Re: [Bug-gne]External Servers and Illegal/Extreme Content

[Tom Chance]

> > We have to have a central
> > submission form, that will then put references
> into a
> > central index, 
> 
> That would mean that one body would still control
> the material which isn't 
> consistent with the aims of the project.

Not at all. The submission form will have no form of
"censorship" on it. It will just dump every article
submitted to the site into one big repository, ready
to be moderated in whatever way we want, and then to
be copied to the main repository(s) and indexed on the
server(s). The form would just be exactly the same.
There could be a new form with the same layout, fields
etc. on each mirror too, just so long as each article
was properly indexed so that every mirror could access
it.


> >so that the resource remains coherent
> > and without broken links and missing materials. 
> 
> If we have mirrors, we won't loose material.

That's not quite what I meant. What you suggest in
terms of indexing is a bit unclear, so I'll try to
look at both solutions. 

*If you have a central index that then refers to
articles as address@hidden, then you'd have to have
secondary and other layers of backup IDs for that
article in case on server went down, or the article
was deleted for legal reasons. 
Lets say I submit an anti-"communist" article from
China. This gets dumped onto the US server, because it
can't be left on the Chinese mirror that has just been
set up. It is then stuck in the index on the main GNU
server, which refers to address@hidden Then it is properlu
indexed, and if it is ever removed, it is easy to take
its reference from the index. Just so long as nobody
has control over that index (i.e. it just hosts a
reference to every article that is stored on some
GNE-related server) then it can remain completely
"free", and is easy to maintain.

*If each mirror had an index, so when you searched a
mirror you searched that mirror's own index (so each
mirror duplicated the sit, not just the material) it
would be quite hard to ensure all the indexes were
exactly the same and referred to the right articles.
Lets say I submit a pro-Nazi article whilst browsing
the main UK mirror. This article can't be held in the
UK so it is sent off (by whatever mechanism) to be
stored in Portugal. In the same process, that article
would have to be added to the index as being
address@hidden How then would all the other indexes
recive this? A daily update? Each index would be
different, so servers would have to look for changes
to each index. The other way would be to add the
reference for the article to one "central" index, and
then twice a day, every index on each mirror gets
"updated" from the central one by means of a direct
copy. 

Either solution would work really I guess. Just so
long as we don't get some distributed network of
mirros hosting all sorts of material, and we don't
know where it is other than that it's "out there
somwhere!". We have to ensure we keep track of the
resource and don't let it turn into a jungle of
information with  seemingly random indexes so that
searches render a poor selection of the articles
available.

Tom Chance

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