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eliminating porn blogs from top posts, top blogs, fastest growing blogs

  1. timethief
    Member

    http://wordpress.com/forums/topic.php?id=1696&page=2&replies=55#post-19827

    At this point in time listed as the top post for wordpress is pornotube - you tube for hard. The blogger (a teenager) who has posted the link to pornotube in his blog has been getting thousands and thousands of "readers" for weeks now. Well suppose he was collecting advertising revenue for each click into his "free" blog to view his valuable "content". How would you feel about that?
    Any splogger could set up a blog with nothing but links to porno and ads as "content". Is that what we want to cultivate in the WordPress community?
    Posted: 2006-07-29 17:41:17 #

    @ cornell - you have said: TT: Point 3 - Oh god, please no! It's such a shame that pornography is still the biggest thing on the 'net. There's so much more there than just porn if people would just open their eyes! This could lead into a whole separate debate, one not suitable for this thread (or possibly even wp.com at all!)

    Well I do happen to think this is suitable for discussion on WordPress and I have blogged about it http://coyotes.wordpress.com/2006/07/29/porno-blogs-fuel-the-global-sex-trade/

    I want porno blogs eliminated from being considered in the selection for the "top postings", "fastest growing blogs" and "best blogs of the day" categories and I will not accept NO for an answer.
    Posted: 2006-07-30 01:12:54

    Those who want to read the reasons as to why I am taking such a stand will read the blog entry I have made by using the link above.

  2. nosysnoop
    Member

    But his site isn't porn/adult. Did he post a link to porn? But his site still wouldn't be considered adult. I've posted adult pictures, which I edited out certain features :) , of celebrities but my site was never considered adult. My site is "adult" now but that's another issue. * cough *

  3. timethief
    Member

    The link on his site in the post in question is to porno tube. The rest of his blog postings are not in question. My point is that by including a single post with a single link to porno tube he has secured and maintained a "top posting" position for weeks. Therefore any splogger could do the same.

    This morning I came upon another site mature/adult/not-safe-for-work site which was not categorized as one. It was hosted by a 16 year old Isreali boy who entitled his site "this is my mother fucking blog site". Just stop and read those words very slowly. Is a teenager in the middle east really a misogynist promoting the rape of his own mother?

    Nosy please read the article on my website. If you met the young Moldavian women who escaped to Canada and heard their personal stories I would guarantee that you would weep. What's more is that at the age of 20 you are actually older than they are.

    My agenda is simple.
    (1)I want all the sites like these labeled adult/mature/not-safe-for-work.
    (2) I do not want them to be accessed by randomly clicking "next blog" on our dashboards.
    (3) I do not want them counted into the stats for fastest growing blogs, top blogs, or top posts.

    Why? Because characterizing them those ways as "top" posts and "top" blogs amounts to promoting them.

  4. nosysnoop
    Member

    Are you implying that pornography leads to violence? When the Reagan administration was on their witch hunt against the porn industry in the 70's and 80's, they set up the Meese Commission to see if ponography lead to violence. The Meese Hearings were a joke because they had a known pedophile on that commission, Reverend Bruce Ritter who founded the Covenant House in New York. Nothing was ever done to him. But when the Meese Commission ended their hearings, three days later is when the Traci Lords scandal broke. Coincidence?? Nothing was ever done to him and he was never charged or anything. But the government sent porn star Ginger Lynn to prison for "tax evasion" because she wouldn't testify against her friends who were arrested in the Traci Lords scandal. The government knew the entire time that she was in porn that she was underage. They had a file on her for three years and that's how long she was in the industry. But they allowed her to stay in for as long as she did because they were using her so they could at the right time bust open the door on porn and try to destroy it making the industry lose millions of dollars since all her movies and all the compilations had to be pulled from shelves.

    It's now leagal for pornography to be produced just as long as you have the permits. The government doesn't care anymore about pornography because they see how much money they can get from taxes from this multibillion dollar industry. Just as long as it's not child porn and other illegal types of porn.

  5. timethief
    Member

    My agenda is simple.
    (1)I want all the sites like these labeled adult/mature/not-safe-for-work.
    (2) I do not want them to be accessed by randomly clicking "next blog" on our dashboards.
    (3) I do not want them counted into the stats for fastest growing blogs, top blogs, or top posts.

    Why? Because characterizing them those ways as "top" posts and "top" blogs amounts to promoting them.

  6. babbler
    Member

    I have to side to timethief, here - if not for the exact reasons she cites. For whatever reasons they have, some people don't like the content of certain blogs. Certainly, it could cause trouble for people accessing WordPress.com at work or school. So we need a feature to mark a blog as containing content for mature audiences, and an option for all users to block out those blogs and there posts from various community lists.

    But timethief, just because a teenage boy calls his blog "this is my mother fucking blog site" doesn't make him to be a misogynist. He proably think it's a cool name - it's what teenage boys do. Of course, I reconsider if you got hard evidence.

  7. nosysnoop
    Member

    Maybe he meant mother fucker and not about raping his mother. Did you read his posts and were they about him wanting to rape his mother?

  8. livingjourney
    Member

    I have to agree with TT here also!

    I think it lowers the standard of WordPress when you see that in the top ten.

    V

  9. podz
    Member

    Define 'porn' in such a way that the definition is acceptable to the vast majority of wordpress.com users and which can also be interpreted strictly.

  10. podz
    Member

    1. "Teenage boy" - why does his age matter?

    2. "posted the link to pornotube in his blog" - he linked to something on the net. It was a legitimate news story. Just because material of a sexual nature is involved makes no difference. I had one request to close that blog - simply because he had linked to a news story.

    3. "I can't tell you what pornography is but I know it when I see it" was something close to a famous judgement in the US when the govt wanted laws for obscenity. How many nipples being shown before a blog is removed? How many swear words? Does 'posh porn, tastefully photographed' not count?

    4. wordpress.com is multicultural. Whose view prevails?

    5. And you don't need content, just titles. So you could have "Pornotube - Hard Sex is HERE!" and then write about cake making. The title will get you hits even though the content is mundane.

    6. When do words become 'dirty'? Images can be argued about but so can words. And both are subject to your own interpretations. Whose values are we running blogs by then?

    Whether blogs are removed or not from public listings is already a judgement call and it has to remain that. Why should a single post remove a blog permanently - because you can't put them back because the post still exists.

    And sploggers. Sploggers on this domain don't want to spike visitors like that because it gets them seen and gets them closed. They want to stay just under the radar and collecting advertising revenue might even be slightly less important than their use of other techniques for boosting traffic elsewhere. We already have sploggers - if you see one report it immediately and I'll shut it as fast - and they stay under the radar, just out of view. They would stay well away from any sort of high-profile story simply because they don't post stories. They post garbage.

  11. wank
    Member

    I dislike pornography as much as anyone else, but compared with arbitrary censorship it's the lesser of two evils </standard liberal line>

    The simple answer is to scrap 'top blogs' and 'next blog' altogether. 'Next blog' is next to useless anyway, since there's no language filter, and 'top blogs' is depressingly static. Let people find their own audiences without official help, same as they do on every other host.

    Somebody refresh my memory -- did we have to declare when we signed up that we were over 13? I'm pretty sure we must have under US law.

  12. drmike
    Member

    I gotta admit that when I come across a site that I would consider to be pornographic or to contain mature or illegal content, I just send in a feedback and let staff take a look at it.

    I also send in the warez and druggie blogs as well. From a previous conversation with Donncha, those are getting labeled as mature as well to keep them out of the Tag system and top listings.

    Heck, half the time, I don't even look at them and just send them in considering where I do my work. Podz must love me for those feedbacks. :)

    I have two adult written works on my site along with an ongoing fanfiction work based in Hell. Should that be considered as mature and a labeled applied?

  13. engtech
    Member

    I fall into the "censorship is worse than *******" camp, where ******* can be anything. (Except for spamming, spamming is worse than censorship).

    My personal belief is that children shouldn't have unsupervised net
    access because there is a lot of questionable content out there.

    Censoring because of "Pornotube" is especially hairy. It was linked to by a lot of professional news sites because of the obvious and intended comparison to YouTube. http://www.google.ca/search?hl=en&q=pornotube&btnG=Google+Search&meta=

  14. timethief
    Member

    As for the comments about the use of the horrible "mother fucking" phrase not really meaning what the words say it means, IMO this proves my point.We are been expected to accept such phrases as being part of everyday language. The world over we are sniggering and mouthing such nonsense as "prostitution is the world's oldest profession" while denying the truth: selling children, as well as young men and women as prostitutes is the world’s oldest form of oppression. Sexually enslaving human beings by pimping is not a righteous profession. And the vast majority of kids, young man and women in the global sex trade are not free citizens pursuing a career - they are sex slaves working for pimps who pander to men with sex addicions.
    World wide we are witnessing depravity, de-valuation of humanity and misogyny on a massive scale and we are turning a blind eye to it. We are choosing to excuse and accept such "mother fucking" phrases depicting the male practices of rape and plunder following wars, as okay everyday language which can be used without shame and that, IMO is sick.

    (1) Requesting a blog be marked adult/mature/not-work-safe is not out of line in any culture. I did not ever request that anyone's blog be shut down and I want to make that clear.

    (2) I now comprehend Podz's point on titles and his point on sploggers working under the radar. Thanks for providing this information that I previously lacked because I now understand what I didn't before.

    (3) I'm glad babbler agrees with me. I strongly believe we need a feature to mark a blog as containing content for mature audiences, and an option for all users to block out those blogs and their posts from various community lists.

    (4) IMO blogs containing "images of people engaged in sexual activity" should be marked as adult/mature/not-work-safe. I accept the fact that people who create such blogs are not likely to be inclined to cut down their "readership" (or shall I say "viewers") by voluntarily having their blogs so labeled. This means that those who encounter such blog sites must bring the same to the attention of staff.

    (5) If the WP management and staff do not believe that blogs that contain single or occasional posts with links to porno sites only and no "images of people engaged in sexual activity" deserve such mature/adult/not-work-safe labeling that's their call and I will accept it. But I don't feel the same way about blogs that strictly or primarily operate as "porno link farms".

    (6) As WordPress staff are currently labeling some blogs that are brought to their attention as mature/adult/not-safe-for-work then why are we looking further for a definition? Obviously, there is some existing criteria, and I'm assuming it's based on "images of people engaged in sexual activity", but if not, then what is the existing critera?

    (7) Living journey and I agree that it lowers the standard of WordPress when we see titles like "Porno Tube - you tube for hard" in the top ten posts. Moreover, as Podz has explained that even such a title with completely unrelated contents will "score", and as we all know that such a title will "soar" to the top, so I'm inclined to think as wank does. The simple answer is to scrap 'top blogs', 'top posts' and 'next blog' altogether.

    Does anyone have a cogent case that they care to make against scrapping 'top blogs', 'top posts' and 'next blog' altogether?

  15. wank
    Member

    The devs spent a couple of minutes writing the necessary code and want to show off that these features are possible? [shrugs]

    I'm going to have to read up on the rules & regulations concerning the prevention of underage signups. Makes a change from the GPL, at any rate.

  16. timethief
    Member

    What is GPL?

  17. andy
    Staff

    Please read the Terms Of Service (TOS) section titled "Responsibility of Website Visitors".

    Marking blogs Mature and filtering them from Top Sites/Posts is something we do because we want to, not because we have to.

    Timethief, you asked that mature material be excluded from the Top lists. This is something we have done since the very beginning by "blacklisting" known mature sites. We have always reviewed sites reported in feedback; now you have another reporting tool and you are MORE upset?

  18. timethief
    Member

    @andy,
    I honestly don't understand you. And I'm not sure what you mean by a second tool. When I wrote my blog post here http://coyotes.wordpress.com/2006/07/29/porno-blogs-fuel-the-global-sex-trade/ dario's post entitled "Porno tube - you tube for hard" was being listed on my dashboard under the "Top Posts from Around WordPress.com". I'm not making this up - it was there.
    I'm not MORE upset. I have accepted Podz's position that dario only had a single post with a single porno link on an otherwise non-porno blog, and I even removed the link to his porno tube posting from my blog posting.
    The confusing part is (I think but I'm not sure) that there is a distinction to be made between blogs that are not primarily pornographic in nature and those that are. Is that what you mean? Please don't be angry or frustrated just explain, okay?
    Edit: I hope you don't think I'm out against WordPress or anything like that. I love WordPress. I appreciate the excellent service we get from sysadmin, staff and from volunteers. I have always had prompt and outstanding service through feedback and I think WordPress is the best blogging platform there is bar none. Please do not take what I'm saying personally because it isn't meant that way. Until 3 years ago I never even had a computer. I only began blogging in April and I have been utterly grossed out by the amount of porno all over the internet. I have even had search trackbacks looking for porno topics on my environmental/political blog. No kidding - they threw me for a loop.

  19. timethief
    Member

    I just found this posting from Matt on the new reporting tools for psam and for mature blog reporting. This must be what andy means. http://wordpress.com/blog/2006/07/30/riff-raff/

    YES! And THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU! [she shouted from the rooftops]
    WORDPRESS ROCKS!
    SYSADMIN ROCKS!

  20. draines
    Member

    I am new to blogging and to wordpress. In the short time I have blogged, it has been
    interesting to say the least what I find clicking next blog or conducting simple keyword searches.

    Prior to posting at wordpress, there is blog I visited which deals with missing children and related topics. Earlier this month, there was a porn site that copied his posts to make it appear you were visiting a missing child site when if fact it was his porn site. I am not a technical person but he explained to me it had something to do with scrapping (sp?)

    I have to admit I was suprised to see some of the listed "top" posts over the weekend
    that were mentioned above. Especially one that used "f*** you" three times in the description. I just ignored them and just won't visit sites listed there.

  21. sunburntkamel
    Member

    timethief said:
    Does anyone have a cogent case that they care to make against scrapping 'top blogs', 'top posts' and 'next blog' altogether?

    i'll bite.

    andy's work on botd.wordpress.com is one of the best things about wordpress.com. it's the other half of worthwhile community features that puts. WP.com head and shoulders above blogspot (the first half being these forums).

    the top growing blogs and top posts links are the fastest way to find something i didn't know to look for on this site. blogger displays an utterly random list of posts that occured in the second that blogger.com was fetched. there is no means of getting yourself onto that list. top growing and top posts are a goal to shoot for.

    and sure, knocking scoble off the top blog spot? that's a wet dream. not everyone takes writing so competitively, but the opportunity is there. it's a mini memeorandum for wordpress.com.

    sure, most people don't want to see porn blogs popping up in that list. but there is already a mechanism in place for removing them. but it requires us to browse around wordpress.com. or at least visiting said blog and clicking 'bury this item' err, i mean 'report as mature'.

    'motherfucker' is an expletive. if you could remove its use from common practice, another foul expression would take its place. if it didn't have a foul meaning in the first place, it couldn't have been chosen, and its meaning could not be stripped by overuse. the fact the fucking one's mother (esp. by force) is still tabboo in every culture is the reason the word still functions as an expletive. i'm quite happy that motherfucking is still held in that regard.

    the discussion on what porn is, i'll leave for someone else. the important thing to remember is that there's a huge gulf between the manner in which sexually explicit material is given, and the manner in which it's recieved. a post about a web 2.0™ company and a tasteful, but nude header image can both be posted in good faith, and recieved in bad faith. people are searching for porn on wordpress.com.

  22. timethief
    Member

    @sunburntkamel - Thank you for the making the cogent case in favour of andy's work on botd.wordpress.com, the top growing blogs and top posts links. I concede the point.

    @andy - Thank you for the work you have done on on botd.wordpress.com, the top growing blogs and top posts links. I'm glad to hear that mature material has always been intended to be excluded from the top lists by "blacklisting" known mature sites. It's up to us bloggers to use the mechanism of reporting the previously "unknown" mature blogs that you have provided. I'll accept that responsibility and will act accordingly.

    I acknowledge that it makes no sense to throw the baby and bathtub out the window just because a dog jumped into the bathwater.

    I note that at this point in time the post in question that consists of 2 sentences and a link to Porno Tube is ONLY being listed as number 4.

    Hot Posts Today

    1. Fetus in man’s stomach
    2. What I learned from BlogHer
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    4. Porno Tube: a YouTube for hard

  23. sunburntkamel
    Member

    the GPL is the license under which wordpress(.org) is distributed.

    in the US, websites are required to confirm that a user is over 13 before granting them a public profile. this could be construed as a violation of freedom 0 (see above link). however, since websites are providing a service, rather than distributing software, it hardly applies. unless wordpress MU would be required to force administrators of it to deny blogs to those under 13. in which case, MU couldn't be GPL. which would mean it couldn't exist.

  24. drmike
    Member

    But anyway....

    Anyone tempted to go label Scoby's blog as mature now? ;)

  25. timethief
    Member

    Ah come on now, you know for sure - for sure that I'm not gonna let a great wordplay like this escape without comment. lol "Mature" indeed. Just mention Robert's name and some folks immediately turn pale green, regress to the sandbox and start hurling the stuff. ;)

  26. wank
    Member

    Livejournal is open source, and allows under-13s to register only with parental permission.

    If you allow under-13s to register without parental permission you are in violation of US law. What wordpress.com is operating at the moment is a 'don't ask, don't tell' policy, whereby they don't ask us whether we're children because not knowing for certain that there are children using the service means they don't have to worry about COPPA requirements.

  27. timethief
    Member

    @wank -
    Up until very recently I had no idea what was happening on the net porno wise. Because of the article I wrote on my personal blog here http://coyotes.wordpress.com I assumed I might get some feedback there from the sex addicted. However, what happened yesterday was that I got spam on my other blog here at http://timethief.wordpress.com. As you can see the second blog is strictly devoted to environmental/political issues.

    The spam slipped through Aksimet and almost slipped by me because it didn't sound the least bit sexual. However I'm the curious type so I clicked the link in the comment which I thought would lead to an environmental or political site. WOAH! It led to a page covered with advertising images of teenage girls engaged in sex acts under the title "free teen sex videos". I am not including the link here for obvious reasons.

    There were several features on the page - one was an advertisement for a click the button and watch an 11 minute and 42 second video of a teenage girl engaged in anal sex with a man who was old enough to be her father. I was appalled that this link could have ended up on my blog in the comments made to a completely unrelated article on climate change and global warming. I deleted it.

    Now I'm being very vigilant about any links in any comments that come to my site. I'm moderating each every comment email notification I receive and checking out every link before I approve any comment for posting on my blogs.

    So if you are you advocating for a parental permission policy to be introduced at WordPress ie. one that's similar, if not identical to the one at Live Journal, I'll stand with you.

  28. sunburntkamel
    Member

    those are some pretty heavy assumptions there.

    1. looking at porn on the internet makes you a sex addict?
    2. you wouldn't have gotten porn spam if you hadn't posted about porn?

    both of those, i can assure you, are not true. spammers have automated means of posting comments. it generally takes a week(ish) for your posts to be indexed, and after that it's open season.

    attempting to relate this to an age requirement for signups means you've got another odd assumptions:

    3. porn spam is ok, if no one under 13 is subjected to it.

    to this i would say, unsolicited advertising is innappropriate, no matter the content, (i'd say weight loss ads just as harmful, to a specific segment of the population) nor the audience.

  29. sunburntkamel
    Member

    @drmike -
    i'm more tempted to label my own blog 'mature', just to see what it does ;)

  30. drmike
    Member

    It keeps your posts from showing up in the tag system, the top 100, and the latest posts along the bottom of one's dashboard. Doesn't affect search engines though. Not sure about the ping services though. (i think that that still works.)

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