At 11:51 PM 12/12/96 EDT, E. Allen Smith wrote:
Umm... I pointed out a while back the considerable problems with the RSAC attempt at objective ratings. See
I agree that it is not a purely descriptive system, however it is much moreso than others. I thought the following was a useful breakdown for my own purposes: Caveat on Vocabulary Before proceeding with the analysis we must first discuss some of the terms used in the analysis. The usage of terms "objective" and "judgmental" can be rather contentious. To address this, we disassociate any of these terms with any pejorative meanings ( opinionated gut feelings about Web content can be very useful ) and posit that there are three variables with which content labeling systems can be considered: descriptive/judgmental - does the label describe the content, or provide an opinion about the "appropriateness" of the content. deterministic/non-deterministic - is the previous process a deterministic process, or is it "gut" based, and voluntary, mandatory, or third party - does the author label his works voluntarily, is he required to label his works by some other agency, or can other services label his content. No rating system we discuss is purely descriptive or deterministic. Rather, each system varies with respect to where it falls between extremes. _______________________ Regards, Restlessness and discontent are the first necessities of progress. -Thomas A. Edison Joseph Reagle http://rpcp.mit.edu/~reagle/home.html reagle@mit.edu E0 D5 B2 05 B6 12 DA 65 BE 4D E3 C1 6A 66 25 4E