> Are You Kidding or Something ?
> This is not the place for this sort of Censorship Plans.
> Here we have millions of people supporting the Blue Ribbon Campaign
> and you want to organise the Size of the Jail Cell
> Who are you to Judge?
Judgement is my most highly valued human atribute. I judge everything
and everyone. Always in my own views; always as fairly as I can; always
trying not to let my judgement affect the way I treat someone unless it
should, but I do judge. I suspect you do too.
> Keith
I think this is the kind of thing that we are really having the problem
with.
Censorship:-
You write a book, I stop you publishing it.
Freedom:-
You write a book, I ignore it completely.
Stalinism:-
I write a book, You HAVE to read it. It's everywhere etc.
The catalogues aren't put there for the benefit of the web authors;
they're for the readers. They run on machines belonging to somebody,
using network connect belonging to somebody paid for by somebody (e.g.
DEC, DEC, in the case of my favourite). They set out with a specific aim
(getting publicity for DEC by providing something I want) and to try to
stop that is vandalism.
Trying to get round their prioritising algorithm is trying to stop that.
Them not indexing you is their choice. If you want a place where everyone
has the right to be indexed, then you are looking at government sponsorship
or a not-for-profit organisation having to be set up (not such a bad idea)
If they stop indexing people because of valuable content (e.g.
politics/sex/competing products) I will find a different engine. If they
start dumping stuff that tries to get in the way of a normal search then I
will move even more strongly over to them.
I've switched almost entirely to Alta Vista, simple because of the ease
with which I can personally chop down the search list I get back by
excluding URLs/Titles/etc..) and almost get back to a level of useful
information.
again :-
The internet does not belong to you. In fact it barely exists as an
object... It's all someones property and you have no right to what
you haven't paid for; just a set of mutually agreed friendly offers.
Trying to use someone elses computer (DECs) for something other than
they intended it can be a crime in most US states and the UK (DEC
intended to make it possible to search for information across the
World Wide Web to publicise themselves :- this person IMHO is
attempting to use the computer to advertise his buisness; he should
set up his own search engine or buy Lycos/Infoseek advertising space).
Oh; and just to end this diatribe; since people like Kieth will have
these feelings, this is a need which should be addressed and could easily
be by just having a censor-junk radio button on the Web pages. Anyone
who wants to wade through page after page of empty adverts would easily
be able to do so.
Possibly we just need some clearer set of ways of categorising pages and this
is the real answer. I don't think that the person who started the thread
really wants me to come to his page (I push up his hit rating which he
will pay for in one way or another, and I'm not likely to ever buy
his particular service).. Perhaps the only way forward in the long run
is some set of META info which it's obviously in your best interest to
get right. Mutually exclusive values of properties for the page, such as
commercial/non-commercial?
P.S. a final thought: do the people who do site rating count as censors?
If I write a bad web page and it doesn't get included in the Point top
5%, should I sue them :-)
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