[WikiEN-l] WikiEN-l Digest, Vol 54, Issue 128

[Charlotte Webb]

On 1/31/08, Mark Ryan <ultrablue at gmail.com> wrote:
> I didn't think it was entirely appropriate to criticise the parenting
> skills of someone I don't know.

Yes, good call, Mark. To anybody else still searching for the most
polite and civil way to say "Lara is a bad mother..." you might try
attending a few PTA meetings, or watching your local 6:00 news, or
visiting your own neighbors; you'll probably see a lot of crazy shit.
There are some rather feral pockets of humanity out there, which we
usually take for granted the ability to ignore.

On a practical note, the fact that photos of (mostly anonymous) kids
can be and are uploaded onto the internet under a free license makes
it a bit easier to illustrate an article about [[children]] (though
interestingly none of the photos currently used are "children of
western society". Hmm...).

Yes, anyone's photo being on the internet is a potential liability to
that person. It could be argued that a child whose photo is on the
internet is at less long-term risk than an adult, all other factors
being equal. Two to five years down the line, which person's
appearance is more likely to be recognizable from the photo?

But supposedly the real issue here is about domain hacks or something,
which are pretty limited. As far as I know it's not possible to cover
up the "Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia" site logo or remove
"Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia" from the <title> element of the
page, or do anything else that would make it non-obvious to the reader
that a page is being served to the browser by "Wikipedia, the free
encyclopedia", without further hacks in javascript (modifications
which the reader would have to make on their own side, unless Lara &
Co. are rouge enough to edit the site-wide common.js to serve their
purpose, which I doubt -- oops WP:BEANS maybe)

Overall this debate is much ado about about relatively little, though
I've probably donated to more than the customary two cents to it,
possibly making matters worse (a risk I'm usually willing to take).
Keep the change, save up for your next cheeseburger.

Peace out.

—C.W.