The NSFW HTML Attribute 273
phaln writes "Over at The Frosty Mug Revolution, PJ Doland makes a compelling case for a new HTML attribute in the spirit of the highly-regarded 'nofollow' attribute promoted by Google — the NSFW attribute (rel='nsfw'). His original idea has been refined and expanded by positive comments from readers, resulting in a semantic solution to the issue he raises in the original post. From the article: 'Content creators can apply the attribute to paragraph tags, div tags, or any other block-level element. Doing so will indicate that the enclosed content is not safe for work. Visitors will be able to configure their browsers to block display of just the content enclosed by the flagged block-level element. This isn't about censorship. It is about making us all less likely to accidentally click on a goatse.cx link when our boss is standing behind us. It is also about making us feel more comfortable posting possibly objectionable content by giving visitors a means of easily filtering that content.'"
Good idea (Score:2, Insightful)
WTF (Score:5, Funny)
Jolyon
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Good idea (Score:5, Informative)
PICS labels [w3.org] have been around since 1996, and were proposed [w3.org] to label for language, violence, and sexual content (among others).
ASACP RTA [asacp.org] is another labelling scheme from 1996.
ICRA labels [icra.org] have been doing the same since 1999.
RTA and ICRA are in active use today. PICS fell mostly away (to my knowledge) -- probably because it wasn't just for filtering, but for any kind of content tagging. Being a general solution doesn't get the "save the children" mouth-breathers behind you.
The problem with the rel=nsfw is that it is binary. I can't establish any kind of scale for what I want to see (nudity is okay, sex acts are not), and it only filters in one dimension (I can't say that I am okay with sex, but not with violence, or vice-versa for the U.S.A.).
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Please submit a single example of a government mandated HTML tag. HTML is always opt in/opt out. You think the porn sites are going to jump on the NSFW tag?
Nice troll though. Looks like you snagged a few moderators.
Re:Good idea - No, bad idea. (Score:4, Funny)
Too bad they don't have a "Not Safe For Moderation" tag.
Re:Good idea - No, bad idea. (Score:4, Insightful)
According to MPAA v. 2600, the government mandates using the <a> tag along with the href attribute and a link to a website with the DeCSS code subjects you to civil liability. Not exactly opt in.
Porn sites are not going to use the proposed tag, exactly as your question suggests. And that is why the government will try to mandate it. You call it a slippery slope. I call it a likely outcome.
Nice troll though. Looks like you snagged a few moderators.
Not trollish by any means. I wish there were a Godwin for comments like yours. Since only one moderation occurred at the time of your post, I assume you are just trying to fill in space with this?
Re:Good idea - No, bad idea. (Score:4, Informative)
The same information would have to be available on any printed publication or movie.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
You can't define it that easily (especially where work is involved.. most places I've been at the only rule has been 'if anyone objects then it'll be removed' - so windows desktops featuring large breasted women are commonplace).
In other places NSFW might be someone saying 'fuck' on a web page.
In still others it may be going to the website of an 'unfriendly' country.
Work-wise it's far better for the company to define the policy and enforce it in the proxy.
The trolls... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:The trolls... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:The trolls... (Score:5, Insightful)
Exactly. For this to work would require everyone's cooperation. I think that, if anything, the internet has proven that you are guaranteed to run into any amount of uncooperative people. What's next, a law mandating the use of this flag?
If you're at work and just clicking on random links in front of your boss, well, you deserve what you get.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
For it to work perfectly would require everyone's cooperation. For it to work well enough to have some positive benefit would only require the cooperation of a lot of people.
Of course, it won't make it impossible for people to look at NSFW items while at work. But for those people who want to avoid looking at NSFW stuff because they have a sense of professionalism, it will help them do that.
Basically, this could work reasonably well for the c
Site-specific solution (Score:2)
For a site like slashdot, the solution would be to serve all comments in a big <div rel="nsfw">. That way, content that has been controlled by an editor gets through, but the uncontrolled content is blocked. Finer-grained controls would just extend the link tags by that attribute.
whitelist it then (Score:2)
"God its a barren featureless wasteland out there..." - Lt. the Honorable George Colhurst St. Barleigh, looking at the wrong side of a map...
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Nice job on getting Lt. George's complete name right though.
Re:The trolls... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:The trolls... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I don't think that many adult advertisers or forum pranksters would voluntarily use an "NSFW" tag, so a browser option wouldn't be that useful IMHO. Fact is, running Firefox with NoScript and AdBlock is very, very effective at blocking most adult images unless you are on a site that specifically is oriented towards ad
Re: (Score:2)
Well, the one doesn't exclude the other ofcourse, ...
That's exactly my point - they are completely mutually exclusive. You can have a browser that does all of this filtering for you without the need for a NSFW tag. I just don't think that it would get used.
You have a good point in that it would be a pain to configure every site, but most sites would likely default to "SafeSite ON" if they actually took the time to implement such filtering. I think most of us visit the same sites over-and-over anyway, but perhaps I am way off there. In fact, when I hit Google
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
Irrelevant (Score:5, Insightful)
In order for this to work, it should be included in third party descriptions of the site. And then, you can rely on standard content filters for that.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
NoT SaFe.
It's never about censorship when it CAN be. (Score:2, Interesting)
"Not clicking on a goatse link when the boss is standing behind you... " ???
Any graduate from Newblet doesn't click *anything* when their boss is nearby.
What would a HACKED variant of this technology be capable of?
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
I don't know, but I was unable to read this article after it was tagged 'NSFW'!
How is this any different... (Score:2, Interesting)
uh.. what? (Score:2, Interesting)
On a side note, if one wants to add to the html tag collection, how about a universal close tag for the last opened tag, </>. Just so we don't have to type </b> </a> </img> </i>, etc. so much.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
Huh? It only needs to be supported by two. Even if it's just supported by one it's cornered most of the market.
Re: (Score:2)
IE (the default browser in Windows)
Safari (the default browser in Mac OS X)
Firefox (the default browser everywhere else)
Obviously, IE has the lion's share of the market, but Microsoft is also the least likely company to implement this idea.
In any case, it's really a stupid argument since the idea isn't even any good. I'm just voicing my disdain for horrible unorganized web "standards" that aren't worth crap in practical use.
But universal close tag not flexible enough... (Score:2)
<i>this <b>is a</i> test sequence</b>
It seems silly, but it is valid html that doesn't perfectly nest as would be required for a universal close tag.
Re:But universal close tag not flexible enough... (Score:5, Informative)
<i>this <b>is a</i> test sequence</b>
It seems silly, but it is valid html that doesn't perfectly nest as would be required for a universal close tag.
Re: (Score:2)
<TD>, <TR>, <P>, <LI>, can all either be closed or not, so how then, do you deal with the following segment of theoretical HTML?
some stuff to keep in mind <b>and here is the important part
<p>new paragraph that continues emphasis
</>
More text
This would be ambiguous and impossible to know whether the code intended to end the paragraph or st
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Why not have both? (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I didn't realize HTML was somewhat lenient about nesting elements. There must be situations where HTML requires strict nesting (e.g. tables, lists, frames). Is there anywhere I can go to get a good answer? Is this part of the original design for HTML, or is this a real-world concession, given the number of broken authoring t
Re: (Score:2)
if (a==b)
printf("a==b\n");
Is valid C code without any braces. Similarly:
{
a=0;
b=2;
c=b+a;
}
without any conditional/loop/function declaration is also valid C code. It simply isn't the same kind of concepts as you see in a markup language. A universal close tag is *by definiti
Re: (Score:2)
It also depends upon the vendor who writes the web client you're using at work to provide support both in the rendering engine and in the configuration (i.e., depends upon a user interface to turn the feature on or off). Now, a good percentage of business still "standardize" (and I use that term loosely) on IE. Do you really think that Microsoft, the company whose business model is all about pandering to IT departments, is going to add a feature that will be used to protect employees from their employers? O
Re: (Score:2)
So a feature that prevents you from looking at porn at work is protecting employees from their employers? More like protecting employees from their inadvertent stupidity.
Regardless, I doubt this would be something implemented by any of the major browsers. Extensions/addons maybe?
Re: (Score:2)
So a feature that prevents you from looking at porn at work is protecting employees from their employers?
Yes, because in theory, you shouldn't be looking at anything on the web that would even accidentally lead you to pr0n (he says as he posts to /. from work), and so if you are caught with something NSFW on your screen, it will be painfully obvious that you aren't working (unless you have a job that requires you to read e.g. /. everyday - yeah, I know, I've used the "but it's one of the best channels f
Re: (Score:2)
Re:uh.. what? (Score:5, Informative)
There's plenty of places where NSFW is specified in link text already. This is just a way of making it machine-readable.
Such shortcuts [w3.org] have already existed since HTML 2 [ietf.org]. These have been universally ignored by browser developers.
Re: (Score:2)
What problem does this solve? (Score:2)
ambiguous (Score:4, Informative)
Two problems (Score:5, Insightful)
I see two problems with this right of the bat.
First, what's "not safe for work" varies from place to place. Not only from country to country (there are government sponsored pro-breast feeding billboards all over the place where I am that I'm sure would be considered "not safe for work" back home) but from employer to employer as well. Two jobs back (in the states) people would occasionally have risque material showing on their monitors and nothing much was said, while one co-worker got a serious dressing-down for shopping on-line for a competitors product.
And probably more importantly, in many cases no one is looking over your shoulder but IT is still logging your web traffic (e.g. at the proxy). And it often isn't just (or even mostly) boobies they're worried about. I've seen more flags raised over warz, drug-related material (don't search for "how to beat drug tests" from your desk), stock trading concerns, cracking tools, and so forth.
It's a cute idea, but I don't think it's going to go too far.
--MarkusQ
Re: (Score:2)
I can't se any good coming of this. (Score:5, Insightful)
Do we really want to just start trusting links and clicking whatever because the invisible tags will surely protect us from doing something we shouldn't at work?
Re: (Score:2)
I propose a slew of such tags (Score:5, Funny)
nsbc: Not Safe Before Coffee
nsbl: Not Safe Before Lunch
nsfc: Not Safe in Female Company
nspt: Not Safe to Print on a Tee
nswc: Not Safe While drinking Coffee
nswe: Not Safe While Eating
wcwd: Warning Chick With a Dick
dne: Do Not Eat
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
They need a WCWD tag at stileproject.com
No amount of therapy will heal my fractured mind.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
A NP (Nude Photos) or PF (Profanity) tag would be functional. Neither of those tags propose any sort of value judgement but when used properly could perfectly describe the content.
Even a MOSA (May Offend Some Audiences) tag would be more useful than NSFW. And given the tags describe the co
For a start... (Score:2)
Not about cenorship... (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, it hasn't worked out quite like they said it would, has it? Illinois did pass a law anyway, fortunately it was shot down by the courts - but guys like Jack Thompson are still out there just looking to befriend any politician that needs a little censor-happy rabble-rousing to get himself re-elected.
Meanwhile Wal-mart now refuses to carry any games with too extreme of a rating, effectively brow-beating the game authors into self-censorship if they want to have any hope of enough sales to recoup their investment.
It isn't too hard to see something like this proposed standard turning into the online equivalent of that sort of thing -- unless your website is certified by an ESRB-like agency as 'properly' using this NSFW flag, you'll be black-listed by all the big net-nanny commercial filters - thus putting yet another unnecessary burden on a website's author to comply or be left out of the corporately accessible world.
Under such a regime, most discussion sites would end up filtered because it would be impossible to enforce an NSFW tagging requirement. If you value being able to read slashdot at work, you don't want to support this proposal.
Re: (Score:2)
Or take it another way, a retailer choosing what they want on their shelves. This isn't government censorship, it is strictly market forces now. Wal*Mart can only carry so many games anyway, there is no entitlement to game developers to have their products on those shelves. I'm not saying tha
Re:Not about censorship... (Score:3, Interesting)
1) Within a one-hour drive of a Wal-Mart but...
2) Amazon.com won't deliver to?
I'm genuinely curious. When I can't find something local (which is quite often), and I can't drive out a bit further to get it, I try to get someone to ship it to me.
Re: (Score:2)
If a single company has enough clout, all by itself, to force authors to self-censor, then it isn't a free market.
If on the other hand, you've got 20 (to pick an arbitrary number) businesses that all independently decide to boycott games with extreme ratings and collectively that forces self-censorship, then you've got a reasonable chance that the boycott represents the will of a free society and not just the arbitrary decision of a company try
Shouldn't that be: NTSFPWTSMAM Tag (Score:2)
While not RTFA this tag seems to be all about setting a level of moral standards in order to protect people from "Objectional" material. And thats my objection. It's such a huge generalisation that anything I would want to be protected from is the same as what other people would want to be protected from. But in using the proposed tag it is the website that is setting what everyone is supposed to think is "bad".
As an extreme, what would the peopl
Re: (Score:2)
What the heck is the first T you keep throwing in for?
In any case, I think the whole point would be having the browser hide the content while indicating that said content was hidden, possibly along the same lines as a popup blocker. You could then choose whether to display it or not. Doesn't seem so mind blowing to me.
Re: (Score:2)
Perhaps the "Yeah, but..." argument is that it can't be hostile if viewing the materials is essential to your performance of your job. For example, a detective reviewi
Worst HTML addition ever (Score:2)
Absolutely /not/ semantic (Score:5, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
If it were "unendorsed" instead of "nofollow", then the Googlebot could act in exactly the same way and it would be semantic (the relationship being stated is that the page's author has not necessarily approved the link). People were talking about this [philringnalda.com] months before Google launched it on the world as a fait accompli, it's just a shame that they didn't listen.
why not? (Score:2)
As for subjectivity, well, all content creators make subjective judgments in their HTML markup. In practice, we accept the variability of the choices.
this wont help me any (Score:5, Funny)
Re:this wont help me any (Score:5, Funny)
Take it one step further... (Score:5, Interesting)
his needs a sitewide solution, too - "nofollow" has robots.txt, so why not have nsfw.txt?
Or for some sites, just:
Could be useful.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
You mean like PICS [w3.org]?
Magic URIs are a poor design. robots.txt was a mistaken hack, not something to be emulated.
Re: (Score:2)
<NSFW ALT="http://www.google.com">
This would redirect you to google, if you are browsing in NSFW mode.
Re: (Score:2)
YGBFKM (Score:2)
Follow-on attributes ? (Score:5, Interesting)
At first glance, this almost sounds reasonable, until you stop and think about it. It relies on the content creator to somehow guess what's "objectionable," and put the tag in the appropriate place. That's always assuming they're going to bother, and that every browser is going to go and put the ability to properly render this in.
If it passes, I can see a whole new range of "NSF" attributes. "Not safe for children.(NSFC)" "Not safe for (fill in the blank)". Now that I think about it, the NSFC tag would have a certain appeal, but it's still a dumb idea.
Meh. (Score:2)
Naturally it wouldn't protect everyone from everything, but it would be a great tool in situations like this where there's a reasonable consensus on what's going to be tagged and why. It's a way for an author to share a greater variety
Alternative suggestion (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
Your suggestion makes much more sense than a "nsfw" tag, because the poster isn't stuc
It isn't *intended* to be a catch-all (Score:5, Insightful)
The people who post links so that you'll get embarrassed or even in trouble at work don't even enter into it, they have absolutely nothing at all to do with why this idea is proposed.
That being said I still think it's a niche idea with positive intentions that would never get widespread adoption, I don't think every potential problem should be solved with technology, some things still need human interpretation.
Oh ? (Score:2)
My deepest thanks (Score:3, Funny)
Why not use PICS/ICRA stuff? (Score:5, Insightful)
Metadata (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Because 99% of the time, there's a perfectly good attribute that already exists for the purpose. In this case, it's class. No extension to HTML is necessary.
But the point of goatse (Score:2)
Besides the much populised but low occurence incidents of people getting fired for reading an article with a cussword in it or some such, the kind of sites someone generally gets fired for browsing are exactly the sites that won't use this.
NSFW proposal considered bogus (Score:5, Insightful)
This isn't an attribute (REL is the attribute); it's an attribute value. REL is already declared as CDATA, meaning it can have any value you want, so what Mr Doland is really looking for is browser recognition of the string NSFW, not any change to HTML.
I wish him good luck: this seems like a sensible solution. A pity that the proposal has been approached in such a manner.
///Peter
No overall standard == no workplace standards (Score:2)
Sounds great! (Score:2)
Of course I am being sarcastic. As other posters pointed there are many problems with this. Not the least being what constitutes 'not safe'.
Evil Bit (Score:2)
http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc3514.txt [ietf.org]
Not about censorship my ass. (Score:2)
And if it gains momentum, various providers and blocking services will start requiring it, and content providers will have to implement it if they want to reach a wider audience; and voila, it's about censorship! R
A neat idea at first, but then... (Score:2)
So, that leaves us to assuming each website will decide to use it or not use it. And this really applies only to sites where all content is just internally created, not externally. So, BoingBoing could use it (no reader comments) but not Slashdot (reader comments: see F
Where does it stop? Useless. (Score:2)
You want a solution? Put [NSFW] in your link text, and possibly explain it in the TITLE="" attribute of the link. So people can see it right there. I mean, why would you want anything else?
Utter nonsense ... (Score:2)
Bad enough how stuff similar to this is used to stop children and parents from thinking. Now an utterly idiotic attempt to stop employees from thinking.
Apart from this, who really believes that somebody who wants to lure to goatse will honestly label t
Useless as the data has already been received (Score:2)
How many people are browsing sites that have potentially NSFW content with a boss standing over their shoulder? I'm guessing not many.
The problem with NSFW content is the big brother problem. How many corporate gateways are monitoring traffic?
If the content is still being sent to your computer and passing through the corporate gateway, big brother is still going to assume you are looking at it on company time and utilizing company
Wow, what an idiot solution! (Score:4, Informative)
Instead of inventing something redundant here, just have browsers installed at work block access to pages rated as "breast exposure", or whatever. There is already a standard with very fine-grained control of exactly what a web page contains, if it's "visible sexual touching", language, or whatever, and the administration can then decide on exactly what they wish to allow. You can even tell that it's "nudity, but in a medical context" if you intend to loosen up the regulations in special cases.
http://www.icra.org/label/generator/ [icra.org]
ICRA is supported by Internet Explorer and while strangely enough Firefox don't seem to have built-in support for these schemes to aid for website classification, there should be extensions like ViQ for Firefox [unimi.it] to add this support, although I haven't tested it.
Of course, few sites today use this system well, but that's still being vastly better off than inventing some new inflexible "nsfw" HTML attribute, and modifying the HTML standard. Wow...
Not safe for whose work? (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm guessing that NSFW in my San Francisco office is different from NSFW in rural Alabama, or Germany, or Saudi Arabia, or China...
The germ of a good idea, but completely unworkable.
Re: (Score:2)
Then , managers visit what looks objectionable or possibly disallowed.
Sounds productive to me, carry on!
Re: (Score:2)