AdultContentPolicyConsensusPoll-2007.05.10

Consensus Poll Details

This section describes what it means to be done with the AdultContentPolicy, and tracks our progress.

We're Done When ...

We are definitely done with this version of the AboutUs AdultContentPolicy if we can reach and maintain the levels of consensus described in this section.

GoThresholds

  • We need at least 11 ActiveMembers who are not AboutUsStaff to participate. We need at least 91% of those who do participate to be at YES on this document to "go".
  • We need at least 10 ActiveMembers who are AboutUsStaff are to participate. We need at least 90% of those who do participate to be at YES on this document to "go".

DoneTimer

  • This document stays above the GoThresholds and remains unchanged for at least 48 hours. Each time the document changes the DoneTimer resets to zero.

How to participate

If you don't feel strongly about this decision, please feel warmly welcomed to work on other things. If you are feeling ProcessFatigue please feel warmly welcomed to take a break. Before leaving, please consider leaving either a yes or not yet status with an explantory comment.

Taking a break while leaving a yes status means:

"Given the GoThresholds for this poll and the people who are participating it feels extremely unlikely that this poll could succeed without creating a high quality, fair and equitable policy. I trust you all to watch out for my interests and come to a good decision. If the GoThresholds were lower, or if Suzy Trustworthy wasn't actively participating I might feel otherwise. I know that Suzy Trustworthy will ping me if I need to become involved again. So, have at it friends and know that I support your effort in spirit even if I can't actively participate right now."

Taking a break while leaving a not yet status means:

"Given the GoThresholds for this poll and the people who are participating it feels like this poll might pass even if the plan isn't high quality, fair, and equitable. If the GoThresholds were higher, or if Suzy Trustworthy was actively participating I might feel otherwise. But since the thresholds are so low and no one I know from my own personal experience to be trustworthy is involved, I'm going to ensure that the final results are better by leaving my vote a not yet. The plan can still succeed, it will just require higher levels of support to counteract my not yet."

If you want to ensure that you are not approached to weigh in on this decsion, please include your name with a "yes" to indicate that you trust the group and the poll and leave a comment that says you'd rather not be bothered again.

If you leave with a "not yet", that means you will most likely be approached again to weigh in. It is possible that even if you leave at "not yet" the thresholds could override your dissent.

If the policy as currently articulated doesn't speak to you, please directly edit the policy. No need to explain your every edit, just tweak the policy until it works for you. (EfficientlyExpressedSuggestions)

Status: YES ... done timer expires 2007-05-09 18:22:32 PST

NOTE: the timer resets every time someone edits the policy page

Participants

ActiveMember (non-staff)

  1. Dedanann NotYet I think that the concept is good and want to endorse with a yes, however, I am concerned about the current definition of violence as being adult oriented as the current definition could include martial arts or other aggressive sports and activities which I do not view as adult themed. I feel that the inclusion of blood sports or extreme violence is more of what is probably being targeted, but this is not what the current definition provides for.
  1. DrewMyers YES I agree with the direction that the planning is headed. My concerns about a definition about what is "adult" remain, but I trust the judgment of the consensus of those involved to clarify a community standard. However, the final implementation should also address Jason's concerns about site performance issues.
  2. Nguyen155 YES I'll try my best.AboutUs must be the best.it'll make people fell safe and clear on The internet.
  3. Katonal YES It is a very good idea.
  4. Nathan YES Great idea, I think this is the only safe way to go.
  5. Demarest YES With caveats. I have no problem with adult content as long as it is flagged as such and no kiddie stuff. I am absolutely against that. Consenting adults? Whatever - as long as it is flagged. EDIT: I have been asked to clarify my caveats. Adult content is fine with me as long as it does not involve children. This would be illegal porn and I don't want to see anything that exploits kids. That said, as long as the adult content is flagged as such, I have no problem with adult content.
  6. Abu Ari YES But beware of text robots. I note that the spam filter already in place did block the creation of Whip.no. Might be the BDSM connotations of the domain name, or that they have a dirty word in their address. Anyway, the important thing is that I was able to override the filter. (Hope people agree with that decision.) I feel that walling images is more important than walling words, this limits the value of robots.
  7. MartinPfahler YES So long as flagged. I trust those people on the staff that I know, to make a decision that I will view as a good one
  8. Urielpunk YES When we have reached our participation goals, I am a yes
  9. Redlake6 YES This is the best way to go
  10. Tutormentor YES I encourage you to move quickly on this
  11. Blu YES You have my full support :)
  12. John Cross YES
  13. Jonnyx YES It seems ok.

AboutUsStaff

  1. Jason Parmer NotYet Having put a bit of thought into it, I am now of the opinion that our site will be better if we just do away with adult content period. The traffic isn't worth it, and neither is it worth it to spend all the effort gardening a pro-spam community.
  1. ScottKeeler YES ...
  2. KristinaWeis YES I'm still a bit confused. What does "Our website (www.aboutus.org) will not itself contain AdultContent" mean? And will or won't there be external links/thumbnails on pages deemed as adult content? I do like that it won't show up in RC or RandomPage because the random user wouldn't even know that we housed adult sites. I think I'm on board now...
  3. Brandon CS Sanders YES I feel really good about the new policy. I'd still rather get rid of it completely because I think it will siphon energy from promoting our core mission (LightningRod, pro-spam community, etc) but I can understand why some folks feel passionate about keeping it (completeness, include everyone, free speech, etc). As we learn more we may eventually decide to change it, but for now this feels like the right tradeoff to make.
  4. TakKendrick YES John Stanton and I just made some minor addendums based on my previous concerns and I'm feeling pretty good about where we're at now.
  5. TedErnst YES I'm leaving town for a week, and I trust those people participating to adopt a good policy. It is VERY important to me that we all know what we're agreeing to, so clarity is very importnat to me. TedErnst 12:32, 29 April 2007 (PDT)
  6. Mohsen YES The idea seems ok as long as the content has warning before user opens the site and we are able to control and not mix up the adultcontent web addresses with other websites.
  7. Stephen Judkins YES The ideas here sound great, getting Mediawiki hacked up to work right may be difficult. Would be great to wait for Topsoil but I know that's unrealistic.
  8. RayKing YES This is great progress and while there are still some open items I am in good shape at this time
  9. Isabel YES In total agreement with current plan although details need to be ironed out.
  10. MarkDilley YES When we have reached our participation goals, I am a yes
  11. John Stanton YES Looking good John Stanton 10:59, 27 April 2007 (PDT)
  12. Kasey YES I think this looks good; also happy about the participation numbers an encouraging surprise.
  13. Chris YES walled garden with community flagging is the only way to do this, in my estimation. Users should be able to add filtering preferences so they don't need to repeatedly run into splash pages.
  14. Vinh Nguyen YES I feel very good about the current policy and the direction it's heading. Adding to the discussion below concerning use of the [MPAA rating system] and the guidelines for Adult Content.
  15. Julia YES Not sure whose responsibility it is to notify the community when the done timer starts... I guess we'll see what happens.
  16. Asad Butt YES The current policy seems to me a balanced one (flagged pages, no related domains, RefersToAdultContent etc).
  17. Obed Suhail YES I think this policy is pretty decent; and broad enough to encompass a wide range of opinions.

Discussion

  • re: KristinaWeis's concerns: seems to me that the policy is not clear enough if you read the policy and still have these questions. I would encourage you to answer your own questions for yourself, the way you want them answered, and then edit the policy to reflect that new clarity. If that new clarity is not the same as what others are assuming we're all clear about, you've made a huge positive contribution! TedErnst
  • re: Now I'm wondering what happens when folks say "yes" to a document that changes? Julia, this is my first time doing this process and I think it is up to the more active people of the poll to seek out the folks that haven't edited in a while, to see if they are on board or not with the new version. Bueller? MarkDilley
    • Hi Julia, not sure if you were asking the questions Mark answered. He's right on, in my opinion. And, I thought you were asking about changing that take place at the last minute. Right now we're still below 3 of the 4 thresholds. When we go above all 4 thresholds, we start the DoneTimer. The DoneTimer runs for 48 hours and is reset every time the policy page is edited, which means that everyone is still invited to make the policy better, even when we're above thresholds, and everyone still has 48 hours to review the policy every time it changes. And, I totally agree with Mark that when the DoneTimer starts, it's really important that everyone is notified so they have a chance to review the policy at least one more time. TedErnst
  • Where do you plan to place the warning page? Let us say there is adult content at adult.com. Do you warn me before opening aboutus.org/Adult.com, or before navigating from aboutus.org/Adult.com on to Adult.com ? If you censor images from the screen shot, it should always be possible to write a non-adult description at aboutus.org/Adult.com? As long as the adult page in question seems legal, I would prefer the warning to appear between the aboutus page and the adult page. Abu Ari 03:31, 30 April 2007 (PDT)
  • Maybe I'm missing something, but if the adult flagged pages are not going to appear in RecentChanges, how are we going to patrol edits? Drew
    • We're going to have to have a way to patrol the edits, but (I think) the idea is that soon there will be better ways to patrol edits than using RC. TakKendrick
    • There could be a whole separate adult RC, adult categories, etc, that's only available behind the wall. TedErnst
  • The interpretation currently mentions a PG rating. I think that makes a lot of sense, to keep the general site viewable by everyone, even children under 13. My concern is that 14 year-olds are not adults. We don't want the in the adult section, so that leaves all PG-13 content completely inaccessible for them. TedErnst
    • Except our own Terms and Conditions very specifically say that anyone under the age of 18 does not have a license to use our site without written parental permission. While I'm not advocating for "R" rated stuff on our site, I feel that PG-13 is a better qualification and allows for more thorough information and descriptions than a "PG" rating. (This helps to cover Dedanann's concerns about martial arts forms and other aggressive sports/activities not being covered under the "PG" rating.) I am of the opinion that rather than trying to present a site that's "ok" for kids under 13, we should probably encourage them to come back when they are older. This might not be a popular opinion, but I think that will always be content/products listed in the main part of the website that isn't adult bu probably shouldn't be viewed by kids. In fact, this was our policy [1] three weeks ago and I'm not entirely sure why it changed, since it was originally dictated by the lawyer-types. -- TakKendrick
    • I agree with Tak that the rating should at least be a PG-13; too much content can be limited by a PG rating. But I also think we need to be careful in using MPAA ratings to grade AboutUs content. For now, in creating a policy on how to handle adult content, the use of MPAA makes interpretation easier as most users understand the differentiations between G, PG, R, etc. However, as we continue to define what it is that RefersToAdultContent I think we'll need to create or borrow from another vocabulary. I haven't done too much research into other systems, but from just quick search I came across the Internet Content Ratings Assoc. (ICRA) whose vocabulary might be a good place to start. Again, I think MPAA ratings are too muddy and inconsistent and won't translate well to the type of content we maintain. Oh, and MPAA also owns trademarks on the ratings names... Vinh Nguyen