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

[Matthew Kerwin <[e-mail]>]

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.

> 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.

-- 
  Matthew Kerwin
  http://matthew.kerwin.net.au/