[IAEP] Non-technical Activity Library editors policy

Aleksey Lim alsroot at member.fsf.org
Mon Nov 30 22:05:51 EST 2009


On Mon, Nov 30, 2009 at 11:11:17AM +0100, Sascha Silbe wrote:
> On Mon, Nov 30, 2009 at 12:19:31AM +0000, Aleksey Lim wrote:
> 
> > There were some threads in mailing lists last time about what 
> > activities
> > could be approved to be public on Activity Library[1]. Well, some
> > of these questions are very arguable, but the worst thing which could 
> > be
> > is what we have now - lack on any definitions.
> 
> Unfortunately your draft is lacking any definition as well:
> 
> [1]:
> >>   * inappropriate(violent, sexual, subversive content) content
> >>   * non-FOSS licence, any restriction for essential(for education, 
> >> some people think, essential for other cases too:) behaviour, free to 
> >> run|study|redistribute|change
> 
> For the latter it's reasonably easy to come up with a definition (e.g. 
> all OSI-approved [3] licenses like Sourceforge does or only DFSG-free 
> [4,5] licenses like Debian).
> 
> The former ("inappropriate content") is unfortunately highly subjective 
> and IMO we should stay well clear of letting these considerations 
> influence decisions on whether an activity is displayed or not.
> I could imagine adding voluntary "content advisory" information like 
> IMDB is doing. [6]
> If we ever decide to filter the default view (i.e. the one not-logged-in 
> users get to see), we should _very_ clearly indicate it's only a subset 
> and that the filtered-out ones are not necessarily inappropriate to the 
> current user. It should also include easily understable and reproducible 
> instructions for removing these restrictions (i.e. creating an account 
> and configuring filter rules).
> 
> Of course content that is illegal (to all audiences) should be kept out 
> of a.sl.o. I'd suggest to take US and EU laws as a basis.
> If obliged to do filtering by law (e.g. US), we should base it on IP 
> address <-> country mappings.
> 
> Just to make my position clear: To me, it's not about whether to provide 
> hardcore porn or highly violent content to children [7] (*), but about 
> all the other subjective decisions: Is Whack-a-mole [8] / Whack-a-rat 
> appropriate? I know many people who would argue on either side. 
> Similarly for various degrees of nakedness. And these are just two 
> examples, there's an entire universe spanning all the different 
> judgements.
> 
> 
> > [1] 
> > http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Activity_Library/Editors/Policy/Non-Technical
> > [2] 
> > http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Activity_Library/Editors/Policy#Additional_technical_policy_for_editors
> [3] http://www.opensource.org/licenses
> [4] http://www.debian.org/social_contract#guidelines
> [5] http://www.debian.org/intro/free
> [6] Warning: Potentially inappropriate: 
> http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0298203/parentalguide
> [7] Warning: Potentially inappropriate: 
> http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0265086/parentalguide
> [8] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whack-a-mole
> (*) We've watched some similarly violent and frightening war films at 
> school, while discussing WW II. But that's a controlled environment.
> 
> CU Sascha


btw does OLPC have such policy?

-- 
Aleksey


More information about the IAEP mailing list