.

I strongly suggest waiting until the Editors have a chance to comment, if they wish, before carrying on a heated debate.

RhoMuNuQ

I hate to argue, because I usually try not to, but...

So what? Is it such a big deal? When I was a newbie, I posted half a dozen entries in PR that didn't meet the guidelines, and I eventually took them out, this didn't result in my immediate disqualification from the volunteer programs. This is basically the same situation, except that SEF is expected to have known better.

One extra thing in PR is not a huge deal, and certainly not a big enough deal for all of this.

Fine point Rho. I await the italics responses

Since Tango is warning me to watch what I say, and spook is disingenuously feigning ignorance - something which I might say he feigns very effectively - I'll provide the explanation.

Spook wrote:

"perhaps instead of coomplaining and complaining scouts could just move along to other 'serious' EG tries and leave the non-serious ones to rot."

Now I happen to think that's extremely f**king rich coming from someone whose behaviour prompted *this*: F21356?thread=218232

Don't preach to others, spook - you're not very good at - and especially don't go round advising people to stop doing something of which YOU are the worst offender.

H.

The PR incident is only one of many reasons the italics gave SEF (he passed on the reasons), it is just a more noticable one. There were others that were more serious. Although there was one comment they made which makes me laugh. I won't elaborate because i would be breaking the disclamer thing at the bottom of all BBC emails.

Tango

I don't think the italics would agree that I was the best CA, Spook.

I disagreed with their policies when they were unreasonable. I told people in the group some truths which they seemed to be trying to conceal (although I had to censor an awful lot of my posts on site whenever I caught them misrepresenting the situation to new people here). It made it very difficult for me to post replies to innocent questions without telling lies myself, knowing what I knew. I put an awful lot of effort into wording things carefully to deflect questions where other people would simply have lied.

It was rather ironic that one of the new EG entries of the day is about this sort of thing but misses that there are some people (or perhaps just me) who never lie, other reasons for people doing so and how the consequences are very different depending on the degree of power.

Ah, yes, i remember that incident well... So you were justified in feeling that way, but that's no excuse for the rudeness.

Tango

Oh, simulpost. I have only heard one side of the story regarding the CAs, but atm i support SEF in that aspect of the disagreement.

Tango

I'm sorry that it looks like I did a 'light the blue touch paper and run' job on this one. I hadn't spotted that yu'd had been booted out of the volunteer groups, SEF, and I'll leave that one down to my poor observational skills. However, I am sure that there must have been reasons, and it's ony natural that you aren't going to agree with them.

SEF, it has to be up to you where to go from here. I'd like to offer a suggestion though. Why not write some things for <./>ThePost</.> and take a few weeks to calm down. Then re-apply, and see if you can't go back in and still work at sorting things out a bit.

All this should work, I hope, provided you tread a bit more gently on those eggshells.

At this point, I have made the decision that this is all I am going to say about the matter for now. I'm bogged down in enough overdue work and campaigning as it is. That doesn't mean I won't speak to anyone, and I'll still be listening in.

Whoami?

Sheesh.

Is there an 'Insiders Back-biting and Whingefest Forum' this thread could be moved to? It doesn't make hootoo look terribly good...

Has SEF had a sex change?

I'm not really sure what else to say, other than I support having multiple scouts post to unsuitable threads as:

* prompt removal (with seconding) keeps PR tidy;

* more people = more discussion, and so we all get to better understand what people want in the guide.

I don't really want PR to become usenet with insta-*BLAM*s for people who don't read the Writing-Guidelines.

I also strongly believe that politeness is an essential part of discussion on hootoo, for a start it ensures that *all* the views will get aired at some point as people will feel able to discuss freely (a reason why house rules with an emphasis on the _topics_ of the discussion, not the _manner_ of discussion is bad IMHO).

Some of you may know that I use irc and hang around the freenode network, now they have the idea of 'channel catalysts' (http://freenode.net/catalysts.shtml). This is part of the role I envisage for aces. They shouldn't (nay, musn't ) just greet newbies, they should particpate in the community at all levels, helping discussing, guiding discussion (not in topic, in manner), and keeping people calm. Note this last point. I fully feel that SEF has been rude on site (the private mailing lists are another matter, even hootoo conversations between friends I would feel to be exceptions [at least until a 'non-friend' arrives]), and so I feel that some comment to be made by staff to SEF would have been appropiate.

I also disagree with all the volunteer schemes being lumped together. We have separate Community and Editorial Editors, and so the volunteers for these roles should be separate too. I do not feel my role as Ace greatly affecting my role as subeditor. There is some interaction on the Scout front, but PR is a separate realm to the rest of the site (it should really be an important part, but I get the feeling people don't quite appreciate it as much as they should).

Well that's it, the end of one of my longer posts. Enjoy, critise and move forward. Say something which'll teach me more about the way *you*, the community and the towers operate.

spelugx -- unusually opinonated and forthright, but not agreeing with the editors.