warning pages on blog sites

Madame brought up this point in my blog trade thread, which I wanted to keep in its own thread as she has a valid question

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I've been meaning to ask this for a very long time. If we as adult webmasters go through the trouble to have Adult Content Warning pages, why are so many blog landing pages filled with hardcore content?

What makes a BLOG owner not responcible for the same effort to keep minors out of adult areas? I'm thinkin' as soon as the Fundies notice, this will bite lots of folks in the ass.

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My opinion on this is simple, a warning page has NEVER made any difference in a prosecution case, ever!!! There is no laws saying we need to have a warning page, this is 100% self imposed by adult site webmasters. I see absolutely no reason for having a warning page on any adult site, especially when the domain name is obviously adult. I mean, come on, you are vising a site called gaypornsexblogs and you have to warn people that it contains gay porn and sex?

what do you think?

cheers,
Luke

I think warning pages are pointless. Like you said, I don't think that they're going to save you. People like to feel like it's showing some kind of due diligence, but the fact is that most of us are showing cock in wide open environments. If we were showing real due diligence, we'd be putting pretty stars over all the unmentionables and hiding the hardcore stuff behind password protected areas.

Also, so what if you have a warning page and Google sends a surfer right to your "Jordan Has a Big Cock" blog entry because it got a good ranking for "big cock." Google's not sending the traffic to your warning page, so it's useless anyway.

Michael

I'm with Luke.

I've never really worried about warning pages or censored tours. I don't have any non-adult domain names. If anyone is going to be offended when they reach one of my sites with the words, 'naked', 'gay', 'cocks', etc. then they are dumbasses. Lol.

I am going to take a different tact that you guys on this. While it is true that warning pages haven't helped protect anyone, in court, how about in preventing unwanted law enforcement attention?

For my blog I dont have any warning page either, however I do have the proper warning tags in place and disclaimer in the footer. My reasoning is that if little suzie or johnny show up, and momma bear gets unhappy about it because she was too busy chasing Mr Bear to take her out for the night, it does sort of dent it when she goes bitching to the Gendarme... or can.

I don't know if true or not, but hey it's my story and I is sticking to it.

Point is that it can give the overworked cop a way out of things. If he can say, look Mrs Bear, the site was labelled, marked, and really there ain't much we can do, it can cool down some heated attention and that is always a good thing. If it doesn't get out of the starting gate, then no judge has to rule or some petty politician won't get his ambition hands on it to begin with.

With wordpress offering static pages now, it is even easier than ever to add a warning page, but for me, my choice is to tag and label the site.

my pennies worth. :thumbsup:

Put a note at the top of your blog - *WARNING* - keep adult content 600 pxls from the top.

When I see a warning page on a blog - I move on. Too many other blogs that require less work (clicking a button/link) to see the content.

I don't care if you have a warning page or not on your blogs Luke. :)

My porn blogs do -- partially because when I started those two blogs they were on sites where I had done something else prior to them becoming blogs. One was a stupid avs site and one was a stupid free site of sorts. lol

So when I set up my blogs I just went with keeping the blog in a different subdirectory.

Another thing about blogs is that alot of the traffic doesn't come in via the main page or the index page (depending on how you've set it up.) Alot of the blog traffic is going to come in via the rss feed.

Some of it isn't even going to come to the blog itself per-se. Some of it will strictly be read via feed readers of various types whether it's a desktop feed or some online feed reader or browser feed reader. e.g. Someone finds your feed and plugs it into I.E.

As porn blogs tend to have alot of pics and videos though they'll end up having to click to the specific post in question if they're interested though.

Our Warning Pages may not be the most productive of safeguards, but our company's business practices demand we show the effort, and not surprise the Aunt Thelmas of the world, with open beaver shots, before a clear heads-up. As a surfer, webmaster and human I appreciate the chance to move along, before I see a quart of cum dribbling out of some actor's pie hole.

Warning Pages might not be the answer, but I can't rage at the stupidity of this Administration, if I don't show some due diligence- that is also obvious to the general public.

Shrug

The world is filled with enough in your face crap, so as long as I have the Final Word - BTM will treat the surfing public with the same respect we would give any customer, window shopping on Main Street.

Even it is not necessary to have a warning page, I have one on my blog. Only to be sure. It doesn't hurt me. And additional I also have a revshare link on my warning page ;) (www.gayboyblogs.com). [Don't click further, I lost all my admin and archive data and have to rebuild my blog if I find the time.]

A warning page alone won't save you.

I think what the attorneys and others who suggest them are saying is to take real, meaningful steps to show that you're trying to keep porn away from those (such as Aunt Thelma) who don't want to see it.

I look at it like this. In the worst case, if I'm put in front of a jury of Aunt Thelma and Grandma Smith and Uncle Elmo and the like, I want to be able to stand in front of them and credibly say that we took all the reasonable steps we could - warning page, tags to make filtering software work, encoding all our images with the invisible adult content watermark, etc - to keep people who don't want to or shouldn't see our content away from it.

i guess the question here is WHY you have a warning page in the first place.

there are a lot of pages listed on search engines, and many - because of the often wide variety of posts made by blog sites that often cover non adult topics - can be found via searching non adult topics. now, if the top of every blog page had an adult disclaimer, you could honestly say that whoever goes there had some warning your site was adult, but in fact many don't have that warning. a person really COULD go there while researching their homework or a policitcal topic and be surprised when they see two guys sucking each others' cocks.

of course, a warning page alone wouldn't fix this situation as those people who just did those searches are going to a specific page. i'm not saying that i know what would fix the issue, but there is 1 dvd store - i think it's cd universe - that sends you through a warning page for each and every search result before taking you to the specific page you requested. i think that's a good solution for people who are more concerned with actually warning people than just with being able to say they did the minimum. of course, it will probably cost some hits...

My feeling has always been that most prosecutions probably start out with a soccer mom being offended. From there one thing leads to another.

I can't imagine putting XXX on common entry points. It's a total disregard for what prudes might think. It's the equivalent of hardcore magazine covers on display at the gas station.

As this is being discussed, it occurs to me that I'm pretty sure that it would be possible to do a redirect based on referer so that any request to a site coming from an external source (rather than from another page on the site) would automatically redirect to the warning page. You could probably be uberclever and then direct them to the specific page they were requesting after they hit the warning page.

I wouldn't have a problem with doing that for our membership sites or for our 18weststudios.com site, but I suspect that it could be against Google's rules in that it would probably be seen as cloaking or otherwise prohibited.

Anyone know if this would work, and/or what Google's take on it would be?

cduniverse does it, and they have literally hundreds of listings on google - maybe thousands. look up "sylvia saint DVD" on google and try one or two of the cduniverse links - and btw, they've been doing this for way over a year.

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Originally Posted by gaybucks_chip

As this is being discussed, it occurs to me that I'm pretty sure that it would be possible to do a redirect based on referer so that any request to a site coming from an external source (rather than from another page on the site) would automatically redirect to the warning page. You could probably be uberclever and then direct them to the specific page they were requesting after they hit the warning page.

I wouldn't have a problem with doing that for our membership sites or for our 18weststudios.com site, but I suspect that it could be against Google's rules in that it would probably be seen as cloaking or otherwise prohibited.

Anyone know if this would work, and/or what Google's take on it would be?

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Originally Posted by gaybucks_chip

A warning page alone won't save you.

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You don't really understand ... a Warning Page isn't just CYA- it's for my neighbor, my Fundie Sister and anyone else that could be offened, when casually surfering the net.

If I'm the kind of person who believes in Do Unto Others ... I'd be a piss poor human, if I didn't carry that belief into my business practices.

:signhere:

There's enough easy free porn .. to be found. If Joe Blow passes me by because of a Warning Page, so be it.

Warning pages are vital.. for putting recips on! All links want them for regular freesites. Other than that, its a pointless exercise imo.

It's not about saving youself, it's about doing the right thing. You don't put hardcore images in the front window of your store, and you shouldn't put hardcore images on your front page. You should open up with a warning page and no hardcore images becuase it's the right thing to do...period.

We will not accept blog affialites that do not have a warning page in place. I don't want my Aunt Thelma or my nephew Matt stumbling across a picture of me with my arm up someone's ass. If they want to see that, they can, but they have to go through the warning page first!

This is about being responsable, not about trying to cover your ass.

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Originally Posted by Chilihost

a warning page has NEVER made any difference in a prosecution case, ever!!! There is no laws saying we need to have a warning page,

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Here I was thinking it was mandetory. Funny how a tradition can seem like a law. But knowing that it's done by people who are perfectly aware that it isn't mandetory ... that's really kind of cool.

Madame and Titanmen,

I respect your decision and I think thats the only reason I would ever decide to put up a warning page. Thanks for giving me that point of view :sunny:

cheers,
Luke

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Originally Posted by Madame0120

You don't really understand ... a Warning Page isn't just CYA- it's for my neighbor, my Fundie Sister and anyone else that could be offened, when casually surfering the net.

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No, I actually do understand, we use them for the same reason you and Titan do. The point I was making is that people who put up a warning page and think it's a titanium shield against prosecution are kidding themselves :)

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Originally Posted by Titanmen

It's not about saving youself, it's about doing the right thing. You don't put hardcore images in the front window of your store, and you shouldn't put hardcore images on your front page. You should open up with a warning page and no hardcore images becuase it's the right thing to do...period.

We will not accept blog affialites that do not have a warning page in place. I don't want my Aunt Thelma or my nephew Matt stumbling across a picture of me with my arm up someone's ass. If they want to see that, they can, but they have to go through the warning page first!

This is about being responsable, not about trying to cover your ass.

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Finally something that Keith and I agree on! We...you...all of us should use warning pages because it is the responsible thing to do. It might keep the soccer mom from accidentally seeing something she really doesn't want to see.

Now, as for seeing Keith's arm up someone's ass.....I'm all for that!

Bill

I support putting icra.org and asacp.org labels in porn page meta tags. This will help those using software filters from getting to porn pages (should all those nasty keywords not do the trick ;) ).