A Conversation for Ask h2g2

can the editors provide a title?

Post 21

Pastey

Popular, or rather busy conversations make it onto the front page automatically. Putting the title back to its original one would leave the risk that it would once again appear on the front page.

smiley - rose


can the editors provide a title?

Post 22

aka Bel - A87832164

Because each time that name is written, one of the moderators has to have a look at it and pass or fail it. Plus, it is still early days, so it just may pop up on the FP again.


can the editors provide a title?

Post 23

aka Bel - A87832164

smiley - simpost


can the editors provide a title?

Post 24

kea ~ Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the western spiral arm of the Galaxy lies a small, unregarded but very well read blue and white website

I've started reading the Dick thread and I was just confused smiley - erm

There are (at least) two issues here:

1. IMO the Editors and the mods SHOULD NOT be editing people's posts. At all. They have no mandate from the community to edit anything other than starring out excessive swearing or removing URLs. I'm fairly alarmed that editing posts is now considered acceptable.

Further to that, IF a title is going to be edited, then at least put the editing message in the OP, where the context is.


2. Are you a Dick? (was dick in capitals or not?) is not devoid of context. Anyone who wants to see the context can click on the thread and see the OP. Just like with any other thread. The OP is in no way inflammatory or designed to start any kind of trouble, that's obvious. Reading Are you a Dick? on the FP and then seeing it's a thread about names is actually FUNNY.


For those two reasons this is a bad call IMO. Both change the culture of the place and not in good, useful ways. It smacks of policy change, I would suspect a result of the arsemuff thread, and as such it should be being discussed by the community. And I don't mean in the reactive way it's now going to happen in this thread, but in a respectful to the community way like having a page to debate policy change threads (Magrathea).

And for gods' sake, the site isn't so fragile that one or two threads with edgey subject lines isn't going to lower the tone. Esp with Taff's thread which was in no way insulting to anyone or the site. When we get barlesque back, are we going to have our names edited because they show on the FP and someone doesn't like them?

I think what's happened here is a serious misjudging of both the community and the role of the CEs.



can the editors provide a title?

Post 25

kea ~ Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the western spiral arm of the Galaxy lies a small, unregarded but very well read blue and white website

>>
Because each time that name is written, one of the moderators has to have a look at it and pass or fail it. Plus, it is still early days, so it just may pop up on the FP again.
>>

Well, that's a problem with the filter then. Either a technical one, or a content one. If the mods can't cope with the workload, then take the word out of the filter rather than editing a title to make their workload easier. Dick is hardly a word we need to be worried about, and in all the conversations I've been in about swearing and what we should be doing on this site, I've never considered that a word like 'dick' would be a problem unless used pejoratively.

I did consider that we might end up with moderation decisions based on the personal views of the person with the mod button in their hand at the time, rather than the ethos and culture of the community smiley - erm It looks like we're there folks.



I'd like to know who decided what's in the filter now.

Is it the same as what came from the bbc, or has it been edited? By who and what criteria were used?

Can we please have the full list of words posts in an A page? (unless that's a time consuming job).


can the editors provide a title?

Post 26

Pastey

Kea, I can assure you that this is all being discussed very seriously by the senior volunteers.

To clarify a few things though, no post was edited. There are only (as far as I'm aware) four people who have the ability to do that anyway, one being me and the others being the CEs (it might be five then). What was edited was the title of the thread, which has always been done by the CEs.

Secondly, this is not a change of policy. The policy has always been to have a site that is welcoming to everyone. At the moment there are aspects that are not. You bring up the arse muffs thread and that's a good comparision. If it hadn't been for that thread, then Taff's Are you a Dick may well have been left alone. However the thread did exist, it did get heated and we do not want to see that sort of behaviour here.

The changing of the thread title is not a change of the culture of h2g2, it's been happening since the site was founded. I can attest to that. The closing of threads that get out of hand is not a change of culture, this has been happening for a long time.

The role of the CEs is to ensure the smooth running of the site. If that means toning down some titles, fine. If that means closing some threads, fine. If that means those that don't like it either standing when the elections come or going elsewhere, well again fine.

I'll state now that I personally think that the CEs are doing a good, if I think too lienient, job of handling this and I would happily vote for them back into their roles if they've not got completely fed up with it by then.

smiley - rose


can the editors provide a title?

Post 27

Pastey

"I did consider that we might end up with moderation decisions based on the personal views of the person with the mod button in their hand at the time, rather than the ethos and culture of the community It looks like we're there folks."

That is absolute rubbish. Complete and utter rubbish. If anything it's the other way. The mods are eering on the side of caution, being gentle with people until things settle down. Want to know how much they're doing? Try it. You've been a *very* useful asset to the gurus kea, we'd definitely not be in as good a situation without the help you've given us, but I can assure you that the mods are working a *lot* harder.

We have rules, we built into them about not breaking the spirit of the rules so that the ordinary, quiet majority could enjoy this site.

Personally, if people don't like it they can go elsewhere as far as I'm concerned. It's a free site, it's run by volunteers doing a *lot* of hard work, as you well know kea, and it doesn't owe users anything.

smiley - rose


can the editors provide a title?

Post 28

Peanut

I do think that it was harmless fun and ok to be on the front page

As I see it there is a policy of editing titles that are seen to be unsuitable for the front page because of the image that the site wants to project. Which is nothing to do with modding or tools or our current situation of finding our feet.

If that is the case then make a clear policy statement/guideline whatever on it and point us in that direction

We could set our bar for titles at phantom yikeser level and be done with it.

I wouldn't mind that, it seems a reasonable request at face value.

Dig deeper, how does this issue of image perculate through the site as a whole? What image are we wishing to project, what image are we going to promote, who are our target audiences. These are big questions, censorship in any form will always be an issue here and I don't know what the answers are. And when were we informed of what editing would or would not be done *looks confused*

So Pastey when you say these are things on which there has been community imput, I totally agree with you there. It is not yet clear to all of us what the output of that is and there is a certain amount of confusion because of this. smiley - ale

This confusion and the implications of the answers of those other questions is sometimes making what people might think is a small thing, into a bigger thing than it is (someone better be proud of me for not make a joke about that)

This seems to be happening on Ask, I can't yet work it out if that is because researchers on Ask find these things more important than elsewhere on site or if we are just quite bloody minded, or both

So next year will that be Celebration of Life thread, followed by post 1 'hang on just changing the title to Death List'? smiley - devil

Peanut smiley - peacesign




can the editors provide a title?

Post 29

Peanut

Blimey I was replying up to the post 18 mark smiley - bigeyes

and smiley - run schools out smiley - biggrin


can the editors provide a title?

Post 30

Pastey

Peanut, the output of the input became the new, more lienient house rules. It became the serious trimming of the filther. It became taking things in context rather than banning threads talking about ear muffs. It became the site we now see, and the site we want to see. We read and listen to what people have to say, and we change policy accordingly. But I will say that policy won't be changed simply because someone is vocal about it. The best way to change something you don't agree with is by doing what h2g2 does best, level headed discussion. Circular arguments go round in circles and people drift away. If there's a point, make it. Back it up with evidence or ideas. Let others discuss and take their views as seriously as your own. This is how we do things here. (none of that was pointed directly at anyone by the way)

These conversations should not be in Ask, they should either be in Feedback if they're after feedback, or they should be as direct emails to the area of the volunteers that are involved.

Posting to Ask has a perception of getting a lot of people to talk because people look there.


can the editors provide a title?

Post 31

kea ~ Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the western spiral arm of the Galaxy lies a small, unregarded but very well read blue and white website

Pastey, I know for a fact that a post elsewhere has been edited. It was a post I yikesed, and I was expecting the post to be hidden. It wasn't, it was edited. I emailed about that and was told it was a very rare occurence. Anyone reading that thread now would have no idea that the post had been edited. I take this very seriously. Hiding posts is one thing, changing them is a completely different thing entirely.

When I write a post, especially if it's starting a thread, then the title IS part of the post.

I don't think I've seen the bbc Editors *ever* change a subject line, they've always just been hidden if they failed. That *is* a change to and for the community and I'm gobsmacked that you would think that it wasn't.

Of course wanting to remove the word Dick from the FP isn't a change, it's exactly the kind of thing the bbc would do. So we've kept that at least smiley - rolleyes. Sorry, but I'm pretty pissed about this. I was under the impression that we would drop the bbc
infantilising of this site.

>>>
Secondly, this is not a change of policy. The policy has always been to have a site that is welcoming to everyone. At the moment there are aspects that are not. You bring up the arse muffs thread and that's a good comparision. If it hadn't been for that thread, then Taff's Are you a Dick may well have been left alone. However the thread did exist, it did get heated and we do not want to see that sort of behaviour here.
<<<

Even at it's worst, I don't remember the bbc Eds taking two completely separate threads and judging them against each other. Was Taff even onsite when the arsemuff thread happened? If the arsemuff thread was such a bit issue for the reputation of the site, that the word Dick is no longer allowed in thread titles, then two things are being conflated, or it's a policy change.

If the arsemuff thread changed policy, then at least have the decency to notify the community. As it is it looks like we're making it up as we go along, and the we there isn't inclusive.


>>
Kea, I can assure you that this is all being discussed very seriously by the senior volunteers.
<<

Yes, that's what I'm afraid of. Invisible conversations about things fundamental to the community fly in the face of all the work in Magrathea and elsewhere that attempted to nut out these issues before we moved.


can the editors provide a title?

Post 32

kea ~ Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the western spiral arm of the Galaxy lies a small, unregarded but very well read blue and white website

Pastey, did you really mean to say that if the rest of us aren't working hard enough, we have no right to critique what is happening with this community run site, and we can spiss off?

I've done my hard graft for this site, far more than what I've done for the gurus. I don't expect that to be visible or even acknowledged, but I also don't expect to have my work belittled by one of the senior volunteers.

btw, in my post I was talking about the CEs not the mods. I thought that was obvious from the context, because it was the CE's decision.


can the editors provide a title?

Post 33

I'm not really here

I much prefer the BBC's original moderation, edit with [somethiing done by moderators], star out, or completely remove.

I complained about a message posted to an entry of mine and it was 'edited'. That horrified me - I really don't think Eds should be CHANGING things in people's posts. It's not acceptable.

If a word such as 'dick' is still in the filter and causing work for the mods then that's ridiculous - just take it out! Yes, meanings have changed now, but I think the Community have enough sense to alert to the 'bad' meaning.


can the editors provide a title?

Post 34

kea ~ Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the western spiral arm of the Galaxy lies a small, unregarded but very well read blue and white website

>>
These conversations should not be in Ask, they should either be in Feedback if they're after feedback, or they should be as direct emails to the area of the volunteers that are involved.
<<

We have *always* had these conversations in Ask, or at least the 8 or so years I've been here.

Ask is where we all go when we want to talk with the community. Which is what we're doing now.


can the editors provide a title?

Post 35

kea ~ Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the western spiral arm of the Galaxy lies a small, unregarded but very well read blue and white website

Mina, I would be horrified too. Were words removed, or actually changed?


can the editors provide a title?

Post 36

I'm not really here

It was a post copied from another website. It came back from the Mods in quotes and a reference to the website it came from. I stopped making copies of posts before I clicked the sent button, but think I'll have to go back to it, so I don't have the full details here, but I don't think it was changed other than the quotes and the additions. I'd still be just as angry if someone ADDED to my post as I would be if they took something away. "I did use the complaints button, but emailling here just in case. This post is mostly copied from http://www.thehedgehog.co.uk/diet.htm" It was then edited... my response: does this mean now that people can post 6 sentances, 5 of which are directly from another site and that's okay as a contribution to h2g2, which is supposed to encourage original writing? I'm not happy with that on my entry, which is why I complained, and just to confirm something else, this 'editing' of postings, is that something that's going to continue on h2g2 in this way? Who will have permission to edit? Thanks, Mina Then the 'offical answer': Apologies for not responding sooner about this, it has taken us a while to be able to discuss this fully. We put the post in quotes as a temporary measure while we were discussing this. It has now been removed completely as we agree that a post that is mostly just copy-paste from another website isn't acceptable. Now that we have a protocol in place this process will happen much faster in the future. Regards, The h2g2 Moderators Personally I don't see why a post that breaks the law needs 'discussing'. Breach of copyright is against the law. If it does need discussing, can't posts be 'referred' anymore to keep them hidden while that happens?


can the editors provide a title?

Post 37

HonestIago

I think we need to be careful lest we disappear up our collective backsides over stuff like this. Taff's title was harmless, but designed to get him attention, the Mods had a reasonable issue with it and changed, promptly explaining what they'd done and why.

It's not a major issue.


can the editors provide a title?

Post 38

kea ~ Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the western spiral arm of the Galaxy lies a small, unregarded but very well read blue and white website

I think it's hard for some people to understand just how bad it is to change people's words without their permission. Even if it's just adding quotation marks and a URL. Did the CEs put an explanation of the change in the post that was changed?


can the editors provide a title?

Post 39

HonestIago

It's part of the T&C's that we all signed up to: we give hootoo the right to use and edit our posts in a way they see fit without seeking further permission.

This is Taff seeking attention and, when he gets it, making a huge issue out of it. It isn't some broader issue, it's not like the mods are going to be doing this on a regular basis.


can the editors provide a title?

Post 40

shagbark

It appears that the title in the forum does not have to match the one on the FP. Why not give it a less controversial one on the FP and keep the original in the forum?


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