Eloquence> "By endorsing fair use, we defend this principle"

I'd prefer to defend the principle of open content. That's what's in Wikipedia's mission statement. We've come together, from diverse walks of life, with all kinds of mutually contradictory belief systems, and united around that goal. Let's not distract ourselves by bringing all kinds of other ideas. To my mind, we should evaluate everything by a single question - "What will help us achieve our goal of making a collaborative, online, accessible, open content, accurate, unbiased and comprehensive encyclopedia?".

If someone can convince me that content filters will help us, or hinder us, in that goal, then I'll listen carefully and "vote" accordingly. But arguments about protecting children, or how content filters should be scrapped, are irrelevant - I didn't sign on to Wikipedia to protect children, nor to scrap content filters. Tell me instead about how content filters will make Wikipedia more accessible, or how they will make Wikipedia less comprehensive. Tell me about how getting more children on Wikipedia will improve the possibilities for collaboration, or tell me how it's impossible to do content filtering in an unbiased way. Those are the arguments that are worth making...

Martin "MyRedDice" Harper