James Rosenzweig a écrit:
Regarding the recent brouhaha over the photos, what I'll say is this. If Wikipedia decides as a community it will display explicit photos of sexual acts, then I won't stop editing, but I'm afraid I'll have to stop recommending it to most of the people I currently recommend it to (normally families with bright teenage children, given my work in a high school). You can call me, my friends, and my acquaintances all the names you like (compare us to Nazis, if Godwin will let you), but those are the cold hard facts.
And I have to be honest: I will probably not choose to introduce my students to Wikipedia with a class project (as I had hoped to do) if the photos are displayed inline. Too many questions to have to answer to administrators (real-life school ones) about. Again, you can call us censorious or narrow-minded or anything you like, but as long as I want to call myself employed, I'll have to live that way. I don't know if you think Wikipedia will lose much by my ceasing to advocate it to every man, woman, and child I talk to. I'll let you decide for yourself: certainly I don't think it's much of a threat in strictly numerical terms (it won't affect Wikipedia's pocketbook or editor population by more than a few hundred bucks or a few editors either direction)! But it's the reality of the situation, and I think all the talk about browsers, etc. (frankly, I think 90%+ of our reader population either doesn't know how to shut off photos or considers it too great a hassle for WP to be worthwhile, but that's unsubstantiated guesswork) ignores the truth of the situation.
Noble principles are fine and all that, but even the most remarkably open free speech laws recognize that there are some kinds of speech not suitable to all occasions. Now go ahead and yell at me -- if you want ammo, I use IE and subscribe to Christian moral and ethical principles. I'm sure someone can make use of those against me. :-)
All my best to all of you, who keep my inbox full and my brain moving. I wish you good fortune this cold February,
James W. Rosenzweig
Nod, I entirely agree with you as well. I am currently in contact with some people to try to see what we could do in schools (this would be in Burkina Faso for example). They are thinking of "certified" version on cd rom. And when they mean "certified", they do not really mean validation, they mean "leaving aside content inapropriate for kids".
I cannot really blame them. I do not let my kids freely read the encyclopedia as well. Our project is great, and I have no fear with regards to a clitoris picture personnaly, but would not want to stumble on a severed head, or even worse goatse.
Call me freaking mother, but still, it is hard fact.
Wikipedia with such multimedia ressource is just not for kids. I proposed several months ago that we move toward filtering system (a parent system to exclude display of certain pictures). Some people have already worked something on meta on the topic. I am still interested. If only, this could be unabled in school. Right now, with no filter, making a second version with no shocking pictures would just take too much time for anyone. So, unless there is a filtering system which might be unable, I will myself discorage use of wikipedia in schools.
Anthere