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

In real life, I'm a person with hair like this, a body like this, and fashion sense which is, like, nonexistant. And all these things go together to make up /me/. Online, there's only one thing which makes up me: my words. Oh, and normally any pictures I use - so on h2g2 that'd be just my words. So if someone changes my words, which means the moderators, they change me. And hugely unsurprisingly, I don't like this, and want to fix it.

For example, if I see [copyright material removed by...] under my name, then that's essentially the moderators accusing me of being a copyright thief, which is like being a normal thief, but shows a lower level of intelligence and will be punished in a much worse section of Hell. Starred words imply that I was deliberately offensive. Other stuff just makes me look like I'm deliberately breaking the rules and being awkward.

Fortunately, there's a solution to this problem: the moderation helpdesk. If you've been mismoderated, you can post there, and the italics will sort it out. And so, caring about my words, I used it every time I was mismoderated, plus those times I thought I'd been mismoderated, but wasn't, because the rules are deliberately vague and unclear. And up till now, they've done just that. "Good", I thought, "the system works".

Or so I thought. Peta has just informed me (in not so many words) that the system only works if people don't use it, and she's rather annoyed by my continued use of it. Now, myself, I'd be inclined to blame this on the designer of the system, rather than someone who just uses it, but that's just me. While I'm being 'helpful', the obvious improvement to the system would be to allow users to use the yikes button to complain about their stuff which has been failed when it shouldn't have been, as well as to complain about others' stuff which hasn't been failed when it should have been.

So, I'm going to go on to doing what everyone else does: Edit...Update entries until they pass; posting lots of different URL indirections till one gets past the mods; and kvitching in the same place rather than taking it to where it supposedly ought to be taken, but it seems it shouldn't be taken after all.

I'll be making that "Unofficial House Rules" entry after all...