--- Geoffrey Thomas <geoffreyerffoeg(a)yahoo.com> wrote:
groan...I have to retype this reply because I
accidentally closed
the window...
I feel for you man...
Christopher Mahan saith:
--- Geoffrey Thomas
<geoffreyerffoeg(a)yahoo.com> wrote:
> Christopher Mahan wrote:
> >Perhaps not, in fact, because the majority of people in the
world
> >want an unbiased source, and almost
everyone knows that
education
> >material is biased. Being banned from
schools might actually
be to
> >the project's benefit.
>
> Mff. I go to a school. I want Wikipedia there.
>
> If educational material is biased, all the more reason for an
NPOV
Wikipedia
available from schools to independently verify the
story given to us from the textbooks. And [[There is no Cabal]]
of teachers intentionally giving us biased facts. I think I'm
missing your logic somehow - could you explain how it would
help the 'pedia if it were banned from schools?
The most effective and deadly weapons are banned from civilian
hands
(Armored personnel vehicles, Combat aircraft,
heat-guided rocket
launchers, grenades, C-4, full-auto M-16s (the list goes on)),
and
they are the ones professionals prefer, because
of their
effectiveness in their intended area of use.
Suppose you were designing a heat-guided launcher for profit. Would
you allow it only to launch rockets, and then be marketed solely
to professionals? Or would you instead enable launching water
balloons
for the citizens, and allow rocket-mode for the professionals only?
For profit, I would choose the latter - more customers. But I'm
still
not _destroying_ the rocket-launching mechanism. I'm _disabling_ it
for those who should only launch water-balloons. Same with the
Wikipedia.
We don't need to _remove_ potentially "dangerous" content. We
merely
need to _restrict_ it for those who shouldn't/wouldn't see it.
[sarcasm] Is that why F-16 jet-fighters come in a non-military
version? [/sarcasm] hum sorry.
Likewise the
W, as a comprehensive resource of unbiased,
in-depth,
well-referenced and pored over the world over
tool of learning
and
referencey,
a what?? a "pored over the world over tool of learning and
referencey"!?
pored over: looked over, investigated, viewed in detail.
the world over: all over the world
referencey: my bad. Typo. should be "reference".
would make any entity that is
unconfortable with
anthing
except their own version of the truth du jour
wish to curtail its
use
> among the more tender member of its society.
So we _allow_ the truth du jour to show in Wikipedia,
but block the
truth
de la nuit*. Don't misunderstand me - I am fundamentally _not_ for
censorship.
I just think we need proactive smart censorship to defend from dumb
censorship
(think: school blocking software). If we want the Wikipedia to
grow, we need
to make it available in as many places as we can - and a prime
place is in
schools, whose role is, like the Wikipedia, to educate mankind.
*nuit=night, it's a word play/double-entendre
Being french, I got your ref.
I want to block no truth, but I want to be NPOV.
Schools are not there to educate mankind. Schools are there to make
people efficient workers.
Libraries and bookstores educate people (which is to say people
educate themselves.) (and by extension, encyclopedias are effectively
self-education-enablers, so it would make twisted sense for them to
be banned from schools).
As far as where to put the W where it can be seen by the most people
in the world, I think
http://www.wikipedia.org/ was a pretty good
spot already.
I would rather
the W become famous among leading geneticists and
PHDs
in history than among 9 graders.
How'd you guess my grade!?
The luck of the Irish, I guess.
To become famous among geneticists and Ph.D.'s, it
must first
become
famous among the ninth-graders. We grow up, you know, and we _are_
the
leading geneticists and Ph.D.'s twenty years hence. The more the
general
knowledge we have, the more the specific knowledge we can in the
future
learn - or create. Many famous persons in history have taught
themselves
Latin, or calculus, or something of the sort at a young age. The
Wikipedia
makes this easy. Opening it to 9th-graders will _increase_ the
likelihood
of the Wikipedia becoming famous among the famous.
Yes, but ninth graders don't have access to the same computing
resources scientists do, so should supercomputer manufacturers make
computers for nine-graders first? You use the right tool for the job.
I envision the W will in a few years become the peer-reviewed of all
peered-reviewed resources, with article histories going back years,
with references and cross-references that would make the most wizened
librarian teary-eyed.
Yes, I said _opening_. Again, the point of
self-censorship is to
create
_more_ readership in the Wikipedia. No, this isn't some "war is
peace"
backwards talk. Either we censor now or somebody will do it for us.
Like they censored Linux.
Anyway, censorship is bad, but most especially self-censorship.
I would *like*
9 graders to be able to use it, but not at the
expense
of seeming to the rest of the world to be a
water-pistol in a
world
of precision-guided munition.
If we censor properly, do so only where necessary, not actually
_remove_
content, and continue as we have been doing, we'll seem to the
world like a
tachyon-positron-laser-beam-parallel-universe-three-second-destroyer
in
contrast to ordinary, *boring* precision-guided munitions <yawn>.
And yes, we'll
seem like water-pistols to students, but in a world of drippy
faucets. At
least we won't be a disconnected faucet.
If the article is censored yet not removed, access must be restricted
somehow. who controls the access? Jimmy? Sysops? the US Secretary of
Education? a rabbi? a consortium?
If the access is not controlled, it might as well not be there.
=====
Christopher Mahan
chris_mahan(a)yahoo.com
818.943.1850 cell
http://www.christophermahan.com/
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