What is appropriate content for DonationCoder?

[CodeTRUCKER]

Herein lies the problem, what I feel as pain you find humorous.  This will never be resolved.  What can be resolved is if people become more important than rights, but it appears my attempts at planting are not finding fertile soil.

-CodeTRUCKER (January 03, 2008, 10:28 PM)

CodeTRUCKER, you voiced a concern and technical solutions have been proposed. True, technology will never be fully effective, or at least not effective and efficient at the same time, as you yourself realized when it became too hard to keep maintaining your Proxomitron filters. But this is what can be done.

What also can be done is request that posters refrain from racy topics, which is happening all the time at DC - not the requesting, mind you, but the refraining! As others have noted, DC is one of the most "clean", most corteous discussion forums of its size and popularity.

What else would you like to happen, please?

I never advocate for the minority to submit to the wishes of the majority (but this itself is a highly political topic for an entirely different forum!) However, and please set me right if I misunderstand your intentions, you seem to be asking everyone to apply the lowest common denominator when deciding about what might possibly be offensive. Because it's not only about swearwords, is it? It's also about content that may well be relevant to the site. The YouPorn post might well have been an article in an IT magazine, after all. It's a "people meet technology" issue - part computing, part sociology. It seems to me you are asking adults to refrain from discussing certain relevant topics. So what would you like to be done?

-tranglos (January 03, 2008, 11:18 PM)

To be honest with you, I don't have a clue.  I have submitted my case and have received the response.  As far as I can tell its over.  Please don't confuse capitulation with defeat.  I don't feel defeated.  Time for the next step.

[Darwin]

...I think that if app103's HTML tag was tied to tranglos's (click to view) button, with a strong public recommendation that anything not qualifying as "Polite Conversation" be labeled as such ... That the folks here could easily Self Police their way to a reasonable resolution.

Mods could also be allowed to insert the tag for any borderline stuff without having to resort to any feather ruffleing draconian post deletion.

-Stoic Joker (January 03, 2008, 11:19 PM)

This is what I was trying (but failing) to say above, and you've done it much more succinctly as well  

[CodeTRUCKER]

Now c'mon... isn't this doing the same thing you just criticized me for above?

-CodeTRUCKER (January 03, 2008, 10:44 PM)

I never said you were wrong in the views you had on profanity and such.

-Veign (January 03, 2008, 10:52 PM)

Oops!, no, I wasn't talking about that. I was referring to framing your comment as an me -vs- everyone else grouping right after you had adressed me for doing the same thing.  Maybe I read it wrong? 

[CodeTRUCKER]

...I think that if app103's HTML tag was tied to tranglos's (click to view) button, with a strong public recommendation that anything not qualifying as "Polite Conversation" be labeled as such ... That the folks here could easily Self Police their way to a reasonable resolution.

Mods could also be allowed to insert the tag for any borderline stuff without having to resort to any feather ruffleing draconian post deletion.

-Stoic Joker (January 03, 2008, 11:19 PM)

This is what I was trying (but failing) to say above, and you've done it much more succinctly as well 

-Darwin (January 03, 2008, 11:35 PM)

Somehow I missed the original post, but I'll second this motion.

[mitzevo]

Idk really what to say with out acting like a semi-prick but..

DC is really a great community, if you decide to think about the small dis-tasteful things over the really great useful stuff (which is more than 97%), then that's your decision. Considering that thousands of other forums have useless crap and have thousands of idiots, DC is a gem in the rough.. Like you said, DC has become your home (or was), but you can't have every thing you want.. it's not fair.. other people like to talk about other things.. if you don't like what other people are discussing, don't read or even think about it.. sure, if it's really bad, then cut it out and it's more than fair to point it out that it's inappropriate.. but what you are talking about is just general discussions and chit-chat.

I mean if you find stuff on DC that is offensive to you (rarely the case), then there is no forum for you my friend, DC is one of the cleanest and most professional forums available, all for free... Nobodies perfect, why should DC be an exception? I'm sure with out some of the stuff you are talking about, DC would be dull and boring.. it's good to have a laugh here and there, and get along together.

[Armando]

Considering that thousands of other forums have useless crap and have thousands of idiots, DC is a gem in the rough..

-mitzevo (January 04, 2008, 12:21 AM)

 

about content tagging, etc. Why not if it's not too obtrusive. (BUT, ahem, let’s not forget that they might have the reverse effect than what one expects — anything that's perceived as subversive provokes curiosity.)

I think I understand your feelings and opinion, CodeTRUCKER.

If DC was to evolve in a direction that didn't correspond to my expectations anymore, I'd just stop posting (and reading posts). Unfortunately this forum seems to be populated with so many  mature, sound and knowledgeable people (it's its greatest asset)… I don’t see myself “leaving” because of a lack of intelligence and respect.

The very positive influence of  a quite a few people (like mouser, especially, but also of all the other great posters like CarolHaynes, lanux128, app103, nudone, Darwin, jgpaiva, f0dder, Tomos, nontroppo, etc. etc. -- there are so many of them) really gives the tone. They all constitute the foundation and the embodiment of DC’s ethics. Much better than enforced censorship if you ask me…

We should still be able to rely on trust and basic (tacit)  moral guidelines, and leave the forum as it is (unless, the tagging idea can be nicely and transparently integrated)… while remaining vigilant. Of course, we should try avoiding subject matters that could excessively offend, and try to avoid to participate in these threads… if we do think they’re offending (or too touchy). It’s a personal matter of knowing-feeling when something can get out of control, uselessly offend and hurt.

All that said, let’s not forget that context is a big part of how to interpret stuff. In the context of DC, the "youporn" link for instance is not just a link to porn. It's information, it's the manifestation of healthy curiosity and humor… always with a computer twist to it. I’m happy that we can at least try to post about anything (even remotely…) computer related…

DCs current “gravitational” force will be the best “judge” of a thread/post’s validity-legitimacy-sincerity… or even functional fit for that matter! And members’ intelligence will usually bring an interesting twist to it. Never underestimate what seems stupid or vulgar : you never know what can come out of a weird or "offending" thread!

“censorship” doesn’t help education or growth. It just hides the object of our fear or desire and we never get the chance learn how to deal with it properly. Of course, tagging for children is another story…

I hope I haven’t been too incoherent or out of place… It’s too late for real good thinking. Good night everybody!

[Carol Haynes]

I haven't read the whole thread yet (gosh that was a quick set of responses) just the first couple of pages! Thanks everyone for discussing this in such an open and light hearted way (at least so far as I have read).

The NSFW tag discussion could be extended to a POC (potentially offensive content) tag too. It would then mean that if age is specified during sign up that POC marked content could be excluded from content viewable until the user reaches a suitable age (16, 18, 21 ... 85) - there could also be POC option in the user profile to exclude POC marked content if users don't want to be faced with such material.

Personally I don't want to see heavy censorship (and as a moderator I would resign rather than try to enforce contentious censorship rules) but as a rule I think it is good for everyone to be sensitive to the sensibilities of users that have different opinions, outlooks and cultural leanings as well as a variety of first languages. This applies across the board and is just the basis of good manners.

I have to hold my hands up and admit that I too have occasionally posted messages that others may be offended or irritated by (especially when I can't resist arguing) ! I'll try to be good in future

[housetier]

I am willing to accept tags if it can be made so I will not see them, will not hindered by them. If that means all my posts will be auto-tagged nsfw, I am willing to accept that as well.

It is I who decides what to look at, it is I who decides what I like!

If you start tagging and categorizing, I do not want to see a part of it. I will respect others in that they might decide to ignore all my posts, because I think we are all sensible people and can decide for ourselves. I know I want to decide for myself.

Respect can not be asked for, it must be given. And another proverb: We cannot please everybody. That said, I respect Trucker for expressing his views; but I want respect too: for my opposing views.

I do not like this thread though...

[Carol Haynes]

Follow up to my previous comment ...

Actually I have gone off tagging as I think it is impractical (if you mean a sort of BBC tag extension).

How about a very simple system that when you post you simply check a "may offend/NSFW' box. User profiles could have an option to exclude such posts from sight. That way no one would be excluded from seeing anything but if you are sensitive to such things you can opt to avoid seeing it at all.

If that could be implemented through a cookie setting even better because then you could have NSFW messages invisible at work but visible at home.

[jgpaiva]

I believe mouser is right, we should now move this discussion in the tagging direction and on how to implement it, to get the max number of opinions on "how to do it" (and on "if to do it").

In my opinion, it should be kind of like gmail's labels, and one would be able to say "i don't want to see the threads with the following tags:" or something like that.

Notice that this would be a per-thread kind of tagging and not a per-post tagging, thus if someone were to say something "offensive" on a "clean" thread, it wouldn't be filtered. There, i think the only solution is self-moderation, where the user who posted should enclose the phrase/paragraph in spoiler tags, or use the censored smile, like renegade mentioned. I don't think this last part is an issue, since that has mostly happened until now and will probably continue to happen.
Like Carol, i will not enforce heavy moderation (notice that from that, i understand "delete/modify offensive posts to remove certain words" etc.), but i'd be up to pm people to ask them to enclose the stronger sentences in spoiler tags or something like that (notice that pm'ing is something anyone can do, not only a mod).

I think Carol's idea about having the threads tagged as POC not being visible for someone under 6/18/21/whatever also makes much sense.

Another idea would be to add the "censored" smilie to the "more" collection of smilies, so that it's easily accessible

[f0dder]

I don't want to see a lot of topics with a prepended NSFW or whatever tag; it's too visually noisy. Tagging should be a set of "properties" a thread (or perhaps even individual posts?) can be assigned, and they shouldn't show up in the general forum overview (although there should be a "tags" button to list them).

People should then be able to set "don't show topics including these tags" in their forum preferences, but none of this should be default. And please, nothing silly involving forum member age, people can sign up with fake age, and besides what one person finds offensive/inappropriate isn't to another.

Tagging system could also be used for the search engine, and perhaps a different "show new posts" link that orders by weighted "relevance" and not just post time etc... but for that to be effective, all old threads would have to be indexed and tagged >_<.

[housetier]

Naturally some will want to be on the safe side and just tag all their posts as potentially offensive. ...but maybe not on dc.com; I have seen this at other places though: once such a system is established, people rebel and start gaming the system.

I say: go ahead and try but don't expect it to work. There will be collateral damage (such a great term) one way or the other: either we have users who are offened by posts and stop participating, or we have users who feel restricted and stop participating. I have decided for myself to watch and see where this is going, but I hope a better solution than those 2 alternatives will be found!

And pausing to think a little because the boss was so happy about his geek clock in the vista sidebar, it might be good to not decide too quickly. We should ask for more input from people who haven't spoken up yet. This is not a veteran's meeting, this is donationcoder where everyone participates.

Now I just read jgpaiva's reply: Does it mean it's been decided to implement a tagging system of sorts?

[jgpaiva]

I don't want to see a lot of topics with a prepended NSFW or whatever tag; it's too visually noisy.

-f0dder (January 04, 2008, 06:37 AM)

I also agree with not showing the tags in the general forum, maybe only in the top post itself, on the bottom like the "edited by" text, with links on the tags, which would allow you to quickly find related threads.

Tagging system could also be used for the search engine, and perhaps a different "show new posts" link that orders by weighted "relevance" and not just post time etc... but for that to be effective, all old threads would have to be indexed and tagged >_<.

-f0dder (January 04, 2008, 06:37 AM)

It'd definitelly be useful for the search, but i don't think you're right in terms of the old threads needing to be tagged. It's irreal to think it is possible to tag 11,068 threads. Thus, we have to work with what we have.
I'd say that given the growth of DC, in less than one year, we'll have at least double of those threads, and in 2, the untagged threads would represent like 1/4th of the threads.
Also, another important point is that this forum is all about technology, and in technology, things change fast, thus, older threads aren't as important.
Oh, and anderson made a great job with the search, it works perfectly without tags, thus, we'd still be able to find anything older

house: nope, nothing is decided, i was expressing my idea of how it could work, to see if it was approved and to invite others to present their ideas

[tinyvillager]

 In respect to everyone's opinion my opinion is more important than everyone else's and i say don't change a thing.
This thread was good for expressing your opinion.If you don't like someone's views simply talk behind their back,it's how
society has gotten along for centuries.My advice to all is to watch Godfather one and two,don't watch three it will only
make one dumber.

[f0dder]

Now I just read jgpaiva's reply: Does it mean it's been decided to implement a tagging system of sorts?

-housetier (January 04, 2008, 06:42 AM)

Not decided I think, but instead of turning the thread into a "I feel this way" "but I feel this way" etc., we could discuss how a tagging system could be implemented, how to integrate it, pros/cons, etc.

[Lashiec]

We should also consider where do we draw the line.

I would like to implement the tagging system, either at database level, not showing for the rest of the people, either with a system similar like the one suggested by app (of course, that would mean CodeTRUCKER would have to use a Firefox extension, don't know if he uses Firefox or not). You want to view NSFW posts? Cool, uncheck the option "Do not show NSFW posts" in the profile. You don't want to view them? Check it.

Should it be enforced by default? No, I don't think so, the option is there, so it's up to a member the task of finding it. Should it be reminded it's there? Absolutely not, mostly because it will give a bad impression of the forum ("Oh, my, they have a NSFW option, this must be a mean site, like that pr0n filled one").

[nosh]

Here's a con: Carol mentioned a "potentially offensive content" tag. I immediately went "wow! that's a great idea" but on second thought it would really suck for someone who's underage and not offended by some of the more risque stuff we see here to miss out on a complete thread coz somebody deemed it not fit for him/her. I know for a fact that nothing on this board would have offended me when I was 13. Come on people, DC is not exactly a sleazefest. If we could come to a solution that helps make DC a more comfortable place for codetrucker and others who are offended easier than some of us without eroding the experience for the vast majority of us, that'd of course be perfect.
If these tags are going to be restrictive in any way, shape or form and the forum experience is going to take a hit in any way I think we owe ourselves a proper vote at the very least to decide if anything should be done at all.

Don't mean to fuel the fire at all but just to clarify, when I earlier said the minority should learn to respect the majority, that came across as harsh, which it wasn't meant to be. I just wanted to imply the principle on which any democratic organization functions. I hope codetrucker hasn't taken my or any other poster's comments to heart, it's very obvious he's more passionate about this place than a lot of us and I certainly hope this discussion hasn't put him off in any way.

[CWuestefeld]

Setting aside all questions of morality, we can learn something from the field of signal processing. If you want to be 100% certain of identifying a signal in a noisy environment, you're also guaranteed to get false alarms. Conversely, if you want to completely avoid false alarms, then you're guaranteed to miss some legitimate signals. For example, a missile defense system, because it's critical not to overlook an attack, must expect false alarms.

Applying this rule here, that means that some content must necessarily be tagged NSFW when it didn't really need to be; alternately some things that should have been tagged were not.

I submit that the situation we're in right now demonstrates that we're in that latter state: some small number of things that might be offensive are not tagged.

Further, I submit that the status quo is precisely the correct balance. We are not dealing with a missile defense system here, the consequences of missing a genuine signal is, in the big picture, trivial. AFAIK, we've only got one complainant here.

If you can subscribe to any kind of utilitarian approach to philosophy, then surely the occasional indignation of one single person[1] is less of an evil than the combination of (a) every single user having to be constantly self-conscious about every possible sensibility; (b) potential good ideas left unaired; and (c) the community becoming (slightly) sanitized and displaying less character and personality.

I hate moral calculus, but in any culture of more than one person, it becomes inescapable at some point. I'm sorry to have to say that, CodeTRUCKER; you seem like a nice guy. And if the consequences were more serious than your sensibilities, the bottom line would certainly come out differently.

[1] Confession to an oversimplification: even if there's only CodeTRUCKER complaining, there may well be others silently agreeing. But I don't think that everyone deserves equal status; if they're not contributing to the community discussion, then it's not worth worrying about.

Call me "Mr. Callous"

[a_lunatic]

I haven't read all posts but I don't like the tag thingy too but I think a New Board or Child Board that you would need to subscribe to to see it would be better option with a disclaimer about what is in it or something a long those lines.

[Ralf Maximus]

Re: Tagging

For it to work in this kind of community, it must be transparent.  The minute somebody suspects they're being labelled "NSFW" or "Potentially Offensive" behind their back trust is broken and cannot be regained.  Thus, if tags exist they should be visible.  Or, at least, user-configurable to BE visible if desired.  Those that think they're noisy can turn displayed tags off.

The tagging system itself should be flexible, with more than just "NSFW".  I would like to see a simple text-entry box below the subject line for a new post.  The author may type any number of space-delimited keywords into this tag-box, and upon posting, the forum software parses the list and stores the tags in a table (along with pointers to the message, author, and date).  ALSO, the processed tags are stored in the message header itself, so that the regular search function can find tags.

The tag table would be very useful.  Fun things like tag clouds could be generated, or statistics about who posts the most hardware-related stuff, or lolcats, or whatever.

Now, this may be more controversial, but hear me out...

I think each reply should also have the tag-box too.  That way a user can make a rude remark or post a naughty link or whatever and tag the reply so it doesn't corrupt an otherwise clean thread.  Better yet, if the topic veers madly off course (that never happens around here) one could tag a reply with new keywords so relevance is maintained.

It would be voluntary, unobtrusive, and take no additional steps or keystrokes than today if somebody thinks tags are dumb.  If you DO want to tag something, it's only a few additional keystrokes.

I'm sure lots more could be done with tags, but that's the basics of what I imagined.

[Curt]

This is a terrifically good idea..  I've been wanting to beef up support for a tag-like system on DC and we could use the same system to allow posts to be tagged as NSFW and then let users opt out of seeing such posts.

This discussion may actually end up getting people posting more NSFW material... LMAO!

-nosh (January 03, 2008, 06:18 PM)

I am not "LMAO", but I truly expect nosh's prediction to be accurate:
If you set up a special NSFW part of DC, we WILL get loads and loads of it.
So DON'T!!

[f0dder]

I haven't read all posts but I don't like the tag thingy too but I think a New Board or Child Board that you would need to subscribe to to see it would be better option with a disclaimer about what is in it or something a long those lines.

-a_lunatic (January 04, 2008, 07:47 AM)

Bad idea, it would fragment the forum.

I also think per-reply tagging can get way out of hand, better to try and stay on topic for threads, and apply the usual moderator tools (splitting, joining, merging) when things go too off-topic.

[Lashiec]

Or use the method we used during all this time: the spoiler tag. Which, as I said earlier, has been used in all cases of rude remarks or posts. Unless we're going to consider the most minor expletive as rude...

[Curt]

Or use the method we used during all this time: the spoiler tag.

-Lashiec (January 04, 2008, 08:25 AM)

- but make it easier to understand how to use it. It took me a year! 

[Darwin]

Quick comment - I *think* that tagging should adhere to the "keep it simple, stupid" axiom and should be invisible. I envision this working like this:

I make a post and eff and blind my way through it because I'm in a grumpy mood (could happen  ). Even from the depths of grumpdom I *know* that the post is off-colour so before I hit "post" I click on a radio button that will invisibliy tag my message as NSFW (or whatever we decide upon - maybe we could have three - "foul language", "inappropriate for minors", "graphic content", whatever) and my post goes up. Anyone who has NOT elected to filter posts using the tags we set up continues to enjoy DC as it's always been. Others who don't want to see foul language have my post filtered out... It relies heavily on each poster monitoring and tagging their own posts. Obviously an issue that will arise is that there will be those who choose not to bother tagging their posts - I think we'll just have to live with that.

Just my two-bits...