[uf-discuss] PICS

Wed Oct 26 22:45:16 PDT 2005

On Oct 26, 2005, at 4:54 PM, Rohit Khare wrote:
>> Moral: don't try to encode machine-readable (and machine-actionable) 
> moral judgments. hReview is much more innocuous because it's primarily 
> human-readable today, not the basis of a robot censor.

I wrote about why technology should be amoral yesterday:
http://epeus.blogspot.com/ 
2005_10_01_epeus_archive.html#113023539824239360
Human readable is good.
On Oct 26, 2005, at 5:35 PM, Tantek Çelik wrote:
>> However, if the poster was actually asking
>> if there was a general-purpose term that might get widespread
>> adoption on the web, I think we need something more general.
>> IMHO: Let folks tag things, and let the terms emerge (folksonomically),
> rather than diving into yet another top-down taxonomy rathole.

This makes sense, definitely.
>>> My suspicion is that the RSS/Atom community will probably standardize
>> on something first
>> Really? Based on what experience?
>>>> (since they'll mirror the issues that led movies,
>> TV, and records to get ratings),
>> Huh?
>> Why would you choose those heavily regulated parallels as opposed to 
> say
> *internet* parallels like email, netnews, instant messaging, mp3s, 
> etc.,
> none of which have any kind of critical mass of official ratings.

Actually, the MPAA ratings are an example of an industry effort to head 
off regulation. See
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Production_Code and 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MPAA_film_rating_system
You can look at them as a converged tag system to some extent. Video 
game ratings are similar - fending off regulation by self-imposed 
ratings.