Karl A. Krueger wrote:
What's wrong with censorware tagging? Where to
start? Here's the
biggie: tagging is incompatible with Wikipedia's existing commitments.
No system of tags is compatible with Wikipedia's commitment to
neutrality. The dimensions, biases, and extremes of any system of tags
are created from a particular non-neutral point of view. Wikipedia is
categorically forbidden from taking on such a point of view as its own.
By "dimensions" I mean the types of material that are considered worth
tagging -- e.g. nudity; violence; religion. The reason that commercial
censorware products have an "explicit nudity" dimension and not a
"explicit Christianity" dimension should be tolerably obvious in the
marketplace -- but Wikipedia does not have any business deciding for
its
readers that "nudity" is problematic and needs to be a filtering option
but "Christianity" doesn't.
By "biases" I mean the inherent bigotries that will be encoded into any
particular category. A system which considers female breasts to be
"nudity" but male chests not to be is sexist by nature. (And anyone
who
thinks that female breasts are "sexual" but male chests are not simply
has not asked enough straight women or gay men for their opinion on the
issue.)
You're absolutely right, but you're also wrong.
First of all, on a minor note, you overstate the NPOVness of Wikipedia.
There is no "view from nowhere." Every edit is POV -- so called NPOV
just means arriving at POVs by consensus if possible and majority if
not. It would be no different for breasts/Christianity/homosexuality
tags than it is for anything else that we argue about.
But you are right about it being problematic, or excessively POV-laden,
to have any simple criteria like I was suggesting, or just suggested on
the other thread. (E.g. having "sexual content/nudity" being the
"dimension" and only two or three options on that dimension.) As you
point out there are many kinds of "objectionable" subject matter and
many degrees within each.
But the solution is not to throw up our hands and sacrifice Wikipedia's
success because NPOV supposedly ties our hands -- the solution would be
to **leave the choice of objectionable content in the hands of the end
user**. We create [[Special:Censorship]]. If a user blanks it,
Wikipedia is uncensored. If a user puts the tags {{img.genitals}},
{{img.femalebreasts}}, and {{paganism}} on it, he doesn't see genitals
or Kate Winslet, or even see articles about pagans. If another user
puts {{img.malechests}}, {{img.ankles}}, and {{christianity}}, she
doesn't see pictures of those things or articles on Christianity.
A setup more or less like this would make things more complicated, and
like all things Wikipedia would never be completely finished, but it
would solve the problem, and it is immune to Karl's objection. People
would generally put {{img.femalebreasts}} tags on things like Kate
Winslet, and people at work, etc. could set up their
[[Special:Censorship]] page and that would be that.
Of course, most people would realize it's not worth the trouble trying
to protect yourself/kids from homo kisses and pagans and boobies. But
until everyone grows up, it's probably either "fork" (so to speak, via
what I just described) or be forked (eventually).
Zach