Recently, I have been thinking about how to avoid a lot of the issues that LiveJournal has been having regarding things like naked userpics, nude pictures in journals, etc. Basically, we don't want to be branded as censors, nor do we want all the extra work that it takes to deal with these issues. Basically, we need some degree of kidproofing.
Currently, random searches will deliver you to any old journal. It could deliver you to a page full of porn. Take the community
homosexuals, for example, which has gay porn. On a strict legal stance, is this any worse than delivering you to nakedparts? In most places, no. Still, it's not where most mothers would want their kids to go by random circumstance.What would be better would be something like this.
Note that the new design for Random, though taking away a bit of the immediacy of the previous random feature, is actually more friendly than before for skimming through several random sites in order to find one that is of interest. Also, I added the idea of searching for random communities, as it would be a nice additional feature for users to find random communities. (Finding good communities is tough if you can't do a full directory search.)
Likewise, we can add a disclaimer box / disclaimer text on all interest searches and directory searches. Also, we may want to consider making directory searches default to not displaying user pics... Presumably, this will reduce the burden on the servers, as well as reduce the chance of anyone being offended by someone else's user pic.
That's the whole plan in a nutshell. It's not foolproof, and it certainly doesn't prevent minors from seeking out adult-themed content, but it does warn them, which seems to be the standard online requirement. This reduces LiveJournal's liability risk. It also decreases the workload for the Abuse team while protecting the freedom of expression allowed by the users of LiveJournal.
Anyone want to work on it?!
