Using PICS for subject evaluation

[JOSEPH MAXIMILLIAN MURPHY]

In reading up on the Platform for Internet Content Selection (PICS), 
( http://www.w3.org/pub/WWW/PICS/ ), I came across a product called 
NetShepherd ( http://www.netshepherd.com/ ) which struck me as a fascinating
potential for using PICS, if we set aside the filtering morality discussion for
a moment.

The deal (as near as I can tell) is this. NetShepherd has an AltaVista search
engine running, and is also patched into a database of PICS rankings of
"Maturity" and "Quality". The user chooses what level of filtering to impose,
and then does the search. Theoretically (although at the moment I'm having
trouble making it behave), the user should get information of the quality
rating selected or higher, and the maturity level selected or lower. The "no
preference" level seems to even allow the unrated sites returned from
AltaVista.

What I'm wondering is if anyone is working on implementing this on the specific
subject content evaluation level instead of the general website quality and 
morality levels. For example, librarians could rank sites in their subject
areas. Presumably, you'd give a "no content" rating for all the subjects (in
your hierarchy) not discussed, and then rank the quality of the information as
appropriate. Different institutions could gear their engines to whatever
criteria they're qualified to evaluate, and the user chooses how to regard
those ratings. It certainly seems like an interesting twist on just making
directories and meta-directories.

Anyway, if anyone's working on such a project, I'd certainly love to know how
it's going. I don't have the technical knowledge or access to start such an
experiment, but I'd be interested in trying it if anyone could find it a home
(and a mutually acceptable set of subjects).

And I got through that whole thing without mentioning that I got 9 messages in
15 hours complaining about the high level of philosophical filtering debate.
Most of which just repeated the same thing without adding any technical
content. Oh, darn, I guess I did just mention it... ain't I a dickens?

-Joe Murphy                       "We will not go down.
murphyj at cua.edu                    We will not be beaten down like grain."
                                           -"Thunderstorm," _Riverdance_