Recovered from the Wayback Machine.
Because of the snow over much of the US yesterday, I received several visits to my How to Drive in Ice and Snow posting from people doing Google searches on How to drive in the snow.
I gather that the fact my tongue was planted firmly in cheek while writing this post wasn’t completely apparent, because a reader left the following comment:
I was driving and certainly I was on top of that black ice you can’t see. Car started to spin and when I open my eyes my car was stopped by two others cars inside an auto shop. Nice try to tell people what to do in a snow storm. If a driver is not experience in driving in hazard conditions not tell them what to do. You know how teenagers are and they will go out there and practice what you guys are telling people to do. Be a little more responsible when posting things that young people could read.
That got me to thinking that a lot of my posts could influence young people to act in a contrary manner. For instance, there’s probably a teenager out there right now telling their Dad not to vote for George Bush. Ever. And there might be a teen girl who doesn’t blush and giggle because a group of boys whistle at her as she walks past.
My own irresponsibility shames me.
What we need is a weblog posting rating system — just like the ones the movie, music, and computer game industry use. You know, the ones that attach a Mature rating to a computer game about stealing cars and killing people, which parents then ignore because Joe Jr. keeps nagging them about it?
So here’s my proposed rating system. Please feel free to extend the list as you see fit:
G – Highly innocuous content unlikely to offend — or inspire — anyone
PG – Some independent thought could result from this posting, use caution
R – Post includes coverage of violent topics, such as war
ISM – Post uses language that some readers might find offensive or lacking in humor
TECH – Post contains technical material that may not be suitable for young children and people who go “Gah! Not Again!” when they see acronyms such as: RSS, RDF, XML, XHTML, and CSS.
WAR – Post is about the War on Terror. May not be suitable for those with a low burning point and a heart condition
ME – Post is about me and may not be of interest to people who aren’t interested in me
INTL – Post contains a lot of big words and covers a lot of really intellectual stuff that might cause real pain to some people.
CAT – Post contains some reference to cats. Use ~Cat when referencing dogs or kids
BLG – Post is about blogging, and my not be of interest to people who don’t like to read about blogging
SEX – Post contains material related to sex. Additional ratings associated with SEX are: SEX-R — risque; SEX-M — really risque; SEX-XX — Suzy down on the farm stuff
WTF – Used to gently remind the reader that not everything they read on the web is real