Re: Last Call: <draft-nottingham-safe-hint-05.txt> (The "safe" HTTP Preference) to Proposed Standard

[Joseph Lorenzo Hall <[e-mail]>]

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On 11/15/14, 5:10 PM, Matthew Kerwin wrote:
> On 16/11/2014, Brian E Carpenter <[e-mail]>
> wrote:
>> On 16/11/2014 07:34, Yoav Nir wrote:
>>> 
>>> Imagine Wikipedia with nothing controversial: nothing about
>>> abortions, religions, genetics, evolution…
>> 
>> And that will not happen, so Wikipedia will simply ignore "safe",
>> so browsers set to request "safe" will just get raw Wikipedia, so
>> "safe" will be useless for parents wishing to censor their
>> children's access to Wikipedia.
>> 
> 
> This straw man serves as a handy informative illustration.
> 
> Wikipedia doesn't (currently, or likely into the future) offer a
> 'safe' option.
> 
> Wikipedia doesn't offer a 'safe' option, so of course the hint
> isn't for them, so of course they will ignore it. Us standardising
> the preference doesn't suddenly force the entire web to present 
> safe/unsafe versions of everything.

But creating a standard may very well mean there will be a time where
they can't ignore it, and that concerns us. (this is the opposite of
the non-adoption of p3p and PICS, in a sense)

>> Thanks; this is a good illustration of why this whole thing is a
>> pointless fig leaf.
>> 
> 
> Once again, this hint is just a means of preempting the server's 
> question: "do you want safe mode?" The example that comes to mind
> is Google's 'safe search', which I presume is the naming
> phenotype.
> 
> If they don't ask the question, they can ignore the answer.
> 
> I wonder, again, if renaming it to "Prefer: x99-bob" would assuage 
> most peoples' concerns, at least had the renaming happened before 
> opinions were formed.

I don't think that would make a bit of difference. ::) It would
undoubtedly make it worse as people would use it for a myriad of other
bit expressions and then it would be essentially meaningless, but
standardized meaninglessness.

best, Joe

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Joseph Lorenzo Hall
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