DMOZ Supports Child Porn?

Depends who is inviting editors to leave. All along it seems perfectly clear to me that the listing of the forums targetted at pedophiles is against existing guidelines and an AOL Staff ruling. Yet they are still there, being discussed. If the invitation comes from anyone less than an Admin then it is nothing more than bad mannered posturing - make the same offer back. If it comes from an Admin or Staff then it is altogether more serious as it indicates a decision has been taken to retain the sites.

In all honesty, should the final decision be to retain the sites there will have been an assumption that the issue will not cause editors to leave in any significant numbers. That would be a dangerous assumption especially as, in my own interpretation of the two official reports issued so far, it seems clear that editor numbers at less than 7700, the lowest for many years, plus an ongoing maintenance problem in many parts of the directory are in the process of damaging the viability of the project in the long run. Losing more editors, especially the principled ones, is the last thing the directory needs. How did it evolve into this? Mismanagement by volunteers who may be brilliant editors and metas in their own right but lack the backup, training, skills, and experience to manage a large scale project.

 

How far is that? Is there anyone including editors that does not see the strength of "AFFIRMATIVE VIEW" editors in the DMOZ? Let's look at the people you mentioned:

brizzie: I think he is totally disillusioned and with some his postings, I am worried that people think I have stolen his password and it is me who is posting and not him.

Pagode: He has disappeared and I think he is aware of what is happening, probably considering the same thing as you if he should stay or not.

Sidjf: Also disillusioned and not defending DMOZ anymore but question will be how important this matter is for him.

In the mean time "AFFIRMATIVE VIEW" editors are finding every excuse in the book to keep these listings as I mentioned in a post in another thread and repeating it here:

"1- We can not do anything until we have discussions about what should be done and everybody is in agreement, we are not in a hurry. It is better to do the right thing and doesn't matter if it takes 1 day, 1 week, 1 month, 1 year or until everybody forget about it.

2- These sites are not illegal, we should not judge people because they are pedophiles, we only don't list sites when it is illegal.

3- Even if it is illegal in USA, may be it is not illegal in country X, we should keep it if it is not illegal in country X.

4- Even if the sites are illegal every where, we are not lawyers and can't judge if it illegal or not, so we should keep it.

5- We should respect free speech and keep it even if we don't like it because DMOZ suppose to be a directory for everything on the web, even pedophile sites.

6- May be the problem is not with the sites but with the description and category, if we change the name of category and fix the description a bit then nobody can blame us and we can keep it.

7- Even the majority of editors are against it, we can not do anything until AOL tells us and they never do."

I agree with you that it is a difficult decision to make about what to do and there is only 3 alternatives:

1- Resign and show a strong protest that you will not stand for DMOZ helping to hurt children but then you are leaving the directory totally in hand of "PRO PEDOPHILIA" editors.

2- Stay and fight- It will be difficult and the question sooner of later will be, how long should I stay if nothing is going to change by my actions.

3- Close your eyes and pretend you see nothing wrong and just be happy that you are an editor and can list your own sites.


The decision you make, will depend on the your moral strength and if you are willing to scarifies children to achieve your own goals.

 

Excellent post, gworld. That, in my opinion, is an excellent summary of the alternatives facing DMOZ editors at this point.

Are you reading this, lmocr?

 

I don't know how many people are active in this thread still, but I have an idea.

A press release generally gets the media going. The media would generally get AOL or whoever helps fund DMOZ to move.

Who has a blog or a site that wants to publish a story about this and get a front page PRWeb press release? I'd be willing to donate to get it done.

Heck, if we collected a little bit from whoever is active in the thread, we could all get a nice keyword-rich link from PRWeb at the same time.

 

Angry, disappointed, but not totally disillusioned. And you'd have a hard job stealing my password! I think former editor colleagues can tell my posting style a mile away

There is a fourth. Industrial action. Strike. Set up a Favorites direct to the internal forums so you can check the discussion threads. Doing this bypasses the editor dashboard login so it is clear you are not logging in to edit. Don't do a single add, delete, modify, no matter how great the temptation, until sanity is restored. If you are getting near the 4 month limit do a single recordable edit before striking. Not as dramatic as resigning but it should soon start to show on the statistics if enough people join in.

 

Not disillusioned, just disappointed.

There never was an illusion - I knew that there were categories in the ODP that I did not like (although, I never knew about the pedophilia chats/forums and never disliked any others as strongly as I dislike this) and I knew that decisions from on high were slow and tedious.

I'm disappointed that there was even more than a one or two day debate over this, I'm disappointed that many of my colleagues feel that censorship is a more important issue than protecting children from potential molestation, and I'm disappointed that the category was not left in Test after I moved it - if it is going to take who knows how long for a decision to be made (maybe in an hour, maybe a week, maybe a month) then a category that is so heavily disputed, and affects so few sites anyways should be moved to test until a final decision is made, IMO.

I know for a fact that this event has seriously damaged the moralle of a fair amount of editors. I was going to say that the biggest loser in all of this was the ODP (no matter how the decision goes), but really, the biggest loser is children that are victimized by child molesters.

 

Excellent idea.

Actually, threads like this will soon rank highly in Google and MSN and Yahoo and even AOL Search won't be far behind. Linking to this thread from a few dozen websites with "DMOZ supports child porn sites" as the anchor text would send a pretty clear message to the DMOZ editors who still want to debate this. Give it a little while longer and DMOZ will be ranking pretty high for "child porn sites".

Suggested html:

<a href=http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?t=53712>DMOZ supports child porn</a>

Code (markup):

<a href=http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?t=53712>child pornography at DMOZ</a>

Code (markup):

<a href=http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?t=53712>DMOZ editors support child porn</a>

Code (markup):

<a href=http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?t=53712>AOL owned directory promotes child pornography</a>

Code (markup):

 

This is not and never was about censorship and if you still believe that it is about censorship, you are just naive. How many other subjects are not being listed in DMOZ?

I agree with you about children are the biggest losers in this mess, I was looking at one of this sites and there was a discussion about how they should work with organizations that try help the under privileged children, so they can find their victims. Can you imagine a child that first had a bad family situation and now being taken advantage by these perverts?

 

minstrel, I object to the third bit of code.

Yes I can, and it breaks my heart.

(we need a crying smilie)

 

For a lot of editors, it is about censorship, but you are welcome to believe otherwise. It's possible that there are editors that have alterior motives concerning the listing of these sites. But there are none that I personally suspect in any way - just my opinion.

There are a lot of other topics that are not covered, but that does not mean they are "banned" - it just means that no one has had the desire to create categories or find sites for them. There is a big difference there.

Indeed.

 

And so you should, Annie. So do I.

 

This is actually a pretty bad idea. Sorry brizzie. But any sort of organization of editors in a disagreement with the admin will not result in change, it will result in massive firings. If you don't believe this would happen, then you underestimate the administrations reluctance to accept change at all costs.

So there are really only the two options, resign or keep editing.

 

Perhaps you and the admins both underestimate the power of public pressure to influence large corporations like AOL and Google.

 

Public pressure directed at AOL corporate is different than pressure from editors directed at the administrators. The first might have an effect, the second won't. Administrators are short-sighted and narrow-minded creatures that allow no room for debate or disagreement.

 

Never having been an editor, I'll yield to your greater knowledge of how things work inside DMOZ, ishfish. But I will say that if enough negative publicity and public pressure can be brought to bear on those who have the power, it shouldn't take them long to dismiss the administrators.

 

Lets get the ball rolling. I sent the following email to Janice Chen at CNET. I will look for some additional reporters.
If people edit it and get it out to their local media, maybe we can bring real pressure to bear on these companies. Time Warner still owns AOL and they still need the U.S. government to look favorably on their media endeavors. Lets rattle the cage.

 

Um. I think I need to pick my words carefully here. I am not against anyone protesting to AOL/Time Warner about any policy of the ODP. And if I thought that ODP policy was to list child porn or sites which aid and abet paedophiles, then I would not only resign now as editor, but I would also protest to AOL/Time Warner.

However that is not the policy of the ODP. The policy in Guidelines is that child porn is not listed. Staff guidance on interpretation of that has always been broad (rather than a narrow focus on sites that are strictly illegal in whatever jurisdiction). That approach is and always has been supported by the overwhelming bulk of editors. And Admins have recently reassured us that no change is in prospect.

The debate really revolves around the issue of where to draw the line, which is not as simple as it might sound. If greater clarity on this emerges from this distressing debate, then it will have been of benefit. In the meantime the controversial category of Paedophile Chats and Forums will be moved out of public view by the end of the week.

 

Did you read this thread at all? It really doesn't matter what you think the policy is... there clearly ARE sites which aid and abet pedophiles listed in DMOZ and they have been there for some time. What part of that confuses you?

So I understand. That is why this campaign has been stepped up.

It would seem that it is quite simple to everyone except the few editors and Admins who are still engaging in the debate.

Why was it moved by into public view after only a few days the first time it was quarantined? And how long will it stay quarantined this time -- until the public heat cools down a bit? And why are those sites being moved "out of public view" at all? Why are they not being deleted?

You and the other DMOZ editors still debating this just do not get it.

 

We need to distinguish between the official policy of an organisation and things that may happen within it as a result of confusion over the policy, or some individual ignoring the rules. As I said the official policy is anti-child porn. And that is not going to change.

I strongly support that policy. So you may believe that I have been active in pressing for the removal of all listings that in my view breach it. The fact that some of these listings have been there a long time seems like proof to me that a house-cleaning was overdue. And that we could use a clear statement of exactly where to draw the line. With luck we should have one in a few days.

 

And my other questions? In particular, why "removed from public view" instead of deleted? What does that even mean? And removed for how long?

Are you an administrator?