I normally wouldn't say this, because I am quite Christian myself, but I agree we need a 'pedia with NO religion entries, except for historical articles on the religion as one would find in a history textbook, and in the same vein NO explicit topics, or anything of that sort - we should have a separate, school-topics-only Wiki encyclopedia for use at schools or other filtered environments.
The Wikipedia as a whole, as the large project to create a comprehensive encyclopedia, is doing quite well in that respect. If it wants to even implicitly support fair use and challenge filters, let it do so. ''However'', these cannot be the goals of a project that wants to serve as a research reference and educational source for schoolchildren. And I think that there should be such a project, even if it is not the Wikipedia.
I see so far three (ok, 2.5) reasons to implement filters: 1) to protect the Wikipedia from a site-wide censor, 2) to protect those who shouldn't see some content (this point is debatable), and 3) to protect those who don't want to see some content. I realize now that the first reason cannot be effectively implemented without impeding the Wikipedia's larger goals. The second, apparently, is loaded with too much POV (though I still don't see why we have to ''not'' censor content because some people might censor ''too much''...). The third I still believe should be implementable. Surely there can be no subjectivity in labeling [[Transubstantiation]] as "Christianity", and people like Toby Bartel's friend (was it?) can easily block that for him/herself and his/her kids. Leave the "dangerous" stuff there, just '''allow''' us (don't '''force''' us) to block it - why not?
Thus, in order to develop a useful reference for schools, I do believe we have to run a separate project (Edupedia, PediaPedia, WiKidPedia, call it what you may) with the rule of '''no''' religion, '''no''' explicit content, etc. - go to the [[Wikipedia]] for those. As long as Wikipedia is still not banned, it should suffice. But if/when it becomes blocked, we should be able to have the benefits of a Wiki encyclopedia, even behind school firewalls, NetNanny, etc.
So I think at some point we'll either have to fork or implement some type of good Sifter - and for a school-targeted encyclopedia, forking the necessary content seems better. Or, we could even start from scratch with a new encyclopedia and have it as a separate sister project, written at a slightly lower reading level and focusing on a separate set of subjects.
Is there any Sifter code available? Is there a way to download, in a serveable form, only selected articles without taking the entire 1GB tarball?
-[[User:Geoffrey]] Thomas
===== -Geoffrey Thomas geoffreyerffoeg@yahoo.com
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