[Clipart] Contributors and moderation

[Alan Horkan]

Damn, I thought I had sent this last week.
Sorry for the late reply.


On Wed, 24 Mar 2004, Ted Gould wrote:

> Subject: [Clipart] Contributors and moderation

> Basically, groups are always started with good intentions by a group of
> people who really want it to be successful.  Then other people join with
> different goals, and things go a little bit crazy.  A good example of
> this is Slashdot, who ended up implementing a rather sophisticated
> rating system to handle the 'junk' submissions.

Clear goals certainly will help.

> I'm concerned that our clip-art repository may become victim to a
> similar issue.  Some will do it on purpose, they'll try to submit junk
> that is just entirely unacceptable (which is something we should define
> clearly).  But, others will just make crummy clip-art.  If the
> repository doesn't maintain some amount of quality it will be useless
> for everyone.
>
> So, I guess I'm asking two questions:
>
> 1) Do we need an 'acceptable use' policy that specifies what is
> acceptable and what isn't?  What should it include?

Are you perhaps referring to a certain historical flag that people
objected to?
I would suggest we try not to refuse anything but be extremely careful
about how we categorize and package some of the more contraversial types
of artwork.

> My response:  Yes, we do.  I think it should include:
>   -- Graphics are Public domain

A license that allows artists to use the SVG without fear of being asked
to pay royalties is essential, what is in and isn't derivative work is too
difficult to work out fairly.

Public domain seems like the best choice, but I cannot help wondering if
there is an alternative that would protect use from being totally screwed
over and exploited.  Could copyright be pooled (given to freedesktop.org)
rather than dropped entirely to give the group some ability to deal with
any potential 'abuse' or unwanted exploitation of the collection?
Anyone have a friendly lawyer we can ask?  What do the Free software
foundation recommend for this kind of 'data files'

>   -- SVG
>   -- Not intended to harm or offend as determined by?

This is impossible to determine and is tantamount to censorship.
Ideally we would have a searchable repository and flag certain items as
contraversial and only offer them for individual download rather than as
part of any packaged collections.

If you have not already witnessed the flag discussions it is surprising
how many flags people find offensive (or to give a more real world example
how offended people get by flag burning).  (And lets not forget my
favourite censorship topic: Art or just nudity?)

> 2) How do we police works that are in the repository?

As little as possible.  Censorship quickly spirals out of control a
minimal policy is probably the best bet.  If we can flag certain items as
contraversial and allowing people to 'self censor' it would be ideal.
When I say 'self censor' just as one can choose not to look in certain
directory categories in Yahoo and just as one can choose not to read
slashdot without moderation.

Hopefully there is a clean way we can fit this in with the Metadata
proposals.

> Do we need a
> group that is in charge of this?  What mechanisms are required to be
> built in for this to occur?  Is being able to roll back malicious
> changes enough?  Do we have a different set of what appears on the
> webpage that what we expect distributions to ship?  Do graphics need
> ratings?

I'd prefer rich metadata and categorisation rather than ratings
specifically but we still need to avoid pitfalls like Microsoft Encarta
and their "Monkey (bars)"

> Okay, I think I've talked enough - I really don't want this to be a
> monologue - what do people think?

Is there a suitable gallery content management system people have in mind,
ideally something being used by another project?  Presumably we could
setup RSVG to automatically generate PNG previews.

Sincerely

Alan Horkan
http://advogato.org/person/AlanHorkan/