The distributed search and indexing workshop in May discussed META info, schemes, home and title page definitions, document-based robot instructions. If you would like to be on the mailing list, send email to Kevin Fink saying why you'd like to participate. The pics-profiles working group will specify a format for describing a PICS preference profile. The profile will have to indicate which services' labels should be consulted, and what constitutes an acceptable label. It may also include information such as the user name and password associated with the profile, or rules about which profiles apply to which users.
Details are still to be determined.
Enough people had this hunch that we decided to make a single working group for both functions. We'll watch carefully to make sure the eventual preference profile format also is adequate as a query language. The work of this group will be carried out exclusively by email, at least for the time being. Jonathan Brezin from IBM has agreed to take primary responsibility for creating an initial proposal that we can all respond to. Anyone else is also welcome to suggest options or full proposals.