On Sun, 13 Feb 2005 13:19:28 -0800 (PST), Robert rkscience100@yahoo.com wrote:
In any case, our encyclopedia is useless if people refuse to read it...and thousands of schools will ban its use if it continues to offer pornographic images (and eventually, videos.) What good is our work if few people can access it?
That's sloppy logic. Even if every single school in the world banned Wikipedia, the remaining Internet users would be more than "a few". Tens or hundreds of millions of users, as a matter of fact.
Even if it is not officially banned by entire schools, many teachers will tell their students that Wikipedia is not reliable or professional if we continue this course of extreme sexual explicitness.
They may tell their students that, but it does not make it true.
However, the point is a valid one. If we include explicit images (or videos) then we are going to get criticism from those who feel that they are inappropriate. I would not be at all surprised if some people express their views in a vocal fashion and enlist the support of school boards, church congregations or others to make as much fuss as possible. With a sufficient level of noise and complaint from these sort of people Wikipedia, in the mind of the general public, might come to be equated with pornography. Although untrue, this would be the perception, and anybody who cared to investigate need do no more than look up Autofellatio and find a rather "in your face" image. Or, heaven forbid, an explicit video.
Never mind that Google Images will come up with hundreds of explicit images on the same subject and that this is easily accessible to schoolchildren.
Although you would generally have to go looking for such material in order to find it in Wikipedia, this point would be lost or seen as irrelevant by those with an axe to grind and a point to push.
And the end result would be that thousands of schools would ban Wikipedia, which would be a shame.
Is there some way that we can find a technological solution? Have a "splash screen" that warns of explicit images? A cookie that prevents download of "adult content"? Something that will pop up when the casual user navigates to Autofellatio?
All we really need is some sort of hurdle that must be leapt, some button that must be pressed, some door that must be opened.