Its called preventive action, leave no stone unturned, taking one step at a time, doing what is ethical, being the first to take a stance against what is deem immoral.
As you know I am not against porn or alternative life styles, but I honestly do not know of any big porn producer or company or directory that tries to organize underground pedophile rings as DMOZ does. DMOZ looks like a one stop shopping for pedophiles with all their necessary resources nicely categorized.
Gworld you are correct, but as with any organization or person that believes it is bigger than the general public, they soon learn that public outcry will crush any infrastructure they have. I hate to sound like a broken record but for those that dont believe the federal goverment will not pursue Dmoz over this will SOON discover they will soon be without a volunteer money making editorial position and may face jail time. No thats not correct, I was just kidding, keep doing what you are doing...
Just enough with keeping silent! It is about time to document some of my thoughts about reading and having to read this thread on a daily basis. First of all, it is less than one week that I have become an editor at ODP. So I am also outing me as a member there. Second, I knew that there is an Adult cat within ODP, but had no idea what specifically was in there. Since this thread started, for me it is also about having to vomit several times a day. I personally support to the very extent every effort for cleaning up dmoz from that garbage. As well I understand that some editors do feel the need to discuss things in a democratic way in order for finding a solution, I do not underestand why e.g. editors should not be given the opportunity to vote on that issue.
I admire your bravery that instead of keeping quite and protect your editorship, you have the guts to protest against something that find unacceptable instead of like other DMOZ editors keep quite about it. Unfortunately if you are using the same handle here as you are using for your editor profile, I am afraid that you won't be an editor for long. The answer to your question about voting is very simple, these kind of activities is just a benefit for the very few people and if there is democratic vote in DMOZ, these people will not last very long. I suggest anyone reading vulcano post, green rep him to show support. People who are ready to take stand for what they believe are few and far between.
Let's take a look at this from another perspective. Google Adsense, a huge advertising program, could make zillions off of advertising on sites such as porn, warez, hate, drugs, etc...but they don't. Why can Google turn down huge money that they could be making promoting such garbage, yet DMOZ (non-profit ) insists they have to provide this content.
vulcano - As long as you don't actually abuse your editing privleges, you will not be removed. You are free to voice your opinion in any way that you want. I myself have voiced, in this thread, disagreement with ODP policies - I am not in fear of losing my editor account over it at all. I've said my piece here (repeatedly) and appreciate the opportunity to do so. This thread is quickly devolving into personal attacks and plain silliness - it's obvious that there just isn't that much more to say on the topic. It's apparent to me that many of you are here only to bash dmoz. You claim to want it to improve, but I think you'd rather just see it fail. If you actually cared about child porn, you would support people trying to remove it from the ODP. Instead you ignore any progress that is made and make silly comments accusing ODP editors of being pedophiles and rapists. Those comments especially are what confirm for me that many of you are more interested in trolling than in anything else. Your first instinct is going to be to post about how you all defeated me with your wit and superiour debating, and that that is the true reason I am leaving the discussion. Resist this temptation - it is too obvious of a thing to say... The truth is just that I have nothing left to say, and based on the amount of repetition I see - neither does anyone else. I'm sure I will still check in on this thread from time to time and will probably post if someone comes up with something new to say, but I'm done hashing over the same ground again and again. Thank you to those that have been pleasant here. I have enjoyed our discussion and plan on continuing to do what I can to improve dmoz and remove junk from it.
You have already admitted that doorway pages, affiliate pages that you call "free gallery" can not be removed. The organized pedophile rings can not be removed either since there has to be discussions (about what, who is supporting it? ) The question is what can you actually do there? Anyway, we enjoyed you agreeing with us even if you can not do anything. May I ask what is the point of being an editall in DMOZ if you have no power?
As I promised I would keep you informed about progress concerning both issues. There are to much postings here since my last visit to read them all. Haven't you people a job or other activities than posting in this forum. Issue: possible child porn Agreement has been reached that DMOZ must be more carefull about what we list than has been done in the past. Because of this past behaviour DMOZ has listed some sites that we prefer not to list. These sites might be legal according to law but this does not mean DMOZ must list them. At this moment a few editors (including sidjf) are evaluating the sites listed in some categories. If they find that children are related to sexual activities (either on pictures, in text or in any other way) the site will be removed. Because of the careful ways we use to evaluate these sites and the technical ways DMOZ works it can take some time (days/week) before changes might be visible on the public site. Cleanup of some specific categories can take some more time as not many editors volunteer to look this kind of sites. But they will be reviewed. Issue: deeplink This is being discussed. Many of the pro's and con's have already been given here by sidjf. No need for me to repeat them.
In the mean time pedophiles can use DMOZ as their one stop shopping portal. Didn't DMOZ discussed the same issues in 2000? Let me guess what was the result? Nothing. Didn't brizzie raised the same issues last year? Let me guess what was the result? Nothing, except Brizzie had to give up his editall. Didn't some admin threaten to quit because of DMOZ association with this kind of garbage? Let me guess what was the result? Nothing, except the admin quit. It is very interesting that while DMOZ complains about lack of resource, they have no problem losing editall and admin editors over protecting these links. Let me guess what will be the result of removing some links as result of this thread? Nothing, editors will register a new domain and list it under another name or may be another category. DMOZ will be the way it is unless new organization and procedures are implanted or authorities put a stop to it.
I think it is for real this time Gworld, NBC Dateline is watching along with AOL executives and Google.....
I don't care. But to be honest I don't even know what NBC Dateline is, and am not interested to know. About the AOL executives. They have the possibility to get information from DMOZ internal forums. Seems to me that it is much more of relevance to them than what is discussed here.
C'mon let's give it a fair chance. It seems that all the great points brought up here are being looked at seriously as they should be. We are being kept in the loop, now let's see if action is really taken. After-all that's all we should expect from a moral standpoint...without question. If that happens everyone's mission is accomplished accept for those that had underlying personal issues Thanks pagode