(At least, I hope it is a major new thread!) Well, we've argued for a few days, and a lot of ideas have been thrown around, and the tension between various competing principles and/or ideals has been explored fairly effectively. So I wonder if we could work towards some consensus that we can all (or nearly all) agree on. What steps might we take that all parties to the discussion might agree on? Can everyone chip into this thread with accomodative ideas that you think everyone might agree with? By way of example, in the "fair use" debate, the one thing that all parties could agree on is the importance of prioritizing the _tagging_ of images with their status. Whatever might end up being done, even if -nothing much- is the answer, that tagging is something that no one has objected to. So what might we do in the content metadata arena that no one (or nearly no one) would object to? I think that there is broad support for a categorization system which is broad and flexible, and not necessarily aimed at content advisories, but which might, in part, be used to address that issue as well. Here's what I propose -- and I'm talking at the level of policy, not at the level of technical implementation, because there's a lot more to be thought about and said in that regard -- is that we move towards the implementation of a content metadata or categorization system with the following features: 1. Categories should be non-normative in nature. That is, "mature content" is an invalid category, because it suggests a value judgment that we want to leave to the end user. "Explicit sexual content", while still perhaps vague in some respects, is at least non-normative... it might be a good thing or a bad thing, depending on your purpose. 2. Categories should be infinitely wiki-editable, especially in the beginning, because "a priori" categorization is impossible and likely to lead to a lot of problems. Ideas that only sysops can create new categories should be avoided until we actually determine empirically that it's necessary. (One thing we know from our wiki experience is that something as obviously insane as letting anyone in the world edit works amazingly well!) 3. We should quite possibly accept _as an editing principle_, a sort of Ockham's razor for categories -- not multiplying them needlessly, while at the same time, not hesitating to let people experiment with categories as they see fit. But, we'll try not to fight about it too much, especially at first. 4. The categorization system should be simple -- i.e., articles can be tagged with as many categories as we like, and that's that. They are not required, and if people want to work on them, they can, and if they don't want to work on them, they don't have to do so. 5. Especially initially, website impacts of categories should be very minimal... i.e. we don't try anything radical regarding filtered searches or automatic index pages or anything too exciting like that. -------------- If we did that, we'd be introducing nothing harmful, and doing something positive for *multiple* purposes, not just the "content advisory" purpose. (See below...) And we'd get to find out, in an experimental environment, whether categorization prompts massive flamewars, etc. And then in a while, we can revisit the issue, and see what we think could be done with these categories. --Jimbo p.s. Examples of useful categories that are non-normative: biography math statistics graphic sexual content advanced mathematical content gay and lesbian studies European history American history U.S. Presidents sports tennis All of these might be useful for content re-users who might like to extract a subset of our data. For example, an "Encyclopedia of Sexual Practices" might want to extract just those articles flagged with 'graphic sexual content' or 'sexual content'. A "edupedia" project could automatically extract articles that avoid certain topics, or focus on certain other topics. ----- End forwarded message -----