On 1/31/08, Mark Ryan ultrablue@gmail.com wrote:
I didn't think it was entirely appropriate to criticise the parenting skills of someone I don't know.
Yes, good call, Mark. To anybody else still searching for the most polite and civil way to say "Lara is a bad mother..." you might try attending a few PTA meetings, or watching your local 6:00 news, or visiting your own neighbors; you'll probably see a lot of crazy shit. There are some rather feral pockets of humanity out there, which we usually take for granted the ability to ignore.
On a practical note, the fact that photos of (mostly anonymous) kids can be and are uploaded onto the internet under a free license makes it a bit easier to illustrate an article about [[children]] (though interestingly none of the photos currently used are "children of western society". Hmm...).
Yes, anyone's photo being on the internet is a potential liability to that person. It could be argued that a child whose photo is on the internet is at less long-term risk than an adult, all other factors being equal. Two to five years down the line, which person's appearance is more likely to be recognizable from the photo?
But supposedly the real issue here is about domain hacks or something, which are pretty limited. As far as I know it's not possible to cover up the "Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia" site logo or remove "Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia" from the <title> element of the page, or do anything else that would make it non-obvious to the reader that a page is being served to the browser by "Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia", without further hacks in javascript (modifications which the reader would have to make on their own side, unless Lara & Co. are rouge enough to edit the site-wide common.js to serve their purpose, which I doubt -- oops WP:BEANS maybe)
Overall this debate is much ado about about relatively little, though I've probably donated to more than the customary two cents to it, possibly making matters worse (a risk I'm usually willing to take). Keep the change, save up for your next cheeseburger.
Peace out.
—C.W.