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

I now find myself forced, on pain of suspension of my account, to stop asking Tango for an apology.

I made the mistake of respecting him and treating him like an adult, instead of brushing off his insults as though they came from some trivial child. I made the mistake of assuming he was a responsible person. I made the mistake of thinking that the site rules apply to him, as they obviously do in spades to me.

I was wrong, on every count. Tango can do what he likes, and need not worry about the House Rules.

I withdraw my request for an apology, and henceforth shall be treating Tango with the respect he so obviously deserves.

H.

looks like "you know when you've been tango'd"

seriously, this is not the only character I can name who seems to get treated differently than everyone else.

there was U110017 - playboy reporter, josh the genius, and a number of others as well.

in each case, a relative newcomer who hasn't provided much material gets prefferential treatment agains an established researcher who has written lots of stuff for the edited guide.

in each case the community tends to come out for the established researcher, and the italics deny bias, even when it is obvious.

eventually the established researcher gets punished for complaining against unfair treatment, and the relative newcomer is given free rein as to their behavior.

often the newcomer never contributes anything to the edited guide, and the established and usually prolific researcher gets pushed of the site by the bias, and a lot of bad feeling results.

when will the italics learn (especially given that page on the hub about community building).

to a certain extent, it doesn't matter if the editors don't feel they are being biased. the fact is that most of the community does, and if they don't listen if creates a bad smell which lingers for a long while.

Xyroth, you need to watch those sweeping generalizations

'in each case, a relative newcomer who hasn't provided much material gets prefferential treatment agains an established researcher who has written lots of stuff for the edited guide.'

If you must drag up that old controversy, please remember that when it began, Playboy Reporter had been a member for a year or so, and Arpeggio for a month. Which was the relative newcomer?

In the present unfortunate disagreement, Tango has one of the smallest U numbers around, and has made a very worthwhile contribution to the Edited Guide in terms of PR comment over the years. To imply by your examples that he is a relative newcomer is just plain silly.

Azara

"Playboy Reporter had been a member for a year or so, and Arpeggio for a month"

this might be true, but I subscribe to most of the major writing forums (if not all) and I only saw playboy reporter for the one thread, whereas arpeggio already had four entries doing well in peer review and showed no signs of slowing down.

similarly with josh, just the on entry, and the person who was on the other side similarly was contributing regularly to the guide.

similarly with tango, he might have been around a while, but hoovooloo is seemingly everywhere, and if he isn't contributing entries to the guide, he is usually commenting in peer review.

I don't know if tango has added numerous entries or not, but he isn't one of those people who is always around with new entries and good feedback.

We frequently moan here that there is not enough work going on here on the edited guide, but every time one of these incidents happens where there is a perceived inequality of treatment, it is the regular peer revie contributers and guide entry writers who are on the wrong side of it.

it doesn't matter if the treatment is fair or not, the way the italics handle these incidents are uniformly dreadfull. they don't address the perceived inequality except to deny it, and they then moan that they are being criticised.

this is not the way to handle it. once you get one of these situations where there is a dispute between 2 characters, those cases where there are complaints against either of them need to be handled by someone who is familiar with the problem, who then has the duty to act in a balanced and fair way. it also means that when the accusation comes up, we then know that mina (or peta or ashley or ...) is responsible, and they can then be alerted to the fuss and come and comment in detail.

also, once you have someone familiar with the problem, they can then keep subscribed to any contentious threads between the people involved, and know the background when the next yikes occurs. usually, when reading the thread, it is obvious which one is trying to be professional, and who is veering towards stiring things up.

I hope one of the italics is reading this, and takes the suggestion to the rest of them for discussion, because this is an ongoing problem.

I will say again, I am not saying hoovooloo is right, and tango is wrong, only that that is how it appears to the people I hear taling about it, and it is a failure on the part of the italics to have let it get to that point (yet again). They need some policy in place to prevent the next one.

they could even put both participants on in-house pre-moderation as soon as there starts to be a problem.

we just need some solution to the problem.

I just found this:

[Unsuitable link removed by Moderator]

... and on reading it, the same name kept popping up again and again in my mind. And it's NOT Tango, I hasten to add. Did anyone else get that strange sense of recognition?

(PS Hurry - the link points to a Google cache, the original is gone...)

H.

TOO LAte! it's gone!

I actually saw it. Very funny!

Hoo-

I ran into a similar problem with my school paper. Once I got on the bad side of the editorial staff (I wrote complaining about how they printed factualy incorrect material) they refused to respond to my emails, or print any of my letters. I was lucky - since it's a school paper, I just had to wait, and eventually the editors graduated

I don't know what the turnover rate for the italics is, but chances are you're not going to be so lucky. I'm willing to bet any amount of money, that if a new set of italics were installed, they would look at the whole thing much more objectively.

Which brings up another point. There is a position that I just learned about for newspapers called an "ombudsman". Basically, it's someone to independently audit the actions of the paper, to act as a representative for the readership of the paper, to raise complaints with the paper. Maybe the guide should look into getting something like this.

There may not be a "pressing" need for it now, but since it is relatively easy, it might be worth it as a preventive measure. Plus, it's just sound policy. What do you guys think?

dave

I think this whole matter has got somewhat out of proportion. The Italics just wanted things to calm down.

Whoami?

The use of "ombudsmen" is fairly wide spread in utilities, the media, national government and local government.

There is already a TV ombudsman http://www.itc.org.uk although they don't have much to do with the Beeb and it extremely unlikely that they would have any role in monitoring on-line communities.

Also the role of ombudsmen generally is to ensure that the public as individuals receive fair treatment from larger corporate and governmental bodies.

The scenario here in h2g2 is different as it derives from a diference in views between individual members of the public. IMO the Italics should have stayed out of it (as they should with other similar scenarios).

Unfortunately the Italics and the mods have to enforce the House Rules, which include clauses on flaming, trolling and harassment (the assessment of which is entirely subjective).

Perhaps then, rather than involve themselves in what can only appear to be a partisan manner (i.e. *after* various rules have been broken to varying degrees by both sides in a dispute), maybe TPTB should adopt the role of adjudicator in disputes between researchers?

How about this as an alternative?

Where a dispute arises, either party could refer the matter to the Italics (this would head off any flame wars, trolling or harassment before it starts). The researchers would then be cautioned not to engage further (even by proxy) until the dispute is investigated (failure to follow this *request* would follow on to the transgression procedure for the offender(s)). The Italics can email the disputants separately to establish the independent views of those involved and then after looking at the relevant backlog indicate who has actually flouted the house rules or behaved in an otherwise unacceptable manner. The verdict can be emailed back to the disputants who can then feel either vindicated or aggrieved, as appropriate. Failure to accept the verdict and engaging in further flaming, trolling or harrassment would then lead on automatically to the transgressions procedure.

It might be a slight case of sledgehammer to crack a nut. I'll have a think about it.

I think that's an excellent way for the disputes to be settled. BTW, what is trolling?

But regardless of this solution, the point of the ombudsmen would be to help point out these solutions (and the problems that necessitate them) to the italics, and to help get the italics to change policy.

What you're saying will fix this problem - but in the future, when there is another issue where the community feels that the italics have failed them, there could be an ombudsman to register a complaint with.

but then again, what do I know about partying or anything else?

dave

dave:

Trolling is a bit like flaming, but is more wide bore.

e.g.

Flaming: "dave/Captain Obvious, you're a spawny eyed parrot faced wazzock".

Trolling: "All [insert ethnic/religious/other group of your choice] are spawny eyed parrot faced wazzocks."

Obviously, usually rather stronger epithets are used....

Independent arbitrators have been proposed before. Never got off the ground because ultimate, the Italics could ignore them, unless they were BBC employees - never gonna happen.

And the idea of the Italics emailing both parties could work - if they were impartial. They sort of tried it in my dispute with Tango, but their obvious non-impartiality made the situation worse rather than better, unfortunately.

Anyhoo, bygones...

H.

Personally, I see trolling as saying something that you know will provoke a debate, eg:

* Everything2 is better than h2g2!

* PHP rox (in a Perl supporting room); or Perl sux (in a Perl supporting room).

Unfortunately my broader definition would also fit Hoovooloo's insistent requests for an apology everythrough it was obvious no-one would back down...

spelugx

If you go with that definition, you'd never be able to start a debate!

To be trolling, the post surely has to be:

(a) unreasonable
(b) likely to inflame or offend
(c) posted deliberately somewhere it's likely to inflame or offend
(d) probably a non-sequitur.

Requesting an apology for lies told about you is hardly trolling, as it's NOT designed to provoke debate. In fact, it's asking for the exact opposite. ALL I wanted was an apology. The only reason there was any debate was that I didn't get one. If I'd got one from the first request, it would have died there.

Similarly, posting the question "Why do people believe in God?" is not trolling, but it's designed to provoke debate - it would be perfectly acceptable to post that to, say, a philosophy or anthropology thread.

Posting "Why do only credulous morons and the mentally ill believe in the primitive backward superstition that is the Christian Bible?" to a religious messageboard, on the other hand, would pretty much define trolling.

Same question, different phrasing, different place, makes it trolling.

H.

I'd see trolling as 'intentionally baiting the general readership of a community'. How's that as a start?

Whoami?

I think I get the idea. THanks for the defs

If an independent third party (ombudsman) were appointed, s/he wouldn't have the power to make the italics do anything. That's not really the point of ombudsman.

Anyway, if you got the ombudsman to agree with you on something, and the italics even still ignored the ombudsman, that's all you would have - consolation.

You could always try to organize a strike...you guys do a ton of work for the guide.

For any sort of strike to be effective, you are assuming there would be community support even of a limited form.

The majority of the community were against the Iraq gagging order. Some volunteers resigned over the issue because they were being asked to enforce it. Not all did. I didn't resign but I did quote the italics own rules at them informing them that it was an "unlawful" order/request and that therefore no volunteer need follow it. I continued to only yikes posts which broke the genuine house rules.

I think this limited strike of volunteers made virtually no difference to site operations. The same would likely be true of any ombudsman decision (much as it is without an ombudsman) - especially given that very few people in any such dispute would be in possession of the facts to make up their own minds whereas many were over the Iraq issue.

I was one of the volunteers who resigned over the Iraq thing.

It was in no way any form of strike that was aimed on interrupting the workings of the site. It was not organised. Myself, and a few other people that I knew of resigned, independantly of each other, because they did not want to be associated in any way with censorship of an important world event.



Ste

Hmmm. Well, do ombudsmen in general have any power? I mean the situation you're describing sounds like what could happen with any ombudsmen (or mediator) - one side can always choose to ignore the decision/criticism. If the ombudsmen decides that the italics have done something wrong, then if they don't correct it, they lose credibility.

Maybe they don't care about it in the short term, but in the long term they'll feel the pinch. The volunteers who work hard WILL dry up if consistently abused, and the guide will fail.

I don't think that the italics would ever do anything to warrant this though. I just think that an ombudsmen could prevent us from getting anywhere near close to a bad situation.