DMOZ Supports Child Porn?

Dannyboy was a meta, and it seems like I've seen somewhere that he was indeed under 18 (but I'm not sure). But he never edited in any Adult categories, so are you lying to everyone or just mis-informed?

 

I think you are the one who is lying, I remember he even posting somewhere and calling it civil disobedience since in his opinion minors should have access to porn.
You can do a search in yahoo groups about this whole mess. I must say if you are trying to cover up for DMOZ, you are not doing a very good job.

Why do you think he "resigned"?

 

I looked at his editing logs and do not see any edits in Adult.

He resigned before I was even an editor, so I don't know what went on at the time. Maybe I am wrong, but the evidence I have is:

1) Gworld made a wild accusation with no proof, as usual.
2) Editing logs.

At this point I am going to go with the editing logs. If further evidence presents itself, I will be more than happy to change my view.

 

You've promised this before so I'm not optimistic you mean it this time but frankly as long as you really go and don't come back I don't care what the hell you take.

You should be right up there with lmocr and orlady for the Most Pointless Editor award this year.

 

Ohhhh, orlady is in the naughty group as well now!

I like to imagine the list is written on your wall in crayon...

 

Yeah, you're a master of witty repartee, sid.

 

Since you like the logs so much, would you like to tell us how many of the listings in adult belongs to previous and present editors?

 

I would have no way of knowing that. I notice however that, when pressed for evidence, you quickly got off of the dannyboy subject.

 

The more people prove you and your ringleader (gworld) wrong, the more you try to get them to quit posting. One could probably draw a line graph that shows a direct relationship between the amount you insult a person and the amount they are showing the falsehoods of gworld's and your statements.

It's quite funny really.

That's probably another checkmark next to my name!

 

What kind of proof do you like, he admitted himself to editing and he is not a Meta anymore, if you are saying that editors who are Meta lie about what they do, I can agree with, that it is a possibility.
OK, if not all the editors, would like to tell us how many of listings are owned by Meta and other editors that you are personally aware of?
Didn't those listings that partially were deleted after my posting in this forum, also belonged to an editor?

 

No, sid - just trying to encourage you to live up to your word, not that I think that's worth anything. You promised/threatened to leave. Why are you stll here?

 

It was before my time too but dannyboy sounds familiar as an incident involving an underage editor who did something in Adult. Not all editing actions are logged in the logs available for general consumption, e.g. rejection of never listed sites awaiting review. There was another editall who edited in Adult just prior to his 18th birthday and got ticked off mildly for it. Who knows how many others have done so and not mentioned it so it wasn't picked up - no age declaration, no way to tell. It just so happened their age was or became known.

The point was that DMOZ did not introduce young male teenagers to the wonders of porn, nor does it encourage them. In my experience teenage boys need no encouragement. It was dirty mags in my day. In fact the policy is minors shouldn't go near Adult as an editor. Nevertheless the policy is not enshrined in guidelines and should be, and if it behaved responsibly then DMOZ would erect simple barriers to enforce the policy. Sure, some kids will get around the barriers, I seem to recall being the owner of a dirty mag long before I was 18 and it only took 25 years of therapy to overcome the shock, but that is no reason not to have any barriers whatsoever and it does protect the younger ones.

Kids, especially male teenagers, do loads of things they shouldn't do. It isn't scandal of the century and the end of the world as we know it. We would be foolish to react as if it were. It is part of growing up and testing the boundaries. But then responsible adults set the boundaries and make it difficult for kids to cross them. So they know they are there. DMOZ is failing to set those boundaries properly. Like a newsagency or shop that puts the dirty mags within easy reach and doesn't ask for ID, only refusing to sell if the kid volunteers they are underage. Would I let any kid of mine go into a store that was irresponsible in that way? No way, they'd be banned from it. But top shelf out of the way, and ID required every time, no problem. This is where DMOZ has it totally wrong - as a safer place for younger people it would increase its attractiveness to potential editors, not the other way around.

 

It is an interesting point. Where I come from 16-17 year olds can legally have sex, even get married, so can look at someone in a sexually provocative pose in the flesh, but need to be 18 or over to look at a photo of someone in a sexually provocative pose in a magazine or on the Internet. On the face of it it sounds like a discrepancy but I wouldn't want that fixed I think. Trying to protect young people from the sleaze, exploitation, and criminal sides of the porn industry for another couple of years is, I reckon on balance, a good thing.

 

When I first became aware that youthful editors received automatic permissions to edit the Adult section if they were good enough to be granted editall+, I resigned immediately. But the truth of the matter goes much deeper than editing rights. Any youthful editor regardless of editing rights has easy access internally to pornographic material. Not only is it easily accessible, there is no way to tell if they do. The directory hides it from the outside, but freely displays it on the inside.

Below is just a possible future senario based on a previous reality of how early exposure to pornography can adversely impact so many lives. No matter how remote the chance might be that it could happen in reality in the future, any chance that it could happen at all is a chance no one should be willing to take.

The senario itself will be intertwined with the reality of history.

"Ted Bundy, an infamous serial killer, granted an interview to psychologist James Dobson just before he was executed on January 24, 1989. In that interview, he described the agony of his addiction to pornography. Bundy goes back to his roots, explaining the development of his compulsive behavior. He reveals his addiction to hard-core pornography and how it fueled the terrible crimes he committed.

By the time he was apprehended, Bundy had killed at least twenty-eight young women and girls in acts too horrible to contemplate. He was finally convicted and sentenced to death for killing a twelve-year-old girl and dumping her body in a pigsty.

Ted Bundy wanted to tell the world about pornography
What was it that Ted Bundy was so anxious to say? He felt he owed it to society to warn of the dangers of hard-core pornography and to explain how it had led him to murder so many innocent women and girls."

JCD: How did it happen? Take me back. What are the antecedents of the behavior that we’ve seen? You were raised in what you consider to be a healthy home. You were not physically, sexually or emotionally abused.

Ted: No. And that’s part of the tragedy of this whole situation. I grew up in a wonderful home with two dedicated and loving parents, as one of 5 brothers and sisters. We, as children, were the focus of my parent’s lives. We regularly attended church. My parents did not drink or smoke or gamble. There was no physical abuse or fighting in the home. I’m not saying it was “Leave it to Beaver”, but it was a fine, solid Christian home.

As a young boy of 12 or 13, I encountered, outside the home, in the local grocery and drug stores, softcore pornography.

Possible Future Senario: No, I had very loving and caring parents. They did everything they could to insure that I grow up to be a responsible, law-abiding adult.

But as a young boy of 12 or 13, I encountered, outside the home, in the internal forum of a directory I edited, softcore pornography.

Ted: Once you become addicted to it, and I look at this as a kind of addiction, you look for more potent, more explicit, more graphic kinds of material. Like an addiction, you keep craving something which is harder and gives you a greater sense of excitement, until you reach the point where the pornography only goes so far - that jumping off point where you begin to think maybe actually doing it will give you that which is just beyond reading about it and looking at it.

Pornography can reach in and snatch a kid out of any house today. It snatched me out of my home 20 or 30 years ago. As diligent as my parents were, and they were diligent in protecting their children, and as good a Christian home as we had, there is no protection against the kinds of influences that are loose in a society that tolerates....

Possible Future Senario: My parents tried very hard to protect me, but there is no protection against certain influences that are loose in a society that tolerates........

Ted: I’m no social scientist, and I don’t pretend to believe what John Q. Citizen thinks about this, but I’ve lived in prison for a long time now, and I’ve met a lot of men who were motivated to commit violence. Without exception, every one of them was deeply involved in pornography - deeply consumed by the addiction. The F.B.I.’s own study on serial homicide shows that the most common interest among serial killers is pornographers. It’s true.

What I hope will come of our discussion is that I think society deserves to be protected from itself. As we have been talking, there are forces at loose in this country, especially this kind of violent pornography, where, on one hand, well-meaning people will condemn the behavior of a Ted Bundy while they’re walking past a magazine rack full of the very kinds of things that send young kids down the road to being Ted Bundys. That’s the irony.

Possible Future Senario: The most common interest among serial killers today is still pornography as it was in the day of Ted Bundy. There are forces at loose in this country where, on one hand, well-meaning people will condemn the behavior of a Ted Bundy while they’re providing easy access to a forum full of the very kinds of things that send young kids down the road to being Ted Bundys. That’s the irony.

Some 17 years later, it appears that society is still in need of being protected from itself, with such excuses as: "We're not the internet police." "They can find it on their own." "It's the parents' responsibilty to place barriers on their children's computers."

 

That's quite a stretch, dogbows...

I respect you and your opinion, but IMO, presenting a case such as this is going to lead to people ignoring the issue rather than doing something about it. It's just too far from the reality of the problem.

I agree with brizzie that there should be some forum of verification/warning system in place, but what you, dogbows, are suggesting is that kids wouldn't be exposed to porn if it weren't for the ODP, which is ludicrous. If they want to find it, they will. Brizzie made the absolute best statement about this topic that I have seen so far, and I don't think I will see a better one:

In the age of the internet, if a kid wants to look at porn, unless you keep them chained up in your basement, they are going to find it. it is innevitable and to deny it is just naive. That doesn't mean, however, that we should be making it easy for them to do so. We should have entry/warning pages to enter the Adult forums, the editor side of Adult, and also the public side of Adult.

Also, you (and apparently Bundy) are suggesting that looking at porn can lead to becoming a sociopath. This, again, is absolutely ludicrous. The proof comes from this sentence:

Most serial killers like porn, but most people who like porn are not serial killers. Your confusing which is the cause and which is the effect.

Looking at porn does not cause one to become a serial killer, but having sociopathic tendancies does most likely cause a person to like porn a lot. But, whether the person looks at porn or not, they're still a sociopath.

 

That is not what I am suggesting at all, siddy, and you very well know it. What I am suggesting is that even though they can find it on their own, some would never venture to do that on their own, but on the other hand would not resist the temptation to look when it's flaunted in their face day after day.

Wrong again! That is not what I said and not what Bundy said! But Bundy did say this.

Ted: Before we go any further, it is important to me that people believe what I’m saying. I’m not blaming pornography. I’m not saying it caused me to go out and do certain things. I take full responsibility for all the things that I’ve done. That’s not the question here. The issue is how this kind of literature contributed and helped mold and shape the kinds of violent behavior.

JCD: What would your life have been like without that influence?

Ted: I know it would have been far better, not just for me, but for a lot of other people - victims and families. There’s no question that it would have been a better life. I’m absolutely certain it would not have involved this kind of violence.

Only he could know what influenced or contributed to his violent behavior.

But even if it were not true, why would you be willing to take a chance that it just might be true. There is no reason whatsoever for anything pertaining to Adult to be easily accessed by children no matter how you look at it.

 

And this is even more true when you look at the type of porn listed in DMOZ with include titles as rape, torture,bestiality... This type of sadistic porn is not part of main stream porn industry and definitely not available in your local super market.

 

You have my total respect dogbows for taking that personal stand. And as it was me that highlighted the situation with editalls having automatic access to edit Adult without any check on age I feel responsible for you deciding you had to leave, and I think some others blame me too.

I am not sure though that underage editors have any more easy access to porn internally than externally, just that internally there are things that could be done to implement controls that externally are impossible. And it is sheer irresponsibility in the extreme not to implement those controls. DMOZ is a respected volunteer project and parents should not have any concerns that their kids are safe there. DMOZ actually encourages the recruitment of minors as editors. Then to find it actually washes its hands of all responsibility when their kids are exposed to an Adult forum and, in some circumstances, to an Adult branch sitting on their editor dashboard accompanied by editing rights and not even a written policy on the matter - it is disgraceful.

I think the first time I became aware of Adult was when I was made an editall and it appeared on my editing dashboard and I suddenly had editing rights there. And I couldn't ask not to have rights there - it cannot be separated from editall rights. One good thing about RZ is if you want nothing to do with the Adult section you simply do not ask for rights to access that forum and no-one forces it on you. The one thing I think that might be more technically difficult than simply changing text on guidelines, requiring an age declaration/parental consent, and controlling the forum access, is separating Adult editing rights from editall rights. It has been done with Kids and Teens. Ironically I could edit in sleazy Adult, but could not edit in K&T. But I would guess that it isn't a flick of a switch. Nevertheless if the public server pages all have PICS tag control then perhaps extending that to editing pages might be another way of doing it.

I am also not sure about the Ted Bundy analogy in this context. Had DMOZ been around at the time he was growing up and he was tempted to become an editor then I am sure his tendencies would have resulted in him lying about his age to get access to the porn even with controls in the way. His mental condition and tendencies are also extremely rare, which is why someone like me, in a different country and too young to remember, knows the name and what he did.

But regardless of the extent to which people believe porn to be a corrupting influence, and it is more or less universal consensus that it does corrupt to some extent or there wouldn't be laws in every country to control its distribution to young people, everyone in this (latest portion of this) thread appears to be agreed that DMOZ is failing in its responsibilities and should introduce controls and written guidelines. And this teeth pulling is ridiculous - it is 4 months since it was last raised and still nothing yet it is so simple to solve. So let's not argue, there is consensus on an issue and how it can be resolved!

 

It seems the discussions in here are more relevant in dealing with actual problems that DMOZ is facing than the internal forum.

 

I wasn't implying that porn was more accessible internally than externally. The only thing implied is that it should not be accessible at all internally no matter how accessible it is externally.

Category moves are made regularly. I personally believe that the separation of Adult from the rest of the directory in the same respect as Kids and Teens could be as simple as any other category move for some of the computer savvy senior editors.