
NSFW tag in HTML 5  - peter123
http://www.zeldman.com/2009/06/08/not-safe-for-work-tag-in-html-5/
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mpk
This is a terrible idea. HTML5 (and friends) is a standard for markup,
presentation and logic. It is certainly not a system that should contain value
judgments.

Put this into a standard and you'll end up with a giant crazy mess. I can just
imagine the idiotic lawsuits now.

Example. Some doofus somewhere looks at naked people on the web, on company
time, against company policy and gets fired. Realizes that the webmaster
didn't put up NSFW tags and sues the webmaster, the hosting provider and
probably the upstream ISP as well. Before you know it we have yet another
pointless, fruitless and _unconstructive_ series of internationally televised
debates on personal responsibility, provider accountability, etc. And because
there's usually a bit of flesh involved somewhere, two thirds of the
population will happily knee-jerk their way against common sense.

Yeah, brilliant idea this is.

~~~
seldo
Oh, but it absolutely should contain value judgements. There is nothing more
semantic than value judgements, in fact. It's a tag that says "this content
may be of questionable taste". How is that less semantic than <em>, saying
"this content should be emphasized"?

~~~
planck
<em> is emphasis within the context of the page. <nsfw> is judgment within the
context of the world. One of these judgments can be made reliably by the site
owner; one cannot.

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sounddust
I don't think a NSFW tag belongs in an international standard. "NSFW" is a
concept which is limited in scope to a small number of cultures, particularly
English-speaking ones.

I have a site that is community-translated, and the phrase "NSFW" is usually
left untranslated. It even sparked several discussions in which people were
genuinely confused about why content would be considered "not safe," and why
it would be unacceptable at work but acceptable at home, etc..

~~~
j2d2
Almost every programming language is written in English.

~~~
Xixi
I think this is about culture, not language. It's two very different things.
Except for all the ASCII/Unicode nightmare, there's not much in a programming
language that depends on country/language/culture.

Who wants to see something like that :
CultureInfo.GetCultures(CultureTypes.Puritan);

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Hoff
This is the HTML variant of the Evil Bit.

<http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc3514.txt>

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lallysingh
That's a shame.

It'd be an almost perfect way to make the cyber-nanny types shut up: all the
naughty bits of the Internet could be tagged, and a client-side solution would
be trivial for parents, libraries, etc.

Additionally, employers could save themselves quite a few sexual harassment
problems.

And frankly, the NSFW tag could be argued for both sides of the content vs
presentation debate.

~~~
enomar
Blocking content won't protect children or prevent employees from bringing
inappropriate content into the workspace. Those that want it will find a way
to get it. If they can't get it on their computer, it will be on their iPhone.

The only solution to these "problems" is to educate your kids or employees as
to why the content isn't appropriate.

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planck
Why not just use existing technologies and implement it yourself? It's already
been done anyway: <http://www.chrisfinke.com/addons/nsfw-detector/>

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GHFigs
Misleading headline. It definitely isn't "in" HTML5, and it doesn't even seem
to have been discussed on either the W3C or WHATWG mailing lists. Someone just
filed a bug on the W3C bug tracker.

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seldo
I like the concept of a tag to mark up the semantic meaning of "the author
considers this content to be in poor taste". The name "NSFW" isn't a good
choice, since the idea of some things being okay for home but not for work is
a curiously hypocritical western idea. However, the concept that some things
are in good taste and some are offensive but discussable is pretty universal
(obviously, if it's so offensive nobody event wants to discuss it, they're not
going to mark it up at all).

I like the concept, but not the name. Perhaps <offensive> or <inappropriate>
or some variant could be used instead.

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nimbix
Wasn't RDFa created exactly for cases like this, so you could attach any kind
of meaning to any block/element in your document? The NSFW tag (and MildlyNSFW
and SFW and SARCASM and...) could then be something that's supported by, say,
input fields for comments, but converted to RDFa when submitted.

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jrockway
I like how it's OK to propose blocking content if it's "not safe for work",
but how everyone gets upset when you talk about blocking advertisements.
(Hence the lack of an <advertisement> tag.)

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pxlpshr
How about just stop wasting your company's money looking at inappropriate
material on the clock?

The chances that a site contains inappropriate material relevant to your job
is slim to none, IMO.

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kingsley_20
Excellent idea, but should be an attribute, so that pages can make statements
about links and images.

~~~
martey
Covered in the article:

 _A tag is preferred to an attribute since it could then also be used around
content and not just links._

~~~
kingsley_20
I don't get that bit. I can add an attribute to a div tag quite easily to wrap
content, but wrapping each link in a tag seems excessive.

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Raphael
Semantic and useful.

