What can we practically do that would reduce any real risk? (I exclude

How much truth is there to this: The Parents for the Online Safety of Children (POSC) organization is worried about parents letting their children into a website that is a known gathering for pedophiles. Any pedophile can easily obtain a child's IP address and use it to locate the child's place of residence outside of the internet. Pedophiles may also solicit children for sex or attempt to contact them through using WikiPedia as a medium, or even find out their e-mail address or instant messenger screen name. Since WikiPedia allows pedophiles to edit WikiPedia pages and view the IP addresses of children freely, we recommend that you use filtering software to block WikiPedia from access in your household or school. The internet is already a dangerous lurking ground for pedophiles; statistics show that about 1 in 5 children are solicited for sex online, and with the growth of the unregulated WikiPedia, that number can only skyrocket. Since WikiPedia refuses to address the issue of pedophiles within its ranks and the allowance of random editing to pages, we can only recommend parents to withhold access to WikiPedia.org for the time being. Excerpts from http://news.baou.com/main.php? action=recent&msg_recent=&rid=20679 What can we practically do that would reduce any real risk? (I exclude fighting among ourselves in a destructive way) Fred _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l(a)Wikipedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l