Re: HTTP Futures

Marc H. (march@europa.com)
Thu, 1 Dec 1994 03:11:00 +0100

Christian Mogensen <mogens@CS.Stanford.EDU> writes:
>Well, the point is that the ratings server is advisory, and you
>could have several points of view (ie: the Libertarians rate pages
>on a political scale as would the Republicans on their SOAP server, etc)
>
>Now, if I were letting a school browse around, I would find such a
>service useful (some sort of school-board or teacher made rating server)
>since I effectivly delegate responsibility to the SOAP server.
>
>If I wanted to ignore the SOAP server I could do that by using an
>'unenhanced' browser, or turning off a SOAP preference.
>
>I could even use such a service to search: i.e. show a list of all
>the URLs rated XXX by the 'horny-geeks' SOAP server.
>
>Christian "washing my keyboard in SOAP and water"

Yes, you're right; there certainly are groups (such as schools) that could
make use of such servers. My strong reaction against the idea was in
agreement with Brian's statement, that information should flow as freely as
possible [a paraphrase; apologies if I've given this a different spin]. A
browser that would reject all unrated pages is antithetical to this; and
your vision of a SOAP opera [sorry] seems the antithesis of the web's links
-- instead of joining information resources, they would fragment resources
into enclaves around particular SOAPs.

</diatribe>

</marc>