dw_suggestions | Streamline logged-out viewing of NSFW/18+ content

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Streamline logged-out viewing of NSFW/18+ content

Title:
Streamline logged-out viewing of NSFW/18+ content

Area:
logged-out users, entries

Summary:
Allow logged-out users with no content preferences set to declare their preferences in some fashion to reduce the number of steps they have to take in order to view flagged content. This would be especially helpful for people who use bookmarking services and offline cached content services.

Description:
There should be some way for logged-out users and people without accounts (and external services, which generally do not have accounts) to view content flagged as NSFW or 18+ with a minimum of barriers, provided that there is some acknowledgment.

Some services have a way to add something like "?view_adult=true" to the end of a link.

One could possibly also do this with saved cookies, but that could be an issue for external services attempting to index the site. On the one hand, sometimes it's good to have a thing that's technically public but the contents have not been crawled. On the other hand, "NSFW" shouldn't mean "dear search engines, please don't index or cache this", it should mean "NSFW". (I am not opposed to the idea of an entry-by-entry no-index/no-cache sort of setting, but I don't want it in my NSFW/18+.)

An external service could always set up an account for their indexing tool to use, but that's a one-by-one sort of solution, and not all external services would necessarily be willing to do that, and it doesn't seem elegant.

Having a URL argument could lead to someone posting a link somewhere and someone else clicking it and getting a faceful of something they did not want. On the other hand, there's nothing stopping the entry owner from posting something blatantly NSFW with no entry settings to indicate that it is. The regular site view does display a discreet little warning at the top of every flagged entry, so even a link where a warning splash page was bypassed would have some indication that this was NSFW/18+. It could also lead to someone who is under 18 logging out and using the URL argument, but a logged-out user can view an 18+ flagged entry by clicking the button that declares them 18+.

If consensus is that the existing NSFW/18+ warning is too subtle for being useful to visual logged-out users who have bypassed the warning splash page, one compromise might be to make a larger header area with a more prominent warning when that page has been bypassed, to (depending on screen size) attempt to force the actual NSFW content down below the fold, in the fashion of spoiler space, and to have a notice that is less easy to ignore than a 16x16 icon. (Text-only users could get the same effect; I'm not sure of the best way to get the same effect for screen reader users.) (However, having a very large bright red scary type of visual warning could be bad for misclicks-at-work use case; it should advise the user that they should be aware without alerting the whole office that they just clicked into something NSFW.)

This suggestion is apropos of the Pinboard most-wanted-features discussion, which includes thoughts on handling Dreamwidth NSFW/18+ flagged entries.

Poll #8404 Streamline logged-out viewing of NSFW/18+ content

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 43

View Respondents

This suggestion:

Should be implemented as-is.
18 (41.9%)

Should be implemented with changes. (please comment)
6 (14.0%)

Shouldn't be implemented.
7 (16.3%)

(I have no opinion)
8 (18.6%)

(Other: please comment)
4 (9.3%)

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I am not really following how this would work. Does clicking the 18+ button as a logged-out user not already persist? (Apparently not? That's annoying and should stop, okay.) Are you suggesting removing the "please confirm" button altogether?

It doesn't persist - that is, it works just that once - I believe. And I think the suggestion is for some variant link that could be used to bypass the 'please confirm'.

I'd rather not see that, as I don't want the person/thing giving me the link to be able to dictate that I bypass that warning. OTOH, it would be really nice if once I tell the site I'm 18+ (or whatever) that it persists for at least that session of browser use. (Longer wouldn't be desirable, say for public computers such as libraries, I'd think....)

+1

+1!

I would like both persistence on clicking the "please confirm" button, and the option to add a "?viewadult=yes" sort of thing on the URL to create a one-time bypass that loads the whole page. Many people when given a link will be able to inspect it and see that this argument is there, but there are some people who may not think to, or cannot because their device does not let them do that easily. Out of consideration to them, when that bypass is used, on entries that are in fact 18+ or NSFW, adding a header that is subtle enough to not be spotted immediately by a cross-room glance (or perhaps even an over-the-shoulder glance) that states in reasonable-sized type in a site-scheme/theme-coordinating colored standout box what the rating is, and works mostly by shoving the entry content down the page so most NSFW-ness would be below the fold and anyone who had reason to not view that would be able to back up/close out/click away.

Edited (clarity! sweet, sweet clarity!) 2011-10-28 06:48 (UTC)

+1

Also, if it would be possible to have a larger header only when the direct viewadult=true option was used, that would be better than having a larger header on all posts; after all, if you have just clicked through something, it seems irritating to be prodded again.

That was the intent of the idea, and I'm sorry if that didn't come through clearly enough in my phrasing.

Okay, thanks.

Clicking the button should persist, period.

I am not sure about the URL argument, and I am not sure why I am not sure, so I will have to think about that some more.

I always appreciate it when people mention their misgivings about stuff because that makes me go over the concept again myself.

In this case it popped up with a case that would have to be taken into consideration when programming. For entries that were marked 18+, the internal age-check could not be bypassed with logged-in users (though the <18-year-olds should be able to use a URL argument to bypass a NSFW splash page if they want to).

It persists for a given entry/journal in a given browser session, I believe (so I can reload the kinkmeme post over and not have to click every time I reload) but you have to click it again every time you go to an entry/journal where you've never clicked it before (so if I want to check the rules post in the kinkmeme I have to click it again.) Also, if you're reading from an reading list rather than an individual post, it doesn't seem to persist at all. Actually the behaviour is inconsistent enough that I'm not entirely sure when it does and doesn't; let's just say that it often doesn't persist, and that's frustrating for logged-out readers.

I would definitely support changing that to one I'm-a-grownup click per browser session, period.

Frankly, as someone who doesn't set persistent logins, the way many people overuse the adult warnings on DW (especially the full-journal setting) is really annoying, and I think a lot of people never browse logged-out enough to realize that.

the way many people overuse the adult warnings on DW

I agree with this, completely. I'm perma-logged in, but sometimes I link people to stuff they might find interesting and didn't notice the poster hadn't overridden their 'adults only' standard flag for a perfectly innocuous post about, say, politics or baking.

It's a good feature, and I'm not sure I'd want to remove it, but people seem to think it does things differently to what it actually does.

Yeah, I mean, when you do that, you're effectively turning away everyone who isn't logged in to DW (including all robots, as the OP is worried about.) Yes, people can click through the adult-flag, but a lot of people won't, especially if, say, somebody linked to it without mentioning whether it was work-safe or not, or if they have no real investment in finding out what's behind the warning.

Some journals need it, but the vast majority of people I know who use it, they'll post NC-17 fanfic about once every three months, and the rest of the time they're talking about their cats. IMO it really isn't something you should set "just in case".

I do know many people who were disinterested in DW because, while browsing, everything was under adult lock (usually from people helpfully marking their entire journals as 14+ or 18+). It does make it aggravating to browse when the site doesn't remember your age, so having the persisting log-in would be a boon for people checking out the site and trying to decide if its for them or not.

Yeah, ditto. I suggested making the button persistent a couple years ago, because I mod a community marked NSFW, and until I was on a shared computer where I didn't log in I hadn't realized how many times people would be asked to tick that box. It's very aggravating.

Aren't there legal issues on this ?

Not really, as long as the person making the request to not see the age warning is given the chance to affirm that they're 18+ at least once.

I'm in favor of this because I find browsing DW logged out super annoying, because many set the age for their journal so high that all harmless content is flagged, but it should be made very transparent when implemented in some announcement because some users might have used this as a by-entry search engine crawl reduction, even if it was not intended this way, and might be unpleasantly surprised if the side effect doesn't work anymore, and some of their content is suddenly crawled.

Voted "Other". I like the idea of setting a cookie or something so that having clicked "Yes, I'm 18 and wish to proceed" should persist at least for a browser session. (Perhaps a checkbox could be offered on that page to make the cookie not expire, so it would hold for a given person?) But I'm not sure about a URL arg that would allow bypassing this entirely.

+1

I admit I just dislike session cookies for sites to which I'm not logged in. This would never hit me because I'm always logged into dreamwidth, but as a general rule I think it's kind of creepy to track preferences for people who haven't said "I want to have a user account in your system".

Then again, the tiny minority of people who think like me presumably have cookies turned off by default, because if you know enough about how session cookies work to find them creepy, then you know enough about how your browser manages them to disable them.

So I voted against in principle, but I do understand that I'm not typical.

The constant click-throughs make the site impossible to browse without an account. It's annoying and unfriendly, and coercive. Really kept me from signing up for a long time.

I wouldn't want to go to the trouble of using a special URL that states I'm an adult and then still see warnings cluttering up the page, and even more obnoxiously, making me scroll to see the content I came for. That'd be worse than the current set up.

If someone has already either (logged out) clicked the button or (logged in) set in their settings that they are OK with seeing NSFW/18+ stuff, using the URL shouldn't change their view of things. The URL would only change the experience of logged-out people who have not already confirmed that they're OK with seeing NSFW/18+ stuff, and logged-in people who have asked that they be warned about such things.

If you are using a link parameter view_adult=true and no persistent cookie, then perhaps the "click here to acknowledge 18+" could come in the form of a collapsed cut around the whole post?

I think there still needs to be some kind of "yes, I'm XX age" acknowledgement, but a collapsed cut might work fine for that.

That does not take care of the use case where a user who knows what they are doing uses a caching-for-later-reading service which employs a bot (without an account, and without a cookie) to fetch the page to store. Which is a puzzler. :(

Edited (tpyo! ) 2011-10-31 05:53 (UTC)

*ponder* Robot user-agent detection to ignore cuts?

Or possibly transmission of full page content with javascript to collapse so that non javascript will ignore the cut?

Those are just brainstormed ideas - I'm not convinced either is fabulous myself.

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