As regards that Macbeth story, I think sheer common sense applies as to what an encyclopedia should have. I'm certainly not against an article on wombs.
Arno
----- Original Message ----- From: dpbsmith@verizon.net To: wikien-l@Wikipedia.org Subject: [WikiEN-l] Wikipedia can never be fully "safe" and also open... Date: Sun, 20 Feb 2005 16:44:02 -0500
Even if there were total agreement among Wikipedians proper content, so long as Wikipedia is open to "zero-threshold" editing, it will always contain a certain among of material that does not belong. The equilibrium between the rate at which such material is inserted and the rate at which it is removed guarantees this.
Even if we had a consensus so clear that "obscenity" could be a valid speedy candidate, removal would still not be _instantaneous._ As things stand, questionable articles will remain visible for at least five days--and the very existence of the VfD discussions makes it easy for anyone who wishes to attack Wikipedia to find them.
No matter what technical mechanism we put into place, tagging an article as offensive likely to be considered debatable and require several days to ascertain consensus before the tagging becomes stable.
This doesn't affect the broad questions we've been discussing, but it does mean that Wikipedia will _always_ be vulnerable to those who wish to attack it for containing offensive material. The only way to change this would be to subject every article to _prior_ review before release into the main namespace.
I think it's pointless to discuss making Wikipedia "safe for classrooms." Any teacher who lets his or students access Wikipedia will always be taking some risk with their career. The risk is small, and that a prudent teacher in the right circumstances might deem it acceptable, but it will always be there. The risk of a student running across one of these pages _by accident_ is very small, but in the fifties my little friends and I were certainly getting _our_ giggles looking up "rape" and "carnal" and "vagina" in the dictionary, and discoveries are quickly shared.
In George Orwell's novel, _A Clergyman's Daughter_, a schoolteacher inadvisedly presents "Macbeth" to her students. They reach the words "Macduff was from his mother's womb/Untimely ripp'd," and a student asks the fatal question, "Please, Miss, what does that mean." She explains "haltingly and incompletely--but she did explain," and the following evening she is confronted by angry parents who feel "it is a disgrace that schoolbooks can be printed with such words in them; I'm sure if any of us had known that Shakespeare had that kind of stuff, we'd have put our foot down at the start.... If I had my way, no child--at any rate, no girl--would know anything about the Facts of Life till she was twenty-one."
Fast forward to Holden Caulfield's tombstone, and Wikipedia.
-- Daniel P. B. Smith, dpbsmith@verizon.net "Elinor Goulding Smith's Great Big Messy Book" is now back in print! Sample chapter at http://world.std.com/~dpbsmith/messy.html Buy it at http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1403314063/
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