Michael writes:

People have suggested rating system, or flagging systems. I think they all sound good.

Well, I'm not so sure. I'm a bit ambivalent about them: on the one hand, I don't mind that Google has a SafeSearch feature and some people like to use it. On the other hand, I do think it's relevant that we don't know exactly what is and is not included in the SafeSearch.

If I can take a short divergence before getting back to the point:

Chain supermarkets in the United States typically have an "ethnic" food aisle, apparently under the misapprehension that ethnicity is something their white owners and CEOs don't have. Similarly, a few years ago one of my colleagues at work asked me why I was so political. The best parry I could think of was that complacence is also a political position.

The point is: given that heterosexuality is still a sexuality, what will we flag as potentially unsafe? Will it lean more towards fisting and felching, or will it include all sex? Will we fall into that common censorware trap of marking [[breast]] "sexual content", with the implication that breasts are more often for--or more importantly for--sexual gratification than they are for nutrition? Does [[George Michaels]] get flagged because of the bathroom incident? Is [[oral sex]] too risque? If so, aren't we compelled to flag [[Bill Clinton]]?

These sound like idle or rhetorical questions, but they're not.

I think that any rating system would indicate a political position, whether to the left, right, or center, and be a clear and unequivocally POV annotation of what we intended to be a neutral article.

I think also that much bickering, tampering, and bad vibes would result from trying to "rate" articles as safe or not safe for children; and that anyone with questions about whether wikipedia is "safe" for their children ought to assume it is not; and that we should continue as we are without giving it much more thought. The world is an odd place, full of actions that are sometimes beautiful and reassuring, and sometimes ugly, sordid, and wearying; and if we're going to report on as much as we can, as neutrally as we can, we're going to have to cover things that people will find offensive. First, it's impossible not to since there's such a broad range of potentially offensive topics; and second; it's just the completist thing to do.

Personally, I don't mind being offended occasionally--the affront to my sensibilities reminds me of what my sensibilities are, and also makes me consider whether they are what they should be.

Given that we're encouraged not to talk about political issues on the list because of the raw emotion and hostility the discussion causes--would wikipedia survive an attempt to annotate its articles with ratings? Think of all the political hot topics: gun rights, abortion, homosexuality, drug use, Christopher Columbus' name... ;-)

I would have to hear a lot more about the proposed systems, but as I understand them right now,* I have grave reservations. The fairest thing I can think of would be a list of all possible axes on which a person could be offended, and ratings for each compiled from user votes and coupled with a toggle for each of them in user prefs (Sex:Off, Religion:On, etc.) And, honestly, categorizing all the articles and rating them is bound to be contentious and inflammatory, aside from being enough work to keep all of us busy for another five years. Is it the best use of our time? Is it even a *good* use of our time?

kq

*It is, as always, possible that I've misunderstood something vital. :-/

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