Dante Alighieri wrote:
Jimbo, I'm puzzled. Where is it written that Wikipedia contains content that needs filtering?
Right here, by me: "Wikipedia contains content that would be widely regarded as thoroughly objectionable by reasonable people, and this is a problem for the project."
What are these mysterious standards that we refuse to implement?
Well, we aren't refusing anything yet. We're having a vigorous discussion about what to do. :-)
Who, exactly, is it that should be choosing which content on our site is "objectionable"... and objectionable to whom?
End users should be able to choose the view of our content that is appropriate for their circumstances.
How are we irresponsible?
We currently provide parents and children absolutely no tools by which they might seek to provide age-appropriate views of our content.
I am of the opinion that Wikipedia does NOT contain content that needs filtering. Ideas are both MORE dangerous and LESS dangerous than most people realize. Of course, the proponents of filtering universally want to filter the less dangerous stuff and let the more dangerous stuff through. (i.e., sexuality is not dangerous, but ideas like freedom/rationality/logic ARE dangerous... at least to people who think sexuality IS dangerous....)
Believe me, I'm sympathetic to that viewpoint. But it *is* a viewpoint, a viewpoint which we should not let manifest itself in ramming our own ideas down other people's throats.
Consider this -- if I let all my personal preferences rule what goes into Wikipedia, it would be far different from what it is now. I couldn't be trusted to write articles on religion, for example, because if it was "up to me" in the relevant sense, they would all end up hostile to religion generally.
But we have a higher principle than that, the NPOV principle, and we need to apply it carefully and conscientiously *even at the level of policy*. Which means: giving our editors the means to introduce NPOV metadata, *even if we don't approve* of what some readers might do with it.
Lastly, I find the assertion that we're being somehow irresponsible, or refusing to handle the issue responsibly insulting. Holding the view that censorship is unnecessary or undesirable is not irresponsible.
"Censorship" is a complete red herring here. I hold that censorship is unnecessary and undesirable. I do not advocate censorship or anything resembling it.
At the same time, on my home television system, I have my cable box programmed so that I don't surf across the shopping channels or the religious channels. I don't like those channels, and I don't want my TiVo to waste disk space recording them.
Since there are only 300 or so channels to choose from, it wasn't hard to customize my system for my own preferences.
Someone at TiVo might have argued thusly: "People should watch a variety of shows, and not be such prudes, or such anti-capitalists, or such anti-religionists. They should keep all channels accessible at all times. So we must not build into the system any tools to allow people to "filter". If they want filters, they can build their own device for doing it. But we aren't going to help."
That'd be silly. And it's just as silly for us to not flag content with some meta-data, even if we think people are silly (and I don't) for using it.
--Jimbo