[uf-discuss] rel="nsfw"

[Colin Barrett]

On Dec 29, 2006, at 11:04 PM, Ben Buchanan wrote:

>> practice, almost no one is publishing ratings with links, and many
>> people are publishing "NSFW" warnings.  So vague as it may be, it's
>> apparently communicating something useful on the live web today.
>
> I don't think it is actually as vague as people are suggesting, since
> I would look at it another way entirely.
>
> NSFW means nothing more or less than "the author of the post would
> consider the target content unsafe for work". It doesn't need to be a
> universal definition, which is unworkable anyway. It's something
> relative to the author, probably (but not necessarily) with some level
> of consideration of their imagined audience.
>
> To put it another way, it's an opinion; much the same as a review,
> vote or tag. We don't require all tag links to be tagged according to
> a universal definition of the tag in question; nor do we require all
> the world to agree with a review or a vote.
>
> So I'd happily support rel="nsfw". It would be as useful as the author
> adding the text "NSFW"; with the added benefit that the UA could be
> set to perform actions like prominently alert the user or even prevent
> them clicking that link.

I definitely agree with this, and other people who are echoing the  
"relative to the author" idea. The point of marking something NSFW on,  
say, IRC (something I often do) is to let people know that I could see  
how the content would be unsuitable for a workplace. It's something  
that's up to the author to make a call on.

Occasionally I will mark something as "SFW, but explicit language" or  
"NSFW, nudity," similar to the way the MPAA ratings are now, in that  
they say what aspects of a movie warranted the R or PG-13 etc rating.  
I think something like that might be useful to think about.

-Colin