User: DangerDan

Of course no one is looking for Disney here and free and open discussion is important.

But at the same extremely hard core stuff, including Castration Fetish and Incest polls pop up regularly in the topic categories.

And I've mentioned before the Spanking, Voyeurism and Urine Fetish stuff appearing in the School Life section.

Looking at the School Life section now, every single one of the 'Today's Most Active Polls' is a Sexual topic and most of All Time Most Popular Polls are sexual topics too.

There has to be a middle ground between Disney and 42nd Street. And that goes double for a kid centered area like School Life which should not be dominated by Sexual content.

Just my view

Dan

========== In Reply To ========== We will definitely be putting some new rules into place regarding adult content, but I'm not sure even the new rules will be so strict as to prevent teenagers from discussing nudity. Again, we're not aiming to be Disney, but we're going to do our best to give both teens and adults appropriate forums to conduct polls and discuss the matters that are on their minds.

Interesting post.

Obviously you guys have a tough job and some difficult decisions to make and it's good to see that there are people who have kids and are giving this issue serious consideration.

Certainly this isn't Disney and no one wants it to be. We need to have free speech out here, but at the same time I think there should be some boundaries. At least common sense ones.

I'd point again to the School Life section which is kid oriented. Of top All Time Most Popular Polls, nearly every one is sexual or fetish.

e.g. Teenager's Panties, spanked in the locker room, High School Upskirts?, Young nudity, School Spanking & Uniforms.

I mean we have spanking, voyeur and urine fetish polls in the top of the School Life section. Not only is this creepy and inappropriate but it provides a fertile ground for pedophiles to solicit kids on the attached message boards and begin email and AIM chats or post sexual polls pretending to be kids themselves (I've seen cases like that happening.) Which wouldn't be the case if the School Life section wasn't dominated by sexual polls.

There is also the problem of adult polls creeping over the other categories. I think there should be be several categories where adult and sexual content is acceptable, e.g. Behind Closed Doors and ones where it isn't e.g. School Life. That would give everyone some of what they want. At the same sexual polls involving kids, certainly involving kids under 16, would not be appropriate for any category I think.

Misterpoll has been a chaotic mess for a while, it's good to know the Sheriff's back in town.

Dan

========== In Reply To ========== Warning... long ramble ahead. :)

Judging what content is appropriate for public viewing has been a topic of great debate since Mister Poll's inception. No matter where we draw the line, we offend somebody. If we are too restrictive on what we let through, we get volumes of complaints about censorship and freedom of speech. If we are too liberal in our reviews, the more conservative take offense and others point out that children use our web site. Try as we might, it's obvious that we can't please everybody.

That being said, we do still want the best solution possible. We realize that a large number of teenagers use our web site. We are all parents here, so believe me, we know where you are coming from. However, it is unreasonable to force the entire web to be kid-appropriate simply because kids may drop by. We aren't Disney, and we don't pretend to be. There must be a responsible solution that lets adults be adults (not necessarily sexual and pornographic adults) without significant hindrance and still makes reasonable attempts not to parade such content in front of our younger audience.

The adult subscription setup was our first attempt at this, and it has worked in setting aside the most explicit adult content while still making it available to the audience that wants it. There is still a good deal of content that may not be suitable for teens but really doesn't fit into an "adult" subscription model. We are entertaining other ideas, such as requiring a free account to get at any content that may not be suitable for teens. While that wouldn't prevent teens from accessing it, it would mean they would have to want access to get it, while those who would prefer not to see such content never would.

From what I'm reading, there may be a certain number of polls getting through that should simply be marked as private and not shown to the public at all. These polls would only be seen by people who have the direct poll URL, presumably because the poll creator gave it to them. We will revisit this situation as well.

Message areas are a different story altogether. We simply are not able to police every message posted in every area on the site. The solution for this one is to give poll creators the ability to manage their own message areas, including the ability to delete and/or review messages before they are displayed to the public. This enhancement will be a part of the upcoming upgrades.

We are very open to your suggestions on how to solve these issues, so please, anybody with an opinion on the matter feel free to chime in.

I'm happy somebody is listening and looking at the site. Overall I think Misterpoll is a good site but some things need to be dealt with and some features should be added.

1. The first thing I think is that the categories mess needs to be cleaned up.

Adult polls are fine but sexually oriented polls should be seperated in a distinct section or sections instead of being spread out everywhere. And should definetly not be in School Life. That's a problem just waiting to happen.

1. A personal message feature in the accounts that would allow Misterpoll users to recieve and maybe send messages to other Misterpoll users without using an outside email address. A lot of sites have this now.

2. Give poll creators the ability to delete messages on the message boards attached to the boards and maybe an option not to create a board at all.

Because as it stands now a site dedicated to Black History Month can create a poll on who contributed the most to Black History only to have the message board attached to the poll overrun by neo-nazis. And there's nothing that can be done about it because messages can't be deleted by the poll creator and even erasing the poll won't get rid of the board because the board remains even when the poll is erased. Another glitch that needs to be fixed.

All this discourages people from creating polls because there's no possibility of moderation or control over the attached boards and a site can end up linking to a poll with content it doesn't want to be involved with.

1. A better poll editing system with built in formatting and color options rather than HTML color and formatting use that exists now since people often use HTML tags that are broken or cause other problems and even HTML color tags on the the title that show up in the index.

2. Some sort of Robots.txt file. At least for the boards and maybe an option to keep individual polls in misterpoll but not in search engines. Google rank is well and good but not everyone wants what they say up to show in google with their names on it.

3. Split up this Misterpoll message board into two boards. One for suggestions and site technical questions and one for reporting abuse and maybe a third board to let users promote their polls since some people seem determined to do it anyway and at least it won't clutter up the fuctional boards that way.

4. A clear set of rules for users with account removals and IP bans for persistent abusers.

Adult polls keep showing up in all the top categories and even dominate most of them. Even the Sports category has adult polls listed.

But what's even more disturbing is that the School Life section, which is supposed to be aimed at kids is chock full of adult polls.

I think there might be legal issues in having an area aimed at kids filled with adult material.

========== In Reply To ========== In promoting a paid subscription to the "Uncensored!" polls, Mr. Poll states that it has "thousands of polls that just aren't suitable for a PG-13 web site."

see ad at:

http://www.misterpoll.com/subscription.m

Yet there are routinely polls that are approved that use "too much adult language, discuss more adult topics, or are sexually explicit in nature".

For example, there are polls like "Girls, how do you feel about having your butt grabbed?", in which girls show off their bare backsides.

Then there are the ads, for "Naked News" and all sorts of adult magazines and books, displaying just about all of the female body that any PG-13 horny male might be looking for.

This content is easily found without having to go the paid route.

I'm not necessarily a prude, but in promoting the PAID "Uncensored!" polls, doesn't anyone else agree with me that Mr. Poll is being a little disingenuous?

Sally

It was a few years ago and it was the summer and I was horsing around with a girl named Laurie at the public pool.

I was snapping her top a bit and trying to loosen it, but playfully and not for real and a few minutes later when I was standing by the pool and talking to another cool, all of a sudden my trunks came down as Laurie reached out of the pool and yanked them down to my ankles.

I quickly pulled them up again but it was pretty embarrassing obviously since I'd just met the second girl and she had now seen me naked. But it was also probably fair of Laurie to do what she did.