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| Author |
Message |
| 25 new of 92 responses total. |
janc
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response 58 of 92:
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Mar 21 19:20 UTC 1999 |
What exactly would an "HTML blocker" show you instead of the HTML
formatted output? A "plain-text" version, like what Picospan users see?
Or should it just make all such responses hidden?
Personally, my inclination is to turn the thing on and then fix problems
that actually appear, instead of trying to fix all the problems people
imagine might exist.
We went through a huge agonizing discussion about enabling anonymous
reading, with lots of people worried about how it would change or
destroy the spirit of the conferences. I implemented a "shylist"
feature, enabling people to filter their responses so anonymous readers
wouldn't see them. There are now five people on the shy list, one
reaped, one who has never posted a response to any conference, and one
who has posted exactly one message which contained six words and four
punctuation marks. The other two are fairly active participants. The
shylist was worth implementing as a nod to feelings of people who were
worried about anonymous reading, but in retrospect the whole frabble was
over a problem that never actually materialized.
My personal theory is that all the theories above about how HTML will
lead to disaster will not turn out to be correct. However, I have no
evidence at all for this theory. I am not enthusiastic about doing a
lot of coding to address problems that may or may not happen. I'd much
rather TRY IT, and if there are problems, FIX IT.
I've got a dozen different people with different worries and concerns,
and different ideas for what I should do. I can't code to that spec.
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mwg
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response 59 of 92:
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Mar 21 23:02 UTC 1999 |
You can only do what you see as reasonable, we can toss in input, but in
the end, the staff makes the decision.
The reason I am arguing so hard against this is that the nearest
equivalent to this issue that I have direct experience with, that of color
text on the old dial-up BBSes, has a known and predictable consequence
that I do not want to see repeated here. If HTML can be useful, people
can chuck a pointer in thier responses to a real web page for things like
diagrams.
If HTML gets permitted, just make sure that there is a stripped
translation used for non-browser types. If the past is any guide, such
stripped posts will be fairly obvious from thier 'content'. The other
point, be sure that the support can be easily turned off, should it prove
necessary.
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aruba
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response 60 of 92:
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Mar 22 00:16 UTC 1999 |
Re #59: Grex policy decisions are not up to the staff, though the staff of
course has to make decisions if no one else speaks up. But any policy issue
may be put to a vote if a member asks that it be so.
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scott
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response 61 of 92:
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Mar 22 11:59 UTC 1999 |
There actually are some color responses out there, in the older conferences.
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mwg
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response 62 of 92:
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Mar 23 14:54 UTC 1999 |
In the far past, people would occasionally bury hard-coded cursor controls
for VT100/ANSI terminals in thier responses. This could be amusing if you
had the right terminal, but otherwise you saw garbage, and in some cases
your terminal could end up in a not-very-useable state. The best 'cursor
dances' operated entirely on spacing and backspace control.
Cursor dancing doesn't work well these days because most people connect at
higher speeds than this sort of visual fiddling is effective at.
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remmers
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response 63 of 92:
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Mar 23 16:12 UTC 1999 |
(For an "HTML blocker", would it be feasible to put in a
user-configurable option of always being shown the plain-text version of
responses? Since a plaintext version will always exist, and since
Backtalk will show that to the user anyway in the cases where there *is*
no HTML version of a response, it doesn't seem like it would be hard to
show that to the user in all cases.)
Re resp:58 - I remember quite well the debate on anonymous web reading,
which got a heck of a lot more heated than this discussion has. I
favored anonymous web reading and thought the whole controversy was a
tempest in a teapot. And indeed, it's had just about zero visible impact
on Grex.
Unlike anonymous reading, which is invisible to users (almost by
definition), HTML would have a visible impact on every user of Backtalk.
There's an aspect of it that makes me nervous: The <IMG> tag makes it
very easy to embed images that are stored on any web server on the
internet. And unlike fancy formatting, which takes some work, putting
images into responses can be done casually, by typing a few characters.
And there are a lot of images out whose posting could have legal
implications. I'm concerned that support for <IMG> might (note that I
say "might", not "would") result in a substantial number of problematic
images (sexually explicit, copyrighted, illegal, etc.) popping up in the
conferences.
Only two people responded to my earlier question about what we should do
if this happens: Joe Parish, who said he would simply censor such images
(which as it happens, fairwitnesses can't do in Grex's version of
Picospan), and Steve Weiss, who said he didn't know how it should be
handled. Any other takers?
Generally speaking, I favor Jan's "TRY IT, and if there are problems,
FIX IT" approach to things. Thing is, I can see three possible fixes to
the "problematic images" problem, should it arise:
(1) Ignore it. Grex doesn't censor, so just leave the images there.
(2) Have cfadm censor them, following some established appropriateness
criteria, and report the poster to their ISP. This would mean we would
have the staff "policing" the conferences, similar to the way we now
police for vandals and mail spammers).
(3) Disallow images by having Backtalk filter out <IMG> tags, on the
grounds that preserving Grex's open, unpoliced, and uncensored style of
conferencing is more important than the ability to jazz up responses
with pictures.
Which of these three fixes do folks favor? Can anyone think of others? I
know I strongly favor (3). I think (1) is ruled out as a general policy
for legal reasons, and I would REALLY REALLY REALLY hate to see policing
spread to the conferences. That leaves (3). Do other people feel the
same way? I have no more evidence that a problem will arise than Jan
does that it won't, but I'd feel more comfortable going into the HTML
posting era if we have a concensus beforehand on how we would react to
this particular problem, should it arise.
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jep
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response 64 of 92:
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Mar 23 19:58 UTC 1999 |
I favor 3. The likelihood of problems seems high. Maybe an option
could be given to fw's to allow IMG tags to operate in their
conferences, which might allow for some interesting specialty
conferences to arise.
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scott
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response 65 of 92:
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Mar 23 21:53 UTC 1999 |
I like option (3) also.
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scg
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response 66 of 92:
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Mar 23 21:57 UTC 1999 |
I think option 2 may have some legal problems, in that if we make it a policy
that staff will go through and edit out illegal content, then we may be in
trouble if the staff misses something.
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janc
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response 67 of 92:
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Mar 23 22:27 UTC 1999 |
Looks like we want to allow fairwitnesses to turn off HTML images in
conferences, without necessarily turning off all HTML. (Currently
fairwitnesses can either turn HTML off completely or on completely.)
Is that what most people are looking for?
Note that if I implement this the easy way, then if you have HTML images
turned on, and then turn it off, the old posted images will not go away.
They will still be there, but you won't be able to post new images. The
rules are enforced at the time of posting, not at the time of reading.
This means that fairwitnesses will always be able to post images, simply
by turning it on long enough to make the post (just as fairwitnesses
currently can always post to frozen items, by thawing them long enough
to make a posting).
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aruba
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response 68 of 92:
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Mar 23 22:31 UTC 1999 |
Is it illegal to put a link on your web page to something that's copyrighted?
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cmcgee
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response 69 of 92:
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Mar 24 00:30 UTC 1999 |
I like 3 as well.
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devnull
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response 70 of 92:
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Mar 24 02:16 UTC 1999 |
Re #68: There are certainly some people who would like it to be illegal;
I'm not exactly sure whether it is or isn't at this point.
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i
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response 71 of 92:
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Mar 24 04:18 UTC 1999 |
Does option (2) mean that cfadm has to follow ALL the conferences, or just
respond to fw's censor requests? This particular cfadm doesn't have any
(graphical) web access at home....
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davel
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response 72 of 92:
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Mar 24 14:29 UTC 1999 |
The criteria - including that one - would have to be decided.
I strongly prefer option 3, for the kinds of reasons John gave.
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remmers
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response 73 of 92:
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Mar 24 18:14 UTC 1999 |
Hopefully (2) won't happen and we won't have to decide any on any
criteria. I would rather not see HTML posting capability result in the
establishment of a heavy-duty conference management bureaucracy.
Having expressed my fears, I'll say again that I have no evidence that
they'll come to pass. Grex has done extremely well by trusting the
users and keeping things very open.
I think that the ability to filter <IMG> without throwing out all of
HTML is a reasonable thing to implement.
I plan to turn both <IMG> and HTML on in conferences I fw and see how
it goes.
On another note: Currently you can do in-line sound files via the
<EMBED> tag. See (or rather hear) the MIDI file I "posted" in item 8 of
the backtalk conference, for example. <EMBED> should probably go, or at
least be selectively disable-able like <IMG>. (A technical problem:
Suppose two sound files get posted in the same item...)
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dpc
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response 74 of 92:
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Mar 25 14:59 UTC 1999 |
I'd favor Option 3 as well.
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janc
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response 75 of 92:
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Apr 7 14:36 UTC 1999 |
The new backtalk has been installed.
By default, HTML is turned off in all conferences.
Fairwitnesses can turn it on, with or without images.
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lilmo
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response 76 of 92:
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Apr 15 22:55 UTC 1999 |
Re resp:19 Hear, hear!!
re resp:23 and resp:24 I propose a compromise (for the end of a long
todo list) On the BBS's that I enjoyed in my halcyon college days, each post
that was a response to a particular post had a tag at the beginning so stating,
and if there were responses to it, there were similar tags designating them.
Something similar might be workable here. I think it would increase the number
of responses, tho', w/o increasing the quality thereof.
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other
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response 77 of 92:
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Apr 16 01:32 UTC 1999 |
is there any place we can easily look to see which conferences have html
permitted?
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remmers
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response 78 of 92:
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Apr 16 10:31 UTC 1999 |
Not that I know of. I've permitted html in the Enigma cf, however.
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scott
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response 79 of 92:
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Apr 16 10:56 UTC 1999 |
I've permitted full html in the DIY conference, on the theory that it would
be a good place to be able to display diagrams.
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hhsrat
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response 80 of 92:
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Apr 16 14:57 UTC 1999 |
I've got HTML turned ON in hangout, but hangout is still very new and
very small.
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lilmo
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response 81 of 92:
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Apr 16 22:18 UTC 1999 |
Very subtle plug there, hhsrat. :-)
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hhsrat
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response 82 of 92:
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Apr 17 01:48 UTC 1999 |
I try :)
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