I think the main misconception that you have is that a content advisory system should take a position on whether or not content is 'safe for children' or not. It should not, and if it does not, then it can be NPOV.
koyaanis qatsi wrote:
Isn't it relevant that we don't know what criteria google uses to filter things into "safe" and "unsafe"?
Sure, I guess it is. But I think we can take a guess at what they do. I am not suggesting that we need to replicate what they are doing exactly, of course. Since our universe of documents is so much smaller, and our purpose so much narrower, our task in this area will be much less.
I'm guessing that my previous argument was so fundamentally flawed that it didn't deserve comment.
Probably not! Perhaps it was just overlooked.
Since we don't know and won't be borrowing Google's system, we will have to establish our own. At the risk of embarassing myself, let me ask again:
[[felching]]: "safe" or not? [[oral sex]]: "safe" or not? [[Bill Clinton]]: "safe" or not?
felching: sexual content oral sex: sexual content Bill Clinton: politics
I suppose some wag could come along and suggest that an article on Bill Clinton is 'sexual content', but if it really is, then there's something wrong with the article on other grounds, I think.
For what it's worth, one of those three articles disgusts me, *but* I don't think that my disgust is relevant to wikipedia *in any way*, nor should it be.
Yeah, I'm no fan of Clinton, either. ;-)
At any rate, if any less than three of those articles are "unsafe" then we are being biased, i.e. POV,
Really? I don't see how. The question is not: "is this unsafe or not?" The question is: "is this controversial or not?" or "is this likely to be considered mature content?"
We often say that such-and-such a person is 'controversial', or that thus-and-so theory is 'controversial', without taking any position on whether or not it *should* be controversial. Sometimes we as a group agree, sometimes we don't, but anyway, NPOV saves us from having to decide.
[[murder]]: "safe" or not? [[infanticide]]: "safe" or not? [[matricide]]: "safe" or not? [[genocide]]: "safe" or not?
I would put all those some content advisory category like 'crime'.
Would it be ok for children to know about murder, but not murder of infants, mothers, or entire ethnicities? If so, why? Isn't that POV? Why should murder of an infant be considered "less safe" to know about than murder of an adult? Why should murder of a mother be considered "less safe" to know about than murder of a stranger? Why should murder of many be considered "less safe" to know about than murder of one? Those are the kinds of issues that will come up in categorizing articles and establishing the filters.
Under the system I'm advocating, none of those questions have any relevance at all.
And, while we're on the subject, are we really doing anyone a service when we forsake our goal of providing a complete educational resource to implement a system to allow people to educate themselves only on what they're already prejudiced towards?
That is hardly much of a concern. We aren't here to cram knowledge down people's throats. If people don't want to read about something, then they won't, no matter what we do.
What's important to recognize is that people *do* have valid concerns along these lines, concerns which we may not share ourselves, but which we can nonetheless acknowledge.
To bring it back to LittleDan's original issue: if the existence of 'felching' in the encyclopedia gets it banned from all schools, then isn't that problematic?
Or: if I can't in good conscience send something with a more delicate temperament than mine to wikipedia, then isn't that problematic, too?
--Jimbo