On Tue, 29 Mar 2005 07:26:33 -0500, Gregory Maxwell
<gmaxwell(a)gmail.com> wrote (in part):
I'm having a problem getting over the cognative
dissonance here.
People have differing views of what is right and wrong, this is true
for people of the same culture or people of differing cultures. When
we attempt to modify the article to fit our views and exclude others,
this is non-neutral and this is censorship.
I don't think the issue is really about "right" or "wrong".
I think
that most people in most cultures would agree that "murder" is wrong
(though they may define murder in differing ways). However, it would
take a _very_ extreme position to suggest that we not have an article
about murder in Wikipedia. Its wrongness does not at all suggest that
is should not be covered.
However, I suspect you'd find much less agreement about including in
that article a photo or a movie showing an actual murder. Again, this
is not about right or wrong. It's about appropriateness. In this case,
you might find substantial cultural variation, as well as differences
of opinion within some cultures.
Making a decision to include or exclude such an image/movie from an
article is not a question of censorship. It's a question of what is
appropriate, which is subjective and will vary between cultures.
To, for example, insist that an article on murder _must_ include an
image/movie showing murder if a free, informational one is available,
is to become enslaved to the concept of censorship as much as
insisting that the article must not have such an image/movie. Either
way, we are sacrificing our ability to apply editorial judgment.
-- Rich Holton
en.wikipedia:User:Rholton