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Inappropriate Waymark Categories


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We had an inclination that one of the first category requests would be something taboo. In fact Places > Entertainment category is currently using the joke icon we had for hooker corners. For the first iteration of Waymarking we decided not to allow any taboo categories but even so you may end up seeing them in categories like bars anyway. I mean some bars are also strip clubs, right?

 

So, considering that the GPS wielding community of geocachers is used to a family-friendly, the question is posed - What is an inappropriate waymark category and should they be allowed in some fashion? Yes, I expect this to be a very popular topic.

 

Here are my thoughts:

 

1. During the beta period, we should keep this family friendly for the sole fact that the site isn't designed to handle adult material and filter it from members of the family.

2. Features (whatever they may be) will be created to designate categories as "family friendly" - to maintain this rating the category manager should agree to uphold a set of requirements to make the category meet these requirements.

3. Reporting methods are in place for waymarkers (new word!) to report, ala craigs list style, waymarks to be labeled "inappropriate" or "miscategorized" or "spam" (or whatever). After some determined threshold of reports the listing is autoarchived by the site.

 

Additionaly we could adopt ratings systems like the ESRB for certain categories. From there you would have to put a cookie on your machine to allow you access to certain ratings, or you would need to be logged in and have your account set to allow this level of material.

 

Your thoughts?

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I like the idea of user selectable viewings based on the ratings. Since this is a listing I don't think gentlemans clubs should be pushed out since its a legal place. It is no different than a bar, casino, tattoo shop, or anything else that requires you to be of a certain age. All of these are considered a bad vice to one person or another. Censorship is the last thing we need. Listing the place doesn't mean anyone has to go there.

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It's hard to nail down where something becomes family unfriendly.

 

By and large even things that are considered 'unfriendly' are legal. My inclanation is to let the law decide. If a family can't do the waypoint as a unit it's not friendly. The location of a bar would be ok. Waypointing the center of a hedonistic adults only theme park would not be.

 

The law is an easier test than trying to figure out how many needles in a park, makes it unfriendly. Familes still can pick and choose. They can waypoint the entrance to a bar but not many will choose to.

 

Good luck. It's not an easy question to answer.

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I like the idea of user selectable viewings based on the ratings. Since this is a listing I don't think gentlemans clubs should be pushed out since its a legal place. It is no different than a bar, casino, tattoo shop, or anything else that requires you to be of a certain age. All of these are considered a bad vice to one person or another. Censorship is the last thing we need. Listing the place doesn't mean anyone has to go there.

I agree...give users the tools to filter out material they wish to not see, but don't censor.

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One category I was thinking of submitting was 'crime sites', such as where the St. Valentines Day massacre took place, or where one of the big Brinks robberies took place. Would that be off limits? Some of the areas might not be the best, but it would have nothing to do with the category per se. Additionally, would there potentially be a problem with the category in and of itself?

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One category I was thinking of submitting was 'crime sites', such as where the St. Valentines Day massacre took place, or where one of the big Brinks robberies took place. ...

Might be better to do it under the title "Historically Significant Crime Sites" - but I think it's a lot more palatable than strip clubs. (though it's only fair if there are equal opportunity strip clubs...)

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I like the idea of user selectable viewings based on the ratings. Since this is a listing I don't think gentlemans clubs should be pushed out since its a legal place. It is no different than a bar, casino, tattoo shop, or anything else that requires you to be of a certain age. All of these are considered a bad vice to one person or another. Censorship is the last thing we need. Listing the place doesn't mean anyone has to go there.

I agree...give users the tools to filter out material they wish to not see, but don't censor.

I hate it when I agree with the chicken.

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Yes. Violence is often considered ok, while sex is a no no. It really depends on the family, but refer to the "hot coffee" incident for Grand Theft Auto to understand how violence is far from taboo in many families.

 

Who judges a category to be taboo? What is the litmus test? Please don't make me decide. There are too many aboard my hate train already.

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Violence is often considered ok, while sex is a no no.

 

Ummm. In the U.S.

 

In MANY other places in the world, it is the opposite. I've seen frontal nudity at 8-9 PM on the T.V. in Spain, Italy, Germany and France. But violent movies (e.g., "clockwork orange" or the original "Texas Chainsaw Massacre") didn't even used to be available for private sale in the original, U.S. version in many places overseas. (The original versions often sold for over $200 on the black market.) Makes me glad I saw "Basic Instinct" for the first time in a theatre in France. There are also places where BOTH is taboo (e.g., China).

 

And in many locales, BOTH violence and sex are taboo. Please don't allow American puritanical views to define an international sport.

 

Edit: I like the ideas expressed further down, of having "self limiting" preferences to control the "types" of waymarks that appear. Sort of like a "V-Chip" for Waymarking. There could be categories such as "nudity/sex/adult themed" (e.g. strip clubs), "violent themed" (e.g., crash sites "upload photos!"), "scatelogical themed" (somebody already submitted a "poo" proposal, I believe).

Edited by mfc61
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I like my puritanical views thank you.

 

Personally I would prefer not having the sex club type listings, but that isnt likely to happen. What would make me happy Jeremy, is being able to not view the listings, even by name or category, whenever I go on the site. Just one click, and they are forever ignored (unless I click to remove the ignore.) I dont mean on pocket queries or anything like that. I mean customize what categories I view. The scenes of violence would be one I would like to ignore too, because violence affected my family. It is something I try hard to distance myself from.

 

Ok, what Im asking for. Is it possible to be able to customize the listings we see? Can we click on a category and not have to view it in the future? Poof, no gentlemens clubs, no scenes of violent crime, no mcdonalds, no starbucks or whatever category I have zero interest in. To me, that would be more useful than the top 80% bar.

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Okay, here's my two cents:

 

I think it would be absurd to exclude legal and legitimate institutions from being listed on this site simply because they are not "family friendly". This just goes too far. For example, Brewpubs are not "family friendly". Who takes their kids to the bars? What about bookstores that happen to have Playboy or Penthouse on their shelves? Also, what about cigar lounges? Very cool-- not kid friendly.

 

Basically, I like the idea of having a real GPS users database where one can find virtually anything that they are looking for, within the bounds of the law. If we were limiting the experience to only "special" sites then why have a McDonald's category? My point is, that you guys have a good idea here and you shouldn't spoil it by worrying about "the kids". Of course, we can be PC by not allowing vulgar pics or language. But I just don't see how the coords of a strip club can be considered out of line.

 

If you exclude one thing, you'll find yourself constantly questioning what is "family friendly" and who gets to decide.

 

Again, just my two cents.... :P

Edited by some_guy
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giving us the tools to filter out or lock out the adult oriented waymarks based upon our profile would be the logical solution. If there were a setting that we could check or uncheck to allow adult waymarks based upon our age would be good, but the age verification would be an issue. Placing the burden on the user by having then click on a statement each time they want to access those waymarks that makes them state they are over 18, placing the burden of proof on the user rather than on Groundspeak might be the correct legal way to avoid potential lawsuits. Will be a touchy area to get into. If Grandma wants to sue Groundspeak because Junior got rolled in the parking lot of a local strip joint because he was Waymarking the parking lot and wants to sue Groundspeak because they allowed him to access the database that had the coordinates listed could be an issue. Or how about the parents that want to sue because little johnny got ran over by a drunk driver at the local bar because Johnny was Waymarking the parking lot and that was the only reason their 14 year old would have been in the parking lot. Believe me, in this day and age, anyone can and most likely will take you to court over the most bizarre situations.

 

Baptist Deacon

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At worst there would always be the ability to "ignore" an entire category so you don't even see it, right? Wouldn't want to tempt anyone to see whats behind the door. And to elaborate on what someone else was saying, if we posted topless beaches here in the US, it would be considered sexual. But when I lived in Europe it was a common sight and is not considered that way all but rather the norm. This site is worldwide, correct? We shouldn't use our American views to close our eyes and mind to whats out there.

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Two thoughts (which is twice my normal daily output, and I'm using them BOTH here!) --

 

1) A feature similar to Google's "Safe Search", which you can set to ON, MODERATE, or OFF. Picking a simplistic example -- and I'm not arguing the merits of any of these -- with Safe Search OFF you might see brothels and strip clubs, at MODERATE you might see just strip clubs, and with ON you would see neither. It's JUST AN EXAMPLE -- I am not proposing that either of these should or should not be listed.

 

2) An "ignore" feature such as was recently incorporated into gc.com. You don't want to see Mickey D's? Click "ignore this category" and it will never curse your screen again.

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May I suggest subsription to categories, like newsgroups or things? you could subscribe to the 'adult oriented' categories then you would be able to browse them. Plus you could choose certain categories, if you wanted just 'crime sites,' but not 'brothels' this would be effective. Just a quick ID check or something to verify age.

 

I like the ignore idea too, this would be good for other categories as well so I could ignore McDonalds and walmart.

Edited by beopots
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I like the ignore this catagory idea, but it would have to work at the Sub-catagory level too.

 

This might be the easiest to implement and allows each user to set their 'family-friendly' preferences based on thier own personal beliefs. I think I would also use it to filter out catagories that simply don't interest me. To use an example already used in this thread 'BrewPubs'. I'm not a beer drinker and really have no interest in that catagory. If I had the option I'd likely filter this one out, but I know a lot of people who'll have it on their favorites list and that's perfectly okay.

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1) A feature similar to Google's "Safe Search", which you can set to ON, MODERATE, or OFF. Picking a simplistic example -- and I'm not arguing the merits of any of these -- with Safe Search OFF you might see brothels and strip clubs, at MODERATE you might see just strip clubs, and with ON you would see neither. It's JUST AN EXAMPLE -- I am not proposing that either of these should or should not be listed.

Jeez, WZK. Yesterday you beat me to posting a McD's waymark and today you bet me with the Google SafeSearch idea. Another thing we could do is use age-tiers for results that are returned. For example, if an Under 18 filter was used, no tobacco shops would be returned. An 18-21 filter would return tobacco shops but no liquor stores. And then a 21+ filter would return everything. Of course, it would be your choice of which to use. Maybe that's just another one of geognerd's too complex ideas. I like the idea of being able to check off categories you're interested in, and having those settings attached to your profile.

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Ok, here's my two cents. What I'm reading is that most people don't really want the locations of strip clubs and 'houses of ill repute' and what not in there, but don't want them to be prevented from entering them under the grounds of 'who decides what is family friendly'.

In one area one thing may be seen as taboo, and in another area, something else may be.

What I would propose then is a setup where on creation of a new waymark category, the category owner sets up a series of attributes, things like indicating what might frighten people away from the listing (like sexual content, or violent nature etc). No restrictions on what you put in the database,

 

BUT

 

on the creation of a new account, all of the filters are set to on, i.e. you only see the perfectly benign family oriented stuff. Then to turn them off you have to go through some fairly deepish menu to enable the 'kinky' stuff.

Then when my little brother logs on, he's not looking at where all the strip clubs in Calgary are (heck, he's not going to 'decide' to turn them off).

 

In a case where someone doesn't set appropriate attributes for their category (i.e. strip clubs not having the 'mature content' flag set) well we can let the community decide.

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We have a building that was reported to be where Rail Road executives went for the high class call girls. The working stiffs had to go womewhere else. This building features nudity in the architecture.

 

It's a former cat house, it's got nudity, it has historical significance. It's worthy of a catagory. Ignore might work best because while in it's day people would of ignored it, today they would seek it out. Go figure.

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ID checking on the 'net is currently just doable if you require use of a credit card. Which will turn off most people, including those who do not have such a thing.

Would that be a bad thing? My feelings are if people are willing to search for categories with this type of content they should be willing to submit to some type of age verification, be it credit card or DNA testing.

 

Besides, that's the idea isn't it? To make it hard for children to stumble across adult material.

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My inclanation is to let the law decide. If a family can't do the waypoint as a unit it's not friendly. The location of a bar would be ok. Waypointing the center of a hedonistic adults only theme park would not be.

 

The law is an easier test than trying to figure out how many needles in a park, makes it unfriendly.

This post started me thinking. In some states, children aren't allowed inside a bar, in other states they are allowed inside. Same thing with casinos --- Nevada they can be in the casino if they're not gambling, West Virginia they can't be. So what you can find as a family is different in different states (let alone different countries), and who knows all these vagaries of law?

 

Then the post came about the lawsuits --- grandma could sue Groundspeak because Junior got rolled in a strip club parking lot. Well, these locations are listed in the phone book (under 'gentlemen's clubs' in Houston), and they're not filtered to 'adults only.' Anyone can look it up in the yellow pages. Anything that is listed in the yellow pages, which is just about every legimate business establishment with a phone, should be fair game for Waymarking. Without age-based filtering.

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Meh. I'd rather if we didn't dwell on the legalities of things. That is our responsibility as a company. What I am looking for is some good solutions for allowing them yet keeping them from the wrong eyes.

 

Obviously there won't be any illegal locations, though I'll be darned if I would know of one. You gotta be real stupid to post a waymark of your secret evil hideout anyway.

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An "ignore" feature such as was recently incorporated into gc.com. You don't want to see Mickey D's? Click "ignore this category" and it will never curse your screen again.

Actually it would curse my screen again. For gc.com, to use the ignore feature, you get this:

 

This is a private, confidential listing for those locations you do not want to show up on your search results. By default this is not a shared list so it will not be available for others to view. The owner of the listing will also not see that you are ignoring it.

 

Once you have added the item to your ignore list you can filter it out using the advanced search options and in Pocket Queries.

 

So you only filter them out by advanced search methods or pocket queries. There are many I would love to ignore on gc.com without having to use those. Regarding Waymarking, the ignore option should enable us to ignore the subcategories or listings no matter what search method is used, even if it is just scanning the listings.

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I like my puritanical views thank you.

Fair enough. Just be aware that they indicate your location just as surely as your GPS coordinates!

Under 18 filter was used, no tobacco shops would be returned. An 18-21 filter would return tobacco shops but no liquor stores. And then a 21+ filter would return everything.

Eh what? It's perfectly legal for a 16yr old to buy tobacco, or an 18yr old to buy liquor. Come to that, it's perfectly legal for a 12yr old to consent to sex. (Though homoseuality is either permitted from birth or punishable by death, depending on where you're standing.)

 

The real question is, is this a global site, or a US site which allows worldwide coordinates? If the latter, then a simple age-banding approach will work.

 

But if you want a global site then the system needs to be a little more flexible. Perhaps each category should have a number of ratings, for sex (none, thru underwear adverts to rape locations), violence (none, thru Tom'n'Jerry sightings to murder locations), religion (none, thru old churches to suicide bomb locations), drugs (none, thru starbucks to cocaine "outlets"), etc etc. Then people from anywhere in the world can input their cultural and personal sensitivities and be sure they're not offended.

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My inclination is to let the law decide.

But this site will be used all across the world. The law varies wildly from one country to the next, and even from one state to the next within the U.S. Some sort of user-supplied family rating would probably work best.

That's true about the laws. They change from state to state. So do user preferences. The laws are easier to quantify, and waypoints probably should not automaticly be available worldwide.

 

For example each country could have it's own Hot Springs catagory. While hot springs are not too controversial, the owners can apply their different local laws to the suitablity of a waypoint. Plus some owners would not be swamped by the virtually limitless number of logs.

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I'm with Tsegi Mike. Why should I have to go through extra steps not to see adult rated material?

I think one concept was to make you go through extra steps too see adult rated material. But of course there's that whole subjective thing (nudist beaches anyone?)

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I tend to be pretty relaxed about adult themed items. They just plain don't offend me. Yet I also see why others can be offended, don't want the exposure to them and/or want to be sure to keep kids from them. Some kind of filtering makes sense and is what I would like to see. To the extent that it can be extra steps to see it, rather than extra steps to block it out seems like the ideal. This could especially be true if not doing so would run the site into extra requirements under various child protection laws (I have nooooo idea if it would or not, I am just speculating and suggesting that it be considered just in case). As Jeremy indicated, I suppose there would always be those subjective middle ground things. There, perhaps adding an ignore feature in addition to the filtering would help cover those too for people who don't want to see them and/or for items that slip through the filters.

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There, perhaps adding an ignore feature in addition to the filtering would help cover those too for people who don't want to see them and/or for items that slip through the filters.

Yes, that's a good idea. However, in the FAQ, Jeremy estimates there will "eventually be hundreds of thousands of categories", so an ignore feature isn't going to be the whole answer.

 

Laws differ from state to state and country to country. Attitudes differ from person to person, and culture to culture. But even though tolerances to sex / violence / commercialism differ, most people are pretty-much agreed on what sex / violence / commercialism actually is. So once a good set of ranges has been defined, there should be relatively little controversy over the ratings, and relatively few which slip the net.

 

So, nudist beaches themselves are not subective. They fall somewhere between "underwear adverts" and "sex clubs" on sex, rate zero on violence, zero on "drugs" and either "free", "members only" or "varied" on commercialism. Anyone going to disagree with that??? The only thing that's subjective is whether you wish to see flabby gonads burning to a crisp in the sun, or whether you'd be happier tightening your filters so that nothing more revealing than a "Hello Boys" billboard assaults your sensibilities.

Edited by Teasel
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Are talking about waypointing things that can be found in public? What I mean is are the goals like; take a photo of you GPS with an adult book store in the background, not having to actually go inside or go inside an adult book store, buy a magazine and take a photo of your GPS with said magazine.

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We talked about this a little more in the office, and this seems like a good idea: Mirroring the ESRB style ratings but not so much as the main rating but in the content descriptors they use.

 

If a category is listed as "Rating Pending" the category hasnt' been rated by the category owner. If they decide on allowable material, like comic mischief, suggested themes, or use of alcohol, those content descriptors should be added. Once the content descriptors are added the individual user can filter out or block category viewing for certain content.

 

It won't be exactly like the ESRB but will be better applied to content within the site. If a parent wishes to filter out content for an account they can do so.

 

This forum post was unofficially rated for EVERYONE 10+

 

icon_e10plus.gif

 

Here's the guide

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Teasel's "nudist beach" category is a good example of the problem. To a naturist, this would rate zero on the "sex" count: but to a pervert it would be near the top of the rating. Highly subjective!

 

Surely, as it's obvious a category cannot be defined objectively as contentious, the best solution is;

 

- clearly indicate the likelihood that a category contains waymarks that a significant proportion of "waymarkers" will want to ignore (as decided subjectively - and possibly wrongly - by the category owner)

 

- make ignoring such categories very simple.

 

This way, the easily-offended can play safe and ignore without even needing to get upset by looking at the offensive waymarks in any detail. It also covers Waymarking.com, who can point to this procedure if ever asked questions about lists of "dogging" sites or devil-worship categories...

 

The only refinement is that a category owner can set his/her own category to "ignore by default". Then it would appear on everyone's "ignore list" from day 1 and need the "ignore" flag to be removed by the inquisitive waymarker before he/she can have a look.

 

HH

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Teasel's "nudist beach" category is a good example of the problem. To a naturist, this would rate zero on the "sex" count: but to a pervert it would be near the top of the rating. Highly subjective!

 

<snip>

No wonder you see it as a problem. You seem to be lumping sex and nudity together. A nudist beach would rate high on nubity but, hopefully, zero on sex.

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I certainly wasn't lumping sex and nudity together!

A nudist beach would rate high on nubity but, hopefully, zero on sex
That's what I was trying to say when I wrote
this would rate zero on the "sex" count
...but also, that it depends on your opinions about nudity. Some would disagree with the zero sex rating, sadly.

 

The problem was not specifically nudist beaches, it was one of fixing a rating to something which varies in acceptability depending on the observer.

 

Teasel said

They fall somewhere between "underwear adverts" and "sex clubs" on sex
- but my point was that there's a big range in there which can't be objectively assessed. The only option I can come up with is to allow the category owner to recognise a reasonably high potential for offence or controversy and give advance warning.

 

HH

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I like the idea of user selectable viewings based on the ratings. Since this is a listing I don't think gentlemans clubs should be pushed out since its a legal place. It is no different than a bar, casino, tattoo shop, or anything else that requires you to be of a certain age. All of these are considered a bad vice to one person or another. Censorship is the last thing we need. Listing the place doesn't mean anyone has to go there.

I agree...give users the tools to filter out material they wish to not see, but don't censor.

I agree with Stunod. Please don't censor but do allow filtering.

 

What is family-friendly to some is not family-friendly to others. Case in point: Hooters Restaurants. I know plenty of people (including many family members) who do not consider Hooters a family restaurant; they are offended by it -- not only wouldn't they take family, they wouldn't go with a group of only adults. I also know a significant number of families who have no problem going there. On many occasions I've seen parents and children there. I've even seen a birthday party for a grandmother once.

 

What is taboo for one group of people is the norm for other groups.

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Filter yes, Censor no.

 

To take it to the extreme though. I have a friend who has pretty strong views about not eating meat. For her she would want to filter out anything related to McDonalds, KFC, etc. It wouldn't fall under the not family friendly area and yet offensive to her, and still low on the ESRB. So how would she or others like her handle that?

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