During the second quarter of 2005, ICRA will change its core labelling technology. A variety of tools and partnerships are being developed that are designed to stimulate a significant increase in the take-up of self-labelling and lead to greater trust in those labels.
What are we inviting you to test?
The basic tools: the label generator and the label tester.
You are invited to go through the new labelling process and to then test the labels you’ve put in place.
The label generator
This takes you through the process step by step. The aim is to make labelling as simple as possible and therefore a lot of the flexibility is hidden behind “advanced options.” If the design is right, all the information you need to label a site effectively is offered at the point at which you need it.
The label tester
The new label tester is still being actively developed with more powerful features being added continually. However, the basic functions are complete. Once you’ve labelled a site using the generator, you can visit it with the tester and see that the label is in place and that a machine can find the correct label for the page you’re on.
Support/FAQ material is being written but is not yet available.
Why is ICRA changing its core technology?
The technology used by ICRA and its predecessor organization (RSACi) were developed 10 years ago . Since then, the web has moved on a great deal with many new techniques and possibilities. In order to gain the maximum benefit from these improvements, ICRA needs to update its own system.
In short, ICRA is positioning its labelling technology within the much wider movement known as the Semantic Web. Led by the World Wide Web Consortium 2, it is a project to allow greater interaction between people, ideas and information on the internet. For example, as well as supporting traditional filtering based on labels, lists and real-time content analysis, the Semantic Web opens the possibility of a 4th approach: social filtering.
In this model, a web agent (a browser or helper application) is able to acquire data about a particular resource from a variety of sources, including other people within a community. Shared bookmarks (favourites), recommender systems, blogs, RSS – a whole range of online data can be accessed and so build up a much better picture of “what’s out there on the web.”
In this framework, ICRA is able to help users find what they want, to trust what they find and to avoid content that they deem inappropriate for themselves or their children.
It’s going to be very exciting!
What about my old label?
ICRA will continue to recognise existing ICRA labels. ICRAplus will continue to offer filtering based on those labels for the foreseeable future.
Should I label my site today with new or old style?
Ideally both! But, if you want to make a choice of one or the other, please continue to label your site with the current system for now.
Are there other changes on the way?
During 2004, ICRA’s descriptive vocabulary was reviewed and some changes made. The new labels use the revised vocabulary 3. Taken together, the vocabulary review and the new labelling system are much more suited to labelling movies and games than the current one, whilst still, of course, being suited to labelling “traditional websites.”
Next steps and further reading
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