Erik wrote:
On a wiki, we risk "flagging wars", and by defining what "can be considered offensive" we are leaving NPOV behind.
When I first read this, I thought I agreed, but overnight I realized that I really don't agree.
Of course we do risk 'flagging wars' -- but that's par for the course -- we risk 'edit wars' and so on all the time. The best way to minimize such wars is to approach tagging *as NPOV meta-data*.
No one can say whether or not children should be exposed to an article about 'felching' without taking the sort of stand that Wikipedia avoids as a rule. It is not for wikipedia, the reference work, to decide such matters.
If we were writing disclaimers at the top of some pages, we would require the disclaimer to be NPOV. We wouldn't say "This page is bad for children." And we wouldn't say "Anyone who doesn't let children read this is a stick in the mud." We would say "Some may consider this page inappropriate for children."
Similarly, a flag for 'possibly mature content' just means that some people may think so.
If the *consequences* of that flag were *huge*, then it'd be a problem. I.E., if people couldn't view mature content without proof of age (credit card, fax me a copy of your driver's license, etc.!) that'd be a very bad thing.
But if the consequences of the flag are mild, i.e. that people can choose, optionally, to 'Turn on Safe Search' with a click, or to turn it back off with a click, then there's no need for there to be edit wars.
--Jimbo