I see your point, Ryan. So, I guess that leaves us with, in terms of minors accessing the articles, only the expected discretion of the poster of these items. Thanks for the quick response, by the way.

and the diligent eye of editors.

the fundamental question though, and this applies to other topics as well, is: is it better to great a venue for certain content which may not meet standards of newsworthiness or to say a flat out no and then have to monitor it?

The creation of the press release category was a response to contrib's regularly posting content which was informative but commercial in nature. Instead of putting the kibosh on it we channeled the content in to a new category. I don't think however, that would work with erotic material as I mentioned above. 

I agree with you, Ryan and you are most likely completely correct re: an erotic material category becoming a haven for pornography, which wouldn't necessarily serve NP's desired input.

As for my suggection, as the late Gilda Radner's character, Miss Emily Littela, used to say, "Never mind!"

I totally agree with the you Ryan. Creating a place for members to push in Erotic content will result in filling in that category with `porn junk' in the first place. Although it may increase the number of visitors, it is IMO against the way NowPublic should work, and against the TOS. And on the other hand it would require more editorial work to get rid of such content, even though some of them are newsworthy.

Even without the Erotic category we get enough spam and not newsworthy content in the topic that gives the editors enough work filtering and flagging them.

The other thing is that we don't have any filtering method for rating content against certain age of the user, like mature, not for teens, adults only and such. Although it might be required at some places, or photos / videos to have such rating to get the visitor prepared for such content, or add some kind of warning that the content is rated for adults only and such.

I agree with pgaliba, who agrees with Ryan-- I think we're all on the same (web) page here! Our minimum contributor age is 13, so I (and others) make sure that more graphic/lurid material is marked as such if it's newsworthy, or removed if it's posted for its own sake.

(Extra points for Karen's SNL reference) 

LOL! Thanks for the extra points, Jordan! I was a huge fan of the original cast of SNL. Another possible but much ruder retort from Steve Martin, a frequent guest  on the show during the earlier seasons, "Well, excuuuse me!"

hi Ryan my name is pooja what are you saying i can't understand any thing

pooja