-Star* of Taliesin
What wonderfull world the Internet is! What wealth of information one can find "on line"... There are however a few unfortunate phenomena one has to accept; some of them easily forgotten, others downright frustrating.
I guess we are all more than tired of the "pop-up-boxes" with commercial content, free-this-and-thats which turn out to be not free at all, or links to casino-games. Where it is true that maintaining a website can be a costly affair,webmasters who choose the "pop-up"-way of having their site sponsored, risk losing "hits" and therefor readers, rather than to attract people. I for one will not "hang around" and will close the site all- together. Shorthsighted? Mayheps, but after the fourth and fifth "pop-up"-box my patience is gone.
The one thing however that frustrates me more than anything else is the use, or mis-use - one might even consider it "misinterpretations"- of META NAMES (i.e. the words you can use in order for search-egines to include your site or pages amongst search-results).
I recently conducted a search (through different search-engines) on 3taliesin", one of the most revered figueres in Celtic Mythology. To many Pagans following the Ancient Celtic Ways, "Taliesin" represents an aspect of the Sun and is therefor considered a deity. The last sites we need at this point are sites of erotic or pornographic nature, with some poor sod referring to himself as "the master of porn" and choosing a name of a major deity as his alias. I encountered the same kind of misinterpretation while researching "Morgana La faye", "Nimue" and so many other Gods and Goddesses. Severely frustrated and purely out of curiosity, I conducted a same type of search for "Jesus" and "Buddha", only to find exactely the same happening. ( Yes, believe it or not, there are actually porn-sites corresponding to the search-critirium "Jesus").
This means that, although agravating and hurtful, at least all filosphies are being treated equally bad and without respect. Where I have no problem with commercial sites named after a deity or major mythological and/or filosphical figueres, I do strongly object to porn-,racist-or sexist sites hiding behind these names. One may think that I have a problem with erotica and pornography, this is NOT the case. Erotic, to my mind is what is tantalizing to the senses in a soft, non-invasive sexual manner. This may be in drawings, music,photography, in short through art in general...and I suppose that pornography also has its fans and therefor its place, but I seriously doubt that place is behind the name a filosophical figuere.
Unfortunately there is not a lot we can do and as long as the severs to these sites do not react, prohibit and ban these sites, this will continue. I am delighted to see that quite a few servers of websites have taken steps in the right direction and have in their terms of service clear statements of "do's and do not's". By adding a disclaimer on their site some webmasters (and I am using the term lightly here) are trying to avoid obeying the terms of the server. From experience I know that it is usually enough when people write directly to the servers and draw their attention to the abuse.
Last but not least: I have found many a good, well-documented and visiually attractive site during my research and to all these webmasters:Thank you and keep up the outstanding level of quality; only in this way can we avoid to be taken over by "pulp". There are some very good web-rings out there where the content of the member-sites have to be of a certain standard and can not contain offensive and/or bigot material; volontary censorship which helps the "web-searching"-researcher on his/her way.
I myself commit to openminded pages which reflect (or at least I hope they do) my respect for every filosophy and all humankind.
Star*
