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

[Tom Chance]

> Define how to moderate without causing the
> Encyclopedia to be 
> under central control ?

Look we can't just let every article submitted enter
the resource, we've decided that already, so we don't
get binary bombs and adverts. The most open moderation
system proposed was mine and Rob's which is where any
article only needs a few "yes" votes to get in;
there's no majority needed or anything similar... no
"reject" votes. That's about as open as you can get,
and about as decentralised as we can make any
moderation process. It'd also work well IMHO.



> > 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. 
> 
> How would you track the legislation in every country
> and decide if 
> each article was legal ?

For most articles it wouldn't be hard, because they're
sure to be legal in almost any country. For
controversial ones, a US server (but not GNU to keep
RMS happy) or a UK server would suffice. For really
controversial articles, if we can find a server
somewhere that doesn't care, they can all go to that
one. The articles get tagged as needing to go to such
a server when "moderated".


> >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.
> 
> And how would you propose to do that ?

Stick it on a computer and just leave the system
automated; don't let somebody sneak through it
deleting references.


> If the author wanted to submit such an article they
> would need to 
> find a server which would allow it, say they found
> such a server in 
> Portugal that server would host it.

That would be an alternative to my solution of making
the moderators designate certain articles as
"controversial/illegal". You're just putting the honus
on the user rather than the moderator. Either way
works for me.

> Now when someone uses a front end to preform a
> search the front 
> end can query the main GNEP server (or mirrors of
> it) and if it 
> wants to it can also query the server in Portugal,
> it could collate 
> the results and pass them back to the user.

Don't you think that might be a bit slow though? So
when the user searches the frontend/ classfication he
is in, he could select to just search his mirror, or
all the mirrors (which would let him see more varied
articles). So the perl script (or php or whatever)
would parse the index on his mirror, return any
results into a temporary file, then parse every other
index (there could be quite a few) to find more
results, ensuring it doesn't double return the same
article, until its parsed all (or a few) of the
mirrors, then it finally returns the result to the
user. Slow slow slow. Why not just have the index on
every mirror to be identical, so when you search, you
just search your local index, which can then refer to
articles across the GNE "network". You could then have
every submission put its reference into one "central"
server, which would then be copied to all the mirrors
every 6 hours or so. That's much faster for the user,
easy to do, not centralised despite there being a
"central" server, and allows us to server materials
across the world.


Tom Chance

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