[videoblogging] Re: Porn --and possible solutions
--- In videoblogging@yahoogroups.com, Frank Carver [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Sunday, December 4, 2005, 2:47:21 PM, Nerissa (TheVideoQueen) wrote: Why the LET PEOPLE PICK A CATEGORY argument will fail: Not everyone will tag their videos correctly ... And what about the ambiguous videos? ... Definately. POSSIBLE SOLUTION #1: Let your community regulate itself and ban members for misbehaving. Use the Craigslist.org model. Allow your visitors to flag the posts. This solution will work, but only in the way that it will POSSIBLE SOLUTION #2: Restrict adult category to a separate category requiring different service agreements and viewership agreements. What worries me about both these approaches is that (despite your mention of ambiguous videos above) they both assume that (a) the only thing people are concerned with is porn, I don't see that assumption. This is to deal with an issue that has come up recently in several places related to videoblogs. Other issues can be dealt with seperately. Because one issue like porn or violence, etc. is dealt with does not exclude dealing with other issues seperately. and (b) that somehow there is an objective definition of what porn is. A determination does not have to be 100% correct to be useful. 99% or even as low as 90% determination can often be more useful than no determination. If the FDA determines that a drug that kills 3% of it's users should be banned even though it's useful for 97% of the others, it can still be a valid determination. Neither of these assumptions really hold up in the wider context of a global internet and varying world cultures. Should cannabilism films be allowed because some cultures had or have that practice? I do think that predetermining a video as adult by the hosting owner or a proxy is a good method as long as appeal is allowed. If people are looking to put up porn, there are locations that specificaly host them. -- Enric http://www.cirne.com Determine the Media Not that you are the only one to fall foul of this misunderstanding - the much-lauded Yahoo mediaRSS specification embodies the same naive assumptions. May I propose a POSSIBLE SOLUTION #3: STEP 1: informative (rather than evaluative) tagging. Tagging is growing in popularity enormously - everywhere I look on the web these days I tagging systems. This is enormously useful and valuable. However, there is an (IMHO) unfortunatel trend toward evaluative rather than informative tagging. Evaluative tagging is the kind used by the watchthis tag on deli.icio.us, for example. I subscribe to this tag feed, and have seen plenty of things on it that I would not have tagged in that way. Informative tagging on the other hand is the kind that helps a potential audience understand the nature of the content before being exposed to it. Tagging a piece with a location, author, participants, length, format, etc. are a common form of informative tagging, but so would contains tags such as nudity sexual violence Christian evangelism, capitalism, swearing, flag burning. The advantage of informative tagging is that it allows each viewer to construct his or her own filters appropriate to his or her own culture and views. This avoids the problem of global definitions and allows people to potentially reject anything they don't want to see, be it porn, advertisments, George Bush, or whatever. STEP 2: trust relationships in tagging. Current tagging systems are essentially anonymous and untrusted. The value they have is based generally on weight of numbers. The more people who tag a particular item with a particular tag, the more likely it is assumed to be valid. It might be better (particularly for items with relatively few tags or taggers) if somehow the potential viewer could assign trust levels to particular taggers. If (for example) I really trust Jay Dedman's taste, then I can give his tags more weight than someone I have never encountered. This becomes particularly important when tagging is used to filter out unwanted material. STEP 3: a quarantine process. The problem with tagging as a filter mechanism is that (at present) it's only realistically possible to filter for positives. I can already ask several services to give me a feed of all items tagged with java AND software AND development, for example, but asking for all items NOT tagged with Microsoft is crazy talk. The main problem is that there is always a delay between an item appearing and it accumulating enough tags to be useful. Current systems add new items to a feed or category only when an appropriate tag is applied, but an exclusive feed that worked in the same way would never add any items. A quarantine process would certainly slow down the immediacy of items appearing in categories and feeds, but could provide a better quality of exclusion. If newly released or
Re: [videoblogging] Re: Porn --and possible solutions
Sunday, December 4, 2005, 6:58:38 PM, Enric wrote: What worries me about both these approaches is that (despite your mention of ambiguous videos above) they both assume that (a) the only thing people are concerned with is porn, I don't see that assumption. This is to deal with an issue that has come up recently in several places related to videoblogs. Other issues can be dealt with seperately. Because one issue like porn or violence, etc. is dealt with does not exclude dealing with other issues seperately. My point is that trying to put a special solution in place just for whatever one group unilaterally defines as adult content is highly likely to be ignored or circumvented by others with different views. And it still doesn't address the big problem of how to avoid stumbling on stuff that you, personally, would prefer to avoid. On the other hand, if a solution is developed which allows: + anyone to produce whatever they think is acceptable, + anyone to host/publish whatever they think is acceptable, + anyone to tag items with as much detail as they wish, + anyone to configure their filters to see only the things they want to. We might actually be able to have both the freedom to produce what we want, and the freedom to consume what we want. there is an objective definition of what porn is. A determination does not have to be 100% correct to be useful. 99% or even as low as 90% determination can often be more useful than no determination. If the FDA determines that a drug that kills 3% of it's users should be banned even though it's useful for 97% of the others, it can still be a valid determination. But in the drug case, I'd rather know the details and make up my own mind. Wouldn't you? Neither of these assumptions really hold up in the wider context of a global internet and varying world cultures. Should cannabilism films be allowed because some cultures had or have that practice? What I'm trying to get at is something like the idea that beauty is in the eye of the beholder. I want every _receiver_ to be able to decide what is objectionable, and thus what is filtered out and what is left visible FOR THEM. Surely it's up to me if I consider cannibalism, or gun-toting policemen, or bare breasts, or whatever, objectionable and don't want to see them. Why should I be forced to abide by _your_ categorisations rather than my own? I do think that predetermining a video as adult by the hosting owner or a proxy is a good method as long as appeal is allowed. If people are looking to put up porn, there are locations that specificaly host them. I hope it's pretty obvious that no two people's classifications are going to be identical. Would you wish to broadly label a whole source as adult if their rules allow the occasional item in which is OK with them but objectionable to you? By all means have specialist source/host sites with their own rules. Likewise, by all means have specialist aggregators and directories with their own rules. But the point is that they will be _their_own_ rules. Which may not be your rules, or my rules. So we will still need a tagging/filtering system. So why not think about building a system from the start which addresses the whole problem? -- Frank Carver http://www.makevideo.org.uk Yahoo! Groups Sponsor ~-- Most low income households are not online. Help bridge the digital divide today! http://us.click.yahoo.com/I258zB/QnQLAA/TtwFAA/lBLqlB/TM ~- Yahoo! Groups Links * To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/videoblogging/ * To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] * Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
[videoblogging] Re: Porn --and possible solutions
--- In videoblogging@yahoogroups.com, Frank Carver [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Sunday, December 4, 2005, 6:58:38 PM, Enric wrote: What worries me about both these approaches is that (despite your mention of ambiguous videos above) they both assume that (a) the only thing people are concerned with is porn, I don't see that assumption. This is to deal with an issue that has come up recently in several places related to videoblogs. Other issues can be dealt with seperately. Because one issue like porn or violence, etc. is dealt with does not exclude dealing with other issues seperately. My point is that trying to put a special solution in place just for whatever one group unilaterally defines as adult content is highly likely to be ignored or circumvented by others with different views. And it still doesn't address the big problem of how to avoid stumbling on stuff that you, personally, would prefer to avoid. On the other hand, if a solution is developed which allows: + anyone to produce whatever they think is acceptable, + anyone to host/publish whatever they think is acceptable, + anyone to tag items with as much detail as they wish, + anyone to configure their filters to see only the things they want to. I think it's a good and useful capability for people to create filters for what they want to view. The problem is in determining where a media object belongs when and right after it is loaded on the host. It's contradictory that people should have to view and tag things as objectionable to not have to view them. Someone(s) needs to determine the correct placement of media and if they're mostly accurate that is useful. -- Enric We might actually be able to have both the freedom to produce what we want, and the freedom to consume what we want. there is an objective definition of what porn is. A determination does not have to be 100% correct to be useful. 99% or even as low as 90% determination can often be more useful than no determination. If the FDA determines that a drug that kills 3% of it's users should be banned even though it's useful for 97% of the others, it can still be a valid determination. But in the drug case, I'd rather know the details and make up my own mind. Wouldn't you? Neither of these assumptions really hold up in the wider context of a global internet and varying world cultures. Should cannabilism films be allowed because some cultures had or have that practice? What I'm trying to get at is something like the idea that beauty is in the eye of the beholder. I want every _receiver_ to be able to decide what is objectionable, and thus what is filtered out and what is left visible FOR THEM. Surely it's up to me if I consider cannibalism, or gun-toting policemen, or bare breasts, or whatever, objectionable and don't want to see them. Why should I be forced to abide by _your_ categorisations rather than my own? I do think that predetermining a video as adult by the hosting owner or a proxy is a good method as long as appeal is allowed. If people are looking to put up porn, there are locations that specificaly host them. I hope it's pretty obvious that no two people's classifications are going to be identical. Would you wish to broadly label a whole source as adult if their rules allow the occasional item in which is OK with them but objectionable to you? By all means have specialist source/host sites with their own rules. Likewise, by all means have specialist aggregators and directories with their own rules. But the point is that they will be _their_own_ rules. Which may not be your rules, or my rules. So we will still need a tagging/filtering system. So why not think about building a system from the start which addresses the whole problem? -- Frank Carver http://www.makevideo.org.uk Yahoo! Groups Sponsor ~-- Most low income households are not online. Help bridge the digital divide today! http://us.click.yahoo.com/I258zB/QnQLAA/TtwFAA/lBLqlB/TM ~- Yahoo! Groups Links * To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/videoblogging/ * To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] * Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
