That is a moral standard. Freedom is more important then moral imperative.
Freedom is subject to obligations. You have the "freedom" - read, "power" - to yell "Fire!" in a crowded theater. You '''don't''' have a right to do so.
I do not have the freedom to vandalise Wikipedia.
Sure you do. People do it all the time. But you don't have a '''right''' to do so. And you don't have a '''right''' to fill this list with off-topic issues. Create a new list, and let others exercise '''their''' freedom to spend allocate their time on lists as they choose.
Some people might find that certain MediaWiki sites such as Metapedia, Encyclopedia Dramatica or even certain parts of Wikipedia offend their moral standards. But there's not much that we can do about that. If MediaWiki were proprietary software, the organization owning the copyright could refuse to allow certain entities to use it. But the MediaWiki community is rather powerless to influence how people use the software, because the licensing allows it to be used for any use. Even if we built in code to enforce some standard of morality (e.g. installing porn filters similar to Google; see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Safesearch), anyone would have the legal right to remove the filters and to distribute the modified code, or to create a patch to disable the filters. Therefore, morality is mostly outside the purview of the MediaWiki community. On the other hand, if someone wanted to put Extension:PornDistributor on MediaWiki.org, or if someone wanted to link to Pornopedia from http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Sites_using_MediaWiki/en, I guess disputes about morality could occur, but so far that doesn't seem to have happened.
I think the best thing for those who are offended by certain content to do is to improve code such as http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:ImageFilter so that it will be more feasible to create mirrors of various wikis that allow users to opt out of viewing content tagged as adult, sacrilegious, immoral, or whatnot. The openness of the software and the content is beneficial in that it allows people to tweak it as needed to suit their tastes. Then of course there is always the possibility of buying third-party web-filtering software.
Steve VanSlyck wrote:
That is a moral standard. Freedom is more important then moral imperative.
Freedom is subject to obligations. You have the "freedom" - read, "power" - to yell "Fire!" in a crowded theater. You '''don't''' have a right to do so.
I do not have the freedom to vandalise Wikipedia.
Sure you do. People do it all the time. But you don't have a '''right''' to do so. And you don't have a '''right''' to fill this list with off-topic issues. Create a new list, and let others exercise '''their''' freedom to spend allocate their time on lists as they choose.
First a response to others. I do agree completly that the moral standards of others, who use the MediaWiki software, is out of our control. No mater if its is porn or neo-nazi or some other subject. I think only legal autorities are able to solve that, if the use of MediaWiki is outside the legal bounderies.
Just for documentation I summarize valuable posts on this subject and it boils down (for me) to :
...freedom is considered by many to be the more important moral imperative.
Source : David Gerard http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/mediawiki-l/2010-May/034196.html
Freedom is subject to obligations. You have the "freedom" - read, "power" - to yell "Fire!" in a crowded theater. You '''don't''' have a right to do so.
Source : Steve Van Slyck http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/mediawiki-l/2010-May/034200.html
There is your wish, and from others, to continue in an other newgroup. Can you tell me which newsgroup I have to use about the morals standards of the community developing and installing MediaWiki? And which results may effect highly this community? And will each member of this community incorporate the end results what is defined there as moral standards as their own moral standard without any further discussion?
With regards,
Bernard
On Mon, May 31, 2010 at 4:02 AM, Bernard@bernardHulsman.nl bernard@bernardhulsman.nl wrote:
There is your wish, and from others, to continue in an other newgroup. Can you tell me which newsgroup I have to use about the morals standards of the community developing and installing MediaWiki?
There isn't such a list. But this list certainly isn't it. We could make a new one (mediawiki-morality-l? Maybe it'll be a good split like wikitext-l)
And which results may effect highly this community? And will each member of this community incorporate the end results what is defined there as moral standards as their own moral standard without any further discussion?
No, I won't incorporate your morality discussions into what I do and what I think is moral.
On a final note: you've been told by several people now that this is off- topic, nobody here wants to listen to it, and to please take it somewhere else. I'm asking you one last time: please take this thread elsewhere or drop it.
-Chad
" 9. Thou shalt think about the social consequences of the program you write "
from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ten_Commandments_of_Computer_Ethics#The_Command...
very best, oscar
On Tue, Jun 1, 2010 at 6:41 PM, oscar oscar@wikimedia.org wrote:
" 9. Thou shalt think about the social consequences of the program you write "
from
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ten_Commandments_of_Computer_Ethics#The_Command...
very best, oscar
Those commandments are pretty lame, especially #6 and #8.
mediawiki-l@lists.wikimedia.org