Just tag it. (was Re: [uf-discuss] "parental guidance"Microformat?)

[Tantek Ç elik]

On 12/23/05 7:20 PM, "Paul Bryson" <paul at msn.com> wrote:

> "Tantek Ç elik" wrote...
>> On 12/23/05 6:04 AM, "Frederic de Villamil" wrote:
>> 
>>> Hi list,
>>> I was lately thinking about a way to tell the most accurate way that a
>>> link points to a page with content not suitable for people under a
>>> certain age, such as porn, violence...
>> 
>> What subjects are suitable or not for people of what age differs greatly
>> across both different cultures in the same time (e.g. in the present), and
>> the same culture across different times.
> 
> It just occurred to me that a very level and relevant measure are the
> commonly used idioms "work safe" and "not work safe".

My statement above still applies and perhaps even more so.

What is regarded as "work safe" or not content greatly varies from say Saudi
Arabia, to the US, to Sweden.

Even in the US, it has both changed over time, and is quite different in
different locations, e.g. a beach lifeguard tower, a car repair shop, or an
accounting firm.

In addition, common practice on the web is to use the abbreviation NSFW in
text.  It's even used as a consistent tag across several tagging services:

http://technorati.com/tag/nsfw  (results themselves are likely NSFW!)

> I don't know if 
> "marking appropriate content" is for a microformat or not, but if it is I
> don't think you'll get simpler than that.

Actually, you can get simpler, in two ways:

1. Use zero additional microformats instead of creating a new one.

Again, xFolk and/or hReview can already serve the need of tagging things
with arbitrary terms.

2. Use just one tag instead of two.

In practice, few people mark things explicitly as "work safe".  Nearly all
such indication is "NSFW", the presumption being that lack of that tag means
it is work safe (though not necessarily so).  Thus feel free to use
xFolk/hReview to tag items as NSFW if that's your opinion of those items.

Thanks,

Tantek