NSFW tag in HTML 5

http://www.zeldman.com/2009/06/08/not-safe-for-work-tag-in-html-5/

by peter123 • 17 years ago

16 21 17 years ago

lallysingh• 17 years ago

That's a shame.

It'd be an almost perfect way to make the cyber-nanny types shut up: all the naughty bits of the Internet could be tagged, and a client-side solution would be trivial for parents, libraries, etc.

Additionally, employers could save themselves quite a few sexual harassment problems.

And frankly, the NSFW tag could be argued for both sides of the content vs presentation debate.

enomar• 17 years ago

Blocking content won't protect children or prevent employees from bringing inappropriate content into the workspace. Those that want it will find a way to get it. If they can't get it on their computer, it will be on their iPhone.

The only solution to these "problems" is to educate your kids or employees as to why the content isn't appropriate.

Raphael• 17 years ago

Semantic and useful.

kingsley_202• 17 years ago

Excellent idea, but should be an attribute, so that pages can make statements about links and images.

martey• 17 years ago

Covered in the article:

A tag is preferred to an attribute since it could then also be used around content and not just links.

kingsley_202• 17 years ago

I don't get that bit. I can add an attribute to a div tag quite easily to wrap content, but wrapping each link in a tag seems excessive.

pxlpshr• 17 years ago

How about just stop wasting your company's money looking at inappropriate material on the clock?

The chances that a site contains inappropriate material relevant to your job is slim to none, IMO.

sounddust• 17 years ago

I don't think a NSFW tag belongs in an international standard. "NSFW" is a concept which is limited in scope to a small number of cultures, particularly English-speaking ones.

I have a site that is community-translated, and the phrase "NSFW" is usually left untranslated. It even sparked several discussions in which people were genuinely confused about why content would be considered "not safe," and why it would be unacceptable at work but acceptable at home, etc..

j2d2• 17 years ago

Almost every programming language is written in English.

Xixi• 17 years ago

I think this is about culture, not language. It's two very different things. Except for all the ASCII/Unicode nightmare, there's not much in a programming language that depends on country/language/culture.

Who wants to see something like that : CultureInfo.GetCultures(CultureTypes.Puritan);

qeorge• 17 years ago

I agree, for the reasons you've stated as well as others. While I do think being able to properly label adult content is important, its better achieved through a meta tag, the class attribute, or in the case of a link, the rel attribute.

With the HTML5 and XHTML movements a primary focus has been on eliminating non-semantic tags like div and span. Its a noble pursuit, but I think in the witch-hunt to eliminate general purpose, non-semantic tags a monster has been created. When all elements must be semantic, we need many more to achieve the same goals.

Microformats are an example of doing it the right way. Instead of creating new HTML elements to represent each concept, microformats use an existing, general purpose attribute (class) to convey meaning.

I'm all for adding new elements when they make sense, but a NSFW element feels like a step backwards.

mpk• 17 years ago

This is a terrible idea. HTML5 (and friends) is a standard for markup, presentation and logic. It is certainly not a system that should contain value judgments.

Put this into a standard and you'll end up with a giant crazy mess. I can just imagine the idiotic lawsuits now.

Example. Some doofus somewhere looks at naked people on the web, on company time, against company policy and gets fired. Realizes that the webmaster didn't put up NSFW tags and sues the webmaster, the hosting provider and probably the upstream ISP as well. Before you know it we have yet another pointless, fruitless and unconstructive series of internationally televised debates on personal responsibility, provider accountability, etc. And because there's usually a bit of flesh involved somewhere, two thirds of the population will happily knee-jerk their way against common sense.

Yeah, brilliant idea this is.

seldo2• 17 years ago

Oh, but it absolutely should contain value judgements. There is nothing more semantic than value judgements, in fact. It's a tag that says "this content may be of questionable taste". How is that less semantic than <em>, saying "this content should be emphasized"?

planck2• 17 years ago

<em> is emphasis within the context of the page. <nsfw> is judgment within the context of the world. One of these judgments can be made reliably by the site owner; one cannot.

baddox• 17 years ago

I disagree. Perhaps "NSFW" is too localized to actually be the name of the tag, but I think there should be a tag that means "give a warning before displaying this content." It would cover NSFW stuff, but could also work for spoilers, or answers to a quiz, etc. There's no way there could be culpability for omitting this sort of tag since it IS a value judgment, just like <em>.

Hoff• 17 years ago

This is the HTML variant of the Evil Bit.

http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc3514.txt

GHFigs• 17 years ago

Misleading headline. It definitely isn't "in" HTML5, and it doesn't even seem to have been discussed on either the W3C or WHATWG mailing lists. Someone just filed a bug on the W3C bug tracker.

seldo2• 17 years ago

I like the concept of a tag to mark up the semantic meaning of "the author considers this content to be in poor taste". The name "NSFW" isn't a good choice, since the idea of some things being okay for home but not for work is a curiously hypocritical western idea. However, the concept that some things are in good taste and some are offensive but discussable is pretty universal (obviously, if it's so offensive nobody event wants to discuss it, they're not going to mark it up at all).

I like the concept, but not the name. Perhaps <offensive> or <inappropriate> or some variant could be used instead.

planck2• 17 years ago

Why not just use existing technologies and implement it yourself? It's already been done anyway: http://www.chrisfinke.com/addons/nsfw-detector/

nimbix• 17 years ago

Wasn't RDFa created exactly for cases like this, so you could attach any kind of meaning to any block/element in your document? The NSFW tag (and MildlyNSFW and SFW and SARCASM and...) could then be something that's supported by, say, input fields for comments, but converted to RDFa when submitted.

jrockway• 17 years ago

I like how it's OK to propose blocking content if it's "not safe for work", but how everyone gets upset when you talk about blocking advertisements. (Hence the lack of an <advertisement> tag.)