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

So, let's see if this one is going to vanish, too:

A75716382

It's still there - for now

The one in the Post is back now, too.

Fingers crossed that they've been sorted

This is how it goes: we publish them, then we see we missed a small things. We go back to edit - the article vanishes.

We then go back and edit some more, just so it will be seen by a moderator (cause otherwise it will take them weeks to look at the entry). It then doesn't take too long and the article is back.

How very annoying

It is, indeed.

I see Icy must have changed his aftershave, again. He's back on the <./>FrontPage/.>

Noodles!

<./>FrontPage</.>

Yes, I've been and done my bows.

I've noticed

Icy said others would have been more deserving, so I told him that the eds probably were afraid they'd open a if they chose an entry of one of the friends he mentioned. After all, it's not very long ago that somebody was very nasty about something nice the eds did.

I think they made the perfect choice. A bit of fun, with a serious side to it

OOoh!.. I've just noticed that 'laces' has got the 10001 Entry!

So I've seen. Was it one you took over from Pinniped?

Yes. It was too good to let him drop it altogether

Yes, I'm sure it was.

Bel, I don't think your description of what happens is quite right.

You edit the article. There is a word in it that is on the "potential problem" list. The article is immediately put onto a moderator's queue for screening, but the entry is not hidden and no notification is sent.

For most articles that's as far as it goes. The moderator looks at it, realises it is ok and it is cleared. You'll never have been aware it was being screened.

But if you make a change to the article while it is on the queue, then it is moved to a higher risk category, and it is hidden until the moderator looks at it.

If this happens with a particular article that you edit regularly, you can contact the eds and they will let you know privately what the word is that is causing the problem. Sometimes the words can be quite innocent and you don't even know they have a secondary offensive meaning.

Whatever it is, Gnomon, it is incredibly annoying. Articles which were perfectly fine only a few months or so ago suddenly contain words which have recently been added to the filter. Why the secrecy about which words are on it? It would make our lives easier to have a regularly updated list. If it was just about things I wrote, it would be easy: I'd just stop writing at all. As it is, it is usually Post authors' articles which are hit, and that's what annoys me most. A lot of people put a lot of time and effort into publishing them, only for the articles to be hidden.

I agree that this business is irritating, and makes us look unprofessional. We have no problem with the filter per se - we have a problem with the apparently random appearance of technical problems related to the filter.

What I think we need is a page with a macro. We could copy the macro and use it in Word, thus doing our own pre-filtering.

If you're going to have a counterintuitive filter, this is the best way. (Bel couldn't guess about the penguins, and some of this stuff is too arcane even for me. I'd need Prof Animal Chaos at my elbow to point out the funny stuff...)

Penguins are not to be mentioned? You must be joking.

What about Semprini?