Jimmy-
Erik Moeller wrote:
Once again, do what? Filter Wikipedia entirely? Do you really think they can get away with that? And if they just want to filter the respective pages, what do we care?
...
After a lot of thought, I don't think that's right. If Wikipedia contains content that should be filtered, then the proponents of filtering can use us as an example of why filters are a Good Thing.
I still don't follow your argument. Do you, or do you not think that the proponents of filtering could plausibly argue that all of Wikipedia, all 130,000 articles, need to be filtered in libraries because we have some articles about "highly unusual sex practices"?
If the proponents of filtering manage to come up with a filtering solution that only filters the articles they find so offensive, something which I doubt given the nature of Wikipedia, then all the better for them -- less work for us. And if they don't, we can say that they
1) ask us to do the impossible (a lot of purely technical objections against filtering have already been raised)
2) violate the First Amendment by hiding 129,500 perfectly valid articles from pupils because of 500 ones which they consider objectionable.
Oh, and by the way -- the Yahoo! message boards contain a lot more objectionable and offensive material than Wikipedia.
Regards,
Erik