What would you consider a family friendly directory and why? What criteria do you look for and how do you view a site to be worthy of being listed as family friendly.?
A directory which would contain links to websites that suit to all ages. For example ok: Links to toy, computer etc. related sites not ok Links to sites containing nudity, porn, warez etc.
As a lawyer Jamie, what do you think would qualify ? Would you support Rape, Pedophilia, Crime, Gore, Death, Anorexia Sites to be included ?
I've not had my results yet Popotalk so not a formal lawyer just yet, near as damn it though. I asked the question, you gave a politicians answer by answering a question with a question, I asked first. I will certainly answer on the anorexia one though, those that are governed and made for the right purpose would be acceptable in my mind, those that simply promote anorexia would not be suitable. Death is life, life is death, the same answer applies, they'd have to be in the right context. Gore? What do you mean by gore? War is Gore, is highlighting war wrong? Again in context. I'm not even going down the route of the first two you commented on as I think you already know that answer to that one don't you. I'll gladly discuss what I think would qualify after I've had some input, hence the reason why I posted the question to the forum not myself.
There is no one conclusive answer to family freindly, each "family" has differing values, so to box it into one is a hard call. you could however leave out violence porn racism illegal activities for starters
As a consumer of all your free directories, I believe that directories with porn, violence, gambling, illegal contents, adult related websites, some health related sites, hacking, sites that promote anything against the society's value as a whole should be considered outside the general family friendly directories.
Any site which contains vulgarity in any forms, in my opinion, is not family friendly. Even if it's only the odd profanity - treat 'em mean, keep 'em keen, I believe is the expression
LOL! Theres Family Friendly and Violent Family. DMOZ/Adult and your part of the community editing team. Theres a million bastards at the Solicitations and Announcements Thread. You can point your mouse even when your eyes closed. I don't know if this site is considered but from the looks of it, it seem is. http://familyfriendlysites.com/
In addition to already mentioned categories, I usually decline tobacco, gambling sites as well. I have also rejected extreme rock & roll music site or game site that promotes violent games for kids.
I agree with you, each to his own type thing, but what I'm trying to establish is the 'general consensus' more than anything. The four you labelled above are obvious candidates, but what about something like gambling though? How can that be taken as non family safe when things like bingo, the lottery, and so on are almost family institutions? In the UK nearly every family bets on a horse-race called the Grand National, so how could you not list betting site? Its a really tricky one this hence the reason I'm trying to get the broadest views possible.
All right I am going to throw something in for consideration ---- Where would you rank sites that deal with sex toys? Family friendly or not? On one hand places like that are freely advertised in the papers, yellow pages etc.... But on the other hand it is sex toys. Any opinions on that one?
I will be listing a gambling catagory, it will cover all legal casinos, horse racing etc and i have no problems with it. I will not cover online casinos or gambling, and will leave that for the vultures.
It's a good question. I usually describe my directories as family friendly, but it means different things to different people and there are a lot of grey areas. Forums are a bit of a pain in this sense: they're fine if moderated well, but they can easily degenerate into places with lots of porn links, foul language and bullying. The same could be true of any social website, so you have to keep a look out for how these things are moderated. My understanding of family friendly is a collection of websites you'd be happy for younger children to browse. They don't have to understand everything in the listed sites, so long as there isn't anything that demonstrates a bad example for them to follow, or unsettling images. The obvious exception to this is news, where you get plenty of both of those but at least it's in context. But this raises the question, what's a bad example? My idea of the limits of reasonable behaviour won't be everyone's. I don't think you can avoid having some grey areas, and having to make some kind of moral judgement that some will disagree with. Probably not. Most parents wouldn't want to have to explain them to younger kids, and some of the point of family-friendliness in not running into stuff that may be embarrassing to explain.
This is an absurd discussion. The vast majority of sites in the snake oil business AKA the pay for inclusion directory industry exist to extract money from gullible webmaster who are told that these listings help their sites in search engines. To go further and to suggest that real people other than webmasters, let alone families, actually use these sites to find sites is nonsense. Even if these directories did what their owners falsely claim, and they did help push the sites that were listed up in the SERPs then whether they are family friendly, or otherwise, makes exactly zero difference in how the SEs deal with their site.
Please, please, please, PLEASE quote me when I've ever said Dmoz was a family friendly directory. Get your facts right, next time, maybe even do a little searching for things I have said before you make such ridiculous accusations.
To me there are sites that are clearly not family friendly. Those that promote violence, porn, warez and illigal content to name a couple. There are some grey area sites which are not so clearly defined to me. Just for discussion sake and not saying listing a sex toy site is right or wrong... I have seen ads on prime time TV, in the yellow pages and on bill boards advertising this type of store in toned down ways. Clearly children are seeing these ads in other places. Think of all the victoria secret ads you see for lingerie. When exposure to those type of "grey area" sites is so prevelant in daily society. Is it fair for a directory owner to say not here? Maybe downunder has a very legit point in going with societies already established standards - that being if it is legal and is advertised in other legitimate and publicly accessible ways why not accept those same standards for directories?
Putting aside for one moment the pay for inclusion directory alternative reality, the fact is that there is a significant amount of porn on the Internet. Yahoo has it, google has it, so does dmoz. It is absolutely pathetic to pretend that these family friendly directories actually do something to restrict the access to unsuitable sites by those who do not want to be (or should not) accessing them. One way of preventing access to these site is services like net nanny, cyberpatrol etc. You don't need to be a rocket scientist to work out one of the sources of their block list, the adult parts of the yahoo, dmoz, etc. These silly little pay for inclusion family directories exist only to delude webmasters and do not make any contribution what so ever to making the web a safer place for anyone.