Comments on: A Semantic Solution for Presenting NSFW Content

By: Jeff

Jeff — Tue, 09 Jan 2007 17:57:48 +0000

I want to echo what Eric said. This is a semantic abuse of the rel attribute (just as nofollow is).

By: Eric Meyer

Eric Meyer — Tue, 09 Jan 2007 15:05:10 +0000

Technically, ‘rel’ indicates the properties of the destination resource in relation to the targeting resource. So rel=”stylesheet” means “the relationship of that document to this one is that it’s a style sheet for this document”. Given this, rel=”nsfw” could mean “that document is a NSFW version of this one” or “”that document is NSFW as compared to this one”.

The key being that ‘rel’ describes a relationship between the targeting and targeted documents. I’m not sure that NSFW is a concept that applies there.

The ‘class’ attribute, of course, has no such restrictions, which is why most microformats use ‘class’ to contain their semantic information.

By: Ian

Ian — Wed, 03 Jan 2007 13:52:51 +0000

For the current page, a META tag of some sort is probably what you want.

By: Jordan

Jordan — Sat, 30 Dec 2006 22:40:44 +0000

Everything offends someone. I can view rotten.com and ogrish at work and my boss will come by and chuckle. People’s standards and environments are different. This is silly.

By: Mike Schinkel

Mike Schinkel — Sat, 30 Dec 2006 21:56:01 +0000

I think you should use “upmga” instead of “nsfw.” That would stand for:

“Uptight People Might Get Offended”

With “upmga” it would no longer be ethnocentric as only uptight people would need filter the content. ;-)

By: SpookyET

SpookyET — Sat, 30 Dec 2006 17:24:56 +0000

I wonder if NSFW should be extended to content in the current page:

...

By: SpookyET

SpookyET — Sat, 30 Dec 2006 17:22:46 +0000

Greasemonkey script: http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/6916

Should NSFW contain the reason why it is NSFW? How would you add that?

class="nsfw-language" rel="nsfw-pr0n"

By: Gervase Markham

Gervase Markham — Sat, 30 Dec 2006 12:17:09 +0000

But in your paragraph case, you don’t actually just want to mark the link and the contents of the link as NSFW. Because if you do, and someone hides NSFW content as you suggest, the remainder of the paragraph makes no sense.

If only the target of a link is NSFW, you don’t want to hide it, you want to indicate it as such. So the “default” styling for NSFW should be to hide class=”nsfw”, and color (e.g.) red rel=”nsfw”. And people should avoid putting NSFW words inside the tag (as in your example) because hiding just the tag leads to an incomprehensible sentence.

So ideally, your link to whitehouse.com would be rel=”nsfw” and so clearly marked, but the text would describe the site in a SFW way; whitehouse.com itself would have , and be hidden.

Gerv

By: Bob Jonkman

Bob Jonkman — Sat, 30 Dec 2006 08:21:56 +0000

I think you may be re-inventing the wheel:

http://www.w3.org/PICS/

--Bob.

By: Karl Swedberg

Karl Swedberg — Sat, 30 Dec 2006 02:48:20 +0000

“Just take care that it is also a multi-valued attribute just like class, e.g. rel=”nsfw nofollow”.”

In that case, again for the jQuery crowd, you could do something like this:

$(’[@rel*=nsfw],.nsfw’).hide();

By: Mario

Mario — Fri, 29 Dec 2006 23:39:43 +0000

Generally, I object people that can’t even write valid Web URLs (hint: trailing slash). But of course, rel=nsfw is a good idea. Just take care that it is also a multi-valued attribute just like class, e.g. rel=”nsfw nofollow”.

By: Jonathan Sharp

Jonathan Sharp — Fri, 29 Dec 2006 22:43:45 +0000

For the jQuery crowd: $('*[@rel=nsfw],.nsfw').hide();

No need for css, just the one line

By: Ned Baldessin

Ned Baldessin — Fri, 29 Dec 2006 21:53:28 +0000

Funny geeky idea, but don't you find it slightly ethnocentric to standardize in a universal spec a very western set of moral/cultural values?

Of course, goatse is probably off limits on all continents, but what about corner cases like female breasts, that you can see on huge billboards over here in france.

By: sonofapiven

sonofapiven — Fri, 29 Dec 2006 15:54:10 +0000

I think the HTML markup needs to support a tag like NSF and have an attribute such as ‘work’, ‘kids’, ‘wife’ etc.

This would be way more flexible and work well for a multitude of use cases.

By: TV Online

TV Online — Fri, 29 Dec 2006 15:48:38 +0000

Interesting concept, but I don’t think it will catch on. Remember goat cx is technically a prank, and that sort of stuff would not be coded with any hint or clue. But it may work for other responsible coders.

By: Rob Crowther

Rob Crowther — Fri, 29 Dec 2006 11:23:47 +0000

You might want to check out the microformats.org website, with many examples of the use of rel to add semantic value to links (and also extensive use of the class attribute for this too). Also, there is an attribute ‘rev’ which may get around your second problem with rel above. Your idea seems compatible with the microformats initiative, you may get better traction if you can bring it up in that community.