Sid, stop looking and hoping, you aren't going to find something strictly 'illegal' there on any of these sites. Even I can work out that those that flirt only 'just' within the boundries of law and freedom of speech will have disclaimers and 'not responsible for' type things all over the place. Peadophiles by their very nature in the light of society's view and with all the new law's coming into force about 'grooming' are hardly going to be open about their activies on a public dmoz listed forum ? You won't find anything..they know the law too well. That shouldn't be too much of a surprise. I think I'll leave this for now.
This is what happens when you leave it for 72 hours! Then again I do sort of have a reputation for being long-winded. Won awards for it actually... There is no guideline that permits the removal of editors for refusing to edit as a protest and if editors were removed for that reason then there wouldn't be a need for massive firings - resignations en masse would follow. It would be gross abuse of Admin privileges and be an absolute disaster of their own making. I don't think they are that stupid. Call me cynical but I started a thread about Adult in the General forum because very few editors visit the Adult forum yet it is a discussion that impacts everyone who edits - it is about whether the community can tolerate that kind of site being listed. A discussion in the Adult forum means that non-Adult editors are greatly outnumbered. And I believe that this was the intention of moving the thread - suppress the discussion and hopefully it will wither and die. Because they don't want to put people off becoming editors for that reason. And it would seriously worry parents of underage editors. It was one of the points I raised in December internally. It is deceptive IMO. The argument is that you should check what you are signing up to before signing up. But since Adult is hidden from the main DMOZ page I would guess 99% of potential new editors have no clue it is there. Wishful thinking. Why do you need to know? Private discussion at high level - confidentiality prevents publication. None of your business. There is a difference between your opinion and what Admins know their responsibilities to be. All these and more are far more likely than a full and frank disclosure that will no doubt end up in the public domain. Which is a real pity. For an organisation that claims to hold honesty and integrity as its foundation there is altogether too much secrecy and too many weasel words in the name of protecting DMOZ from nasty spammers. Animal Farm. And so it should - there are altogether too many editors who turn a blind eye to things that should not be happening rather than face the issue head on and solve it. The main problem I have had with DMOZ over the last year and a major factor in the reason I left was a continual refusal to address any of the major problems the directory faces and instead concentrate on trivia and window dressing. Any organisation that ignores the difficult questions will eventually find themselves in crisis. Take the pedophile forums and chat rooms. When they were first discovered, years ago at a high level and the editor removed, quietly and discretely remove the category and tag the sites to ensure they are not re-listed. The result would have been identical to the inevitable outcome now - the sites and category gone. Except instead of strife, editor conflict, campaigns outside, etc. if anyone had discovered the story they would have had nothing but praise for the actions taken. Even when the story broke now, quick and decisive action would have stopped all the conflicts immediately and gained praise all round. Now what if the sites had been removed quietly and someone wanted to start a category up and list them again - can you imagine them really starting a thread to advocate that? This has been complete mismanagement from start to finish and the responsibility lies 100% with the Admins and not anyone who revealed the category's existence. And I am glad to hear one of them has removed them back to Test again You are missing the point that the category and listings are in breach of existing guidelines and Staff rulings. It would require consensus to change the rules in order to for the sites to remain listed. Any editor with the rights could have delisted the sites at any time using existing guidelines and rulings as the justification and it is highly unlikely it would ever have been challenged. Sorry Annie, but I have to disagree - there is a ruling that seems very clear to me. But once the debate has started you would have to be very brave! You wouldn't have been fired but if you had then we'd have started an international campaign to get you reinstated as an Admin! Seriously, I would have done it, and if I'd been fired I would be totally happy with that - I wouldn't have wanted to stay where such sites could be listed and the response to an act of responsibility was so draconian. But I would have done it clear in my own mind I was following my interpretation of guidelines and rulings. If in your mind you don't believe existing guidelines and rulings give you a reason to delete then you are obliged not to and have done the right thing. In DMOZ? By one or two maybe but I'll bet 90%+ of editors were with you and cheering you on. You did the right thing, I would have done it too. Gworld, if an editor suspects something might be illegal they are supposed to report it so AOL's lawyers can take a look. I have, however, never once heard a legal ruling being quoted internally. So if the lawyers are ever consulted no-one has ever mentioned it or what they said in response. But then illegality is a red herring - you could probably find a legal fault in a huge number of perfectly innocent sites. You are not supposed to list a site that is illegal where you live, but that doesn't stop another editor listing the same site so long as it is legal where they live. It is protecting the editor from prosecution. Pedophile material is supposed to be the single universally banned subject but as this thread proves laws seem to vary considerably. Easy example - in some places to view an Adult site the local law requires you to be 21. DMOZ forbids a 20 year old from reviewing an Adult site if that is the law in their jurisdiction. It does not stop a 19 year old listing the site if in their jurisdiction the age barrier is set at 18. You are expected as an editor to know what you can and can't do on the Internet where you live. That is the primary basis of not listing sites that are illegal. Hence the difficulty with these particular forums. In some jurisdictions, quite likely in mine, they may well be considered illegal. In others they might not be. But all that is irrelevant - aside from an editor's duty to abide by their own laws they must also follow editorial guidelines on sites not to list and on whether the sites they list add unique value to the directory. Taking a different example, holocaust denial is illegal in some countries so editors there should not list holocaust denial sites. To get holocaust denial sites banned entirely could not rely on quoting legislation in say Austria, it would have to gain editor consent to be added as a banned class of site within the guidelines. Once in the guidelines no editor could list such a site regardless of the laws where they live.
You've never seen an editor removed because they did one edit every 120 days just so they would stay an editor? I have. In fact, I reported it. If your only reason for being a dmoz editor is to view the forums and do a non-edit edit every 4 months, that's abuse. And if you're caught, you'll be fired.
We are not asking DMOZ to police and take down pro-pedohilia websites. That is the job of the various levels of police services. What we ARE asking is that DMOZ stop endorsing and promoting such sites by listing them in the directory. I would have thought that was well understood by now. How many times must I repeat this? This is not all or just about legality. This is about what is right and what is clearly wrong. This is about taking a stand against something that is wrong whether or not it breaks a law. If people before you had not understood that principle, we would still have Americans owning slaves and segregating schools, washrooms, churches, and buses. Are you suggesting that because the sites exist, DMOZ must list them?
Dude, I agree with you 110%. I'm only responding to gworld (and others) who are saying that the sites are illegal. I think that is a very weak arguement and ultimately will lead nowehere probably. A much better arguement is what you just said: Repeated for truth!
Thank you for that, sidjf. And to Shygirl for her statements, too, and for the sentiment she expressed that common human decency will prevail. I wish I could be optimistic about that but I think we are better off putting our faith in the strength of public outrage to make the AOL lawyers and executives sufficiently worried that they will issue a few decrees.
That is exactly what I have mentioned many times. A volunteer organization can not thrive and grow when is always operating in a state of siege and paranoia. Some times I think that some of the editors would blame WWI, WWII and 9/11 on webmaster spammers, if they could. That is part of my problem also. Admins /Staff have access to AOL legal department, why wouldn't they ask for a legal opinion and end the discussion if they are so sure about legality of these sites.
Why would I waste my time looking for something that I don't think exists...you think it exists, so you find it. If you won't (or more likely, can't) then your arguement that the forums have illegal content are pretty silly.
On http://dmoz.org/Adult/Image_Galleries/Ethnic/Ebony/Free/ we have Farah's Black Sex - A lesbian couple having oral sex by the pool, a sexy young teen posing, and a horny slut sucks a big long cock. Could we get a definition for a "young teen"? As defined on Answers.com, the definition of a teenager is: A person between the ages of 13 and 19; an adolescent. So now could we please define "young teenager". It took me 2 minutes to find this on DMOZ.
Here is another category: http://dmoz.org/Adult/Image_Galleries/Voyeur/Free/P/ "Girl caught naked on a secret cam in the shower. " The words "Voyeur" and "secret" together points to the notion the images were obtained without the consent of the person being photographed. Furthermore, we are not able to know the age of the person being photographed in such a situation.
Do you really want me to quote here the texts from forum listed in DMOZ about how molestation is a compensation for child molesters because they spend their time working with children in after school activity and parents should understand this? How about the one about grand father who gets advice that he should let the grand child touch him over the clothes first between his legs and continue from there after couple of day and seeing the child reaction? Are you denying seeing these texts and like you told me before a simple yes or no as answer will be enough?
I'm still waiting for your "yes" or "no". But, even though you are unable to give a straight answer, I will give one to you. Yes, someone did apparently find some posts that had explicit content. Unfortunately that have not supplied links to it yet - just quotes, so I haven't seen it for myself. Either way, I'm sure this will get at least one or two of the forums deleted for sure.
I don't want you to wait too long deleting those forums, so here is the link: www(.)boychat(.)org/messages/960652.htm Anything else you need? Is this what DMOZ social contract meant by "We will be highly selective and judicious about sites we add, "?
I hope this isn't true. Supporting child porn sounds so immoral for me. Yeah, u can earn lots of money from it, so what? It ain't going to do any good to anyone, except for the perverts!
It seems quite obvious by now that those sites are illegal, what is the excuse for having it in test instead of deleting it? What is happening with "AFFIRMATIVE VIEW" sites?
Might be interesting to find out how many sites have been rejected in favor of the SMUT that is sometimes accepted. I reckon there are plenty of sites much more worthy of a spot than the child-porn certain editors prefer. Perhaps those same people rejected some boring intellectual stuff, or some obscure factual information in favor of sensationalistic hits. How would we know if some inventor of xyz-subject-site whom particular editors couldn't understand were dropped while they were eagerly publishing what can only be described as an embarrassment? Human editors have human failings and I doubt very much that DMOZ bother finding out much about the backgrounds of all whom they empower to judge what's good-or-not.
If the category is deleted we will lose the editing logs associated with it. Those logs are needed for any investigation or to root out more of the same that may be hiding somewhere. If someone abused their position to list those sites we need to know the details and it's important to get rid of them if they're still around. We don't know yet. All we've been told is that something will be done...still waiting.