madlights wrote:I'm certainly against censorship...as the old question goes "who censors the censors?" But as I view it, maybe some kind of filtering or classification would be OK. I also think that as a previous poster said "with freedom comes responsibility" Pbase is viewed by all sorts of people...kids, perverts, religious zealots, you name it. How many photographers or models, literally would take off their clothes in a room full of strangers and display themselves in the ways some of the photographs I've seen are? Anonymity as a refuge? Yet I've also seen very tasteful and effective nude photography on PBase. So maybe some kind of filters, at least to inform would be appropriate (and many photographers do warn of nudity). As has been said in other threads...a problem could occur if it were limited to certain sections, then those sections could easily become very popular with certain segments of internet traffic. Some form of filter (perhaps set by the photographers themselves, voluntarily or otherwise, to certain galleries? ) that could be applied and set by schools, businesses etc, on individual galleries... yet site wide, without creating separate areas might work. Then those who are offended by such things could block them, and those who aren't could look...allowing for freedom on both sides of this issue?
Well, that's very simple (I am knowledgeable about this as I am a programmer and web developer myself). Let's look at how Flickr does it..
Flickr uploads have 3 upload states: safe, moderate, restricted. When you upload a photo, you choose the rating you wish to give it. e.g. I rate ALL my nude images with "restricted" and other stuff safe.
Now a user viewing flickr comes along and browses. if that user has his viewing preferences" set to "safe" then he or she will see only the photos that their uploader has marked "safe." If you want to see restricted content, you simply change your viewing preferences to "moderate" or "restricted" in order to see those photos. This is the case with ALL of Flickr. It is site-wide.
Now, I know people are saying, "that leaves a lot of room for uploaders who don't care if their content offends."
Flickr has covered this by applying the SAME 3 filter states to accounts. In other words, they periodically review public areas and if anything shows up there that is "restricted" they will set your account to "moderate" state (which, in reality means the uploader is not a very good self-moderator). When this happens, your photos are not seen in public areas or indexes for browsers who are browsing Flickr with "safe" turned on, even if a suspect photo on that accounr is marked "safe." This is also true if someone reports one of your photos as inappropriate.
If you have a good history of moderating your own content, Flickr will mark your account "safe." My account on Flickr has been reviewed and since I am a good self-moderator, my account is marked "safe."
It is an excellent system and one of the best implementations I've seen to date, for a content filtering system. If PBase implemented this, they would benefit greatly from such a system and end most of the drama surrounding this topic in one deft motion.