Nathan wrote:
On Sun, May 17, 2009 at 6:25 PM, Samuel Klein
<meta.sj(a)gmail.com> wrote:
What I'd like to see is a preferences
framework that allows people to
subscribe to a set of opt-in viewing/reading options similar to how we
currently can add JS widgets. If any of them become so massively
popular and useful that there is demand to include them as a
single-button option in the global user prefs menu, that's ok - but we
can wait to see how each viewing option is received.
The ones I imagine getting lots of use would not be about
'content-hiding', but would filter up/down other sorts of information
(I really want an option to see major contributors, or the last few
contributors, near the top of an article for instance). However,
this would also let the minority of readers who care a lot about that
collaborate with one another on making reading WP more friendly for
them.
I think if there was demand for this within the editing community, it would
already exist. The problem, then, is not what to do for the editors who
might like a "safe" option but for the readers who don't have an account
and
can't set preferences or add .js widgets. Maybe not right now, but I can see
in the future shooting for a
kids.wikipedia.org or
safe.wikipedia.org -
perhaps Simple Wikipedia, which has had some criticism for its mission,
could be adapted for the purpose.
It's true enough that the demand would not
come from the editing,
because the editing community is on the supply side of the economic
equation, and it suits the supply side to market its material so that it
can justify putting it in there in the first place. Some kind of
filtering or an alternative project for kids (without usurping the role
of Simple Wikipedia) are both solutions worth exploring, preferably in
ways that do not encumber the demand side with a lot of techno-babble
that reduces utility, and which can then encourage the supply-siders to
say, "Look, we gave them these opportunities, but they aren't using them."
I find the pearl-necklace picture in extremely poor taste. There is
little if any benefit to supporting this kind of scurrilous infantilism.
Nevertheless, the civil libertarian in me is conflicted because it is
based on a presumptions that individuals will act responsibly, and that
it is illegitimate to substitute my judgement for that of others. The
problem is not with these images. If we could miraculously find a
formula that clearly identified which images would not be hosted the
problem would not go away. We would still have vigorous competition to
fill the role of the Grand Inquisitor who would put Jimbo on the cross.
Vision is anathema to the cubicle-minded.
Vision threatens to shatter the belief in an orderly world. We are
overwhelmed with the technotheism of those whose years of education in
computer science have propagated well the theology of order.
There is no evidence that pornographic pictures or distorted biographies
of living people would work to bring down the entire project. It's a
sense of integrity, not the threat of Armageddon, that should guide us
in this kind of thing.
The priests of the theology of order are ever ready to regulate any
eccentricity in their perfectly circular orbits. Woe to any planetoid
that would perturb their orbits. Truly democratic systems make room for
the outliers who happened to be out of the room at the time a decision
was made.
Ec