Jimmy writes:
Sure, and so toward that end, I think we need do no more than what google does -- make it a one-click easy thing to view the encyclopedia in this way or that. If parents want to *enforce* that their children take a certain view, they can do so in their own way, perhaps in the same way that they do with google or other big websites.
Isn't it relevant that we don't know what criteria google uses to filter things into "safe" and "unsafe"?
I'm guessing that my previous argument was so fundamentally flawed that it didn't deserve comment. Since we don't know and won't be borrowing Google's system, we will have to establish our own. At the risk of embarassing myself, let me ask again:
[[felching]]: "safe" or not? [[oral sex]]: "safe" or not? [[Bill Clinton]]: "safe" or not?
For what it's worth, one of those three articles disgusts me, *but* I don't think that my disgust is relevant to wikipedia *in any way*, nor should it be. Apparently there's a large enough sector of people that find it perfectly appealing, and so 1) there was something worth writing about and 2) someone wrote the article.
At any rate, if any less than three of those articles are "unsafe" then we are being biased, i.e. POV, in our application of the filter, and therein lies the problem.
Similarly, for Julie's benefit, since this is clearly not only about sex, though sex provides some vivid examples:
[[murder]]: "safe" or not? [[infanticide]]: "safe" or not? [[matricide]]: "safe" or not? [[genocide]]: "safe" or not?
Would it be ok for children to know about murder, but not murder of infants, mothers, or entire ethnicities? If so, why? Isn't that POV? Why should murder of an infant be considered "less safe" to know about than murder of an adult? Why should murder of a mother be considered "less safe" to know about than murder of a stranger? Why should murder of many be considered "less safe" to know about than murder of one? Those are the kinds of issues that will come up in categorizing articles and establishing the filters.
Deciding what is "safe" to know about carries strong and undeniable moral connatations. Why should wikipedia establish, codify, and *display, prominently* a moral value system? If we filter *murder*, how is wikipedia of any value whatsoever? If we don't filter it, but filter other similar topics, we're exercising moral judgement, which is incompatible with our goal to be NPOV.
And, while we're on the subject, are we really doing anyone a service when we forsake our goal of providing a complete educational resource to implement a system to allow people to educate themselves only on what they're already prejudiced towards? That sounds like a different project altogether--we could have a felching-pedia, a drug-abuse-pedia, a sunshine-and-bubbles-pedia.... If that's what people want, let them fork. That's not our project, those aren't our goals.
kq
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I think the main misconception that you have is that a content advisory system should take a position on whether or not content is 'safe for children' or not. It should not, and if it does not, then it can be NPOV.
koyaanis qatsi wrote:
Isn't it relevant that we don't know what criteria google uses to filter things into "safe" and "unsafe"?
Sure, I guess it is. But I think we can take a guess at what they do. I am not suggesting that we need to replicate what they are doing exactly, of course. Since our universe of documents is so much smaller, and our purpose so much narrower, our task in this area will be much less.
I'm guessing that my previous argument was so fundamentally flawed that it didn't deserve comment.
Probably not! Perhaps it was just overlooked.
Since we don't know and won't be borrowing Google's system, we will have to establish our own. At the risk of embarassing myself, let me ask again:
[[felching]]: "safe" or not? [[oral sex]]: "safe" or not? [[Bill Clinton]]: "safe" or not?
felching: sexual content oral sex: sexual content Bill Clinton: politics
I suppose some wag could come along and suggest that an article on Bill Clinton is 'sexual content', but if it really is, then there's something wrong with the article on other grounds, I think.
For what it's worth, one of those three articles disgusts me, *but* I don't think that my disgust is relevant to wikipedia *in any way*, nor should it be.
Yeah, I'm no fan of Clinton, either. ;-)
At any rate, if any less than three of those articles are "unsafe" then we are being biased, i.e. POV,
Really? I don't see how. The question is not: "is this unsafe or not?" The question is: "is this controversial or not?" or "is this likely to be considered mature content?"
We often say that such-and-such a person is 'controversial', or that thus-and-so theory is 'controversial', without taking any position on whether or not it *should* be controversial. Sometimes we as a group agree, sometimes we don't, but anyway, NPOV saves us from having to decide.
[[murder]]: "safe" or not? [[infanticide]]: "safe" or not? [[matricide]]: "safe" or not? [[genocide]]: "safe" or not?
I would put all those some content advisory category like 'crime'.
Would it be ok for children to know about murder, but not murder of infants, mothers, or entire ethnicities? If so, why? Isn't that POV? Why should murder of an infant be considered "less safe" to know about than murder of an adult? Why should murder of a mother be considered "less safe" to know about than murder of a stranger? Why should murder of many be considered "less safe" to know about than murder of one? Those are the kinds of issues that will come up in categorizing articles and establishing the filters.
Under the system I'm advocating, none of those questions have any relevance at all.
And, while we're on the subject, are we really doing anyone a service when we forsake our goal of providing a complete educational resource to implement a system to allow people to educate themselves only on what they're already prejudiced towards?
That is hardly much of a concern. We aren't here to cram knowledge down people's throats. If people don't want to read about something, then they won't, no matter what we do.
What's important to recognize is that people *do* have valid concerns along these lines, concerns which we may not share ourselves, but which we can nonetheless acknowledge.
To bring it back to LittleDan's original issue: if the existence of 'felching' in the encyclopedia gets it banned from all schools, then isn't that problematic?
Or: if I can't in good conscience send something with a more delicate temperament than mine to wikipedia, then isn't that problematic, too?
--Jimbo
At 12:44 PM 6/7/2003, you wrote:
To bring it back to LittleDan's original issue: if the existence of 'felching' in the encyclopedia gets it banned from all schools, then isn't that problematic?
Or: if I can't in good conscience send something with a more delicate temperament than mine to wikipedia, then isn't that problematic, too?
--Jimbo
Not to be hard-nosed about it or anything....
Yes, if [[felching]] gets us banned from schools, that is a problem... for the schools. I don't really see it as a problem for us. The schools lose out on a source of information that, in my opinion, is unparalleled in its usefulness.
As I see it, it is up to the schools (or, more properly, the parents of the students in the schools, or the administrators/politicians responsible for school policy) to fix this problem. The problem, as I see it, is not the inclusion of felching in the Wikipedia, but that some people are /so/ narrow-minded that they will block access to the whole 'pedia because it's here.
I'm sorry, but if other people want to censor information from themselves and children in their charge, that's /their/ problem, not ours. I don't see why we need to be held hostage to the Puritanical views of a few people out there who think that it would somehow be a disaster if a child read the felching article. Why do their work for them? If they want a filter, let /them/ write it. Let /them/ argue what it should filter. Let's leave Wikipedia just the way it is.
----- Dante Alighieri dalighieri@digitalgrapefruit.com
"The darkest places in hell are reserved for those who maintain their neutrality in times of great moral crisis." -Dante Alighieri, 1265-1321
Dante Alighieri wrote:
I'm sorry, but if other people want to censor information from themselves and children in their charge, that's /their/ problem, not ours. I don't see why we need to be held hostage to the Puritanical views of a few people out there who think that it would somehow be a disaster if a child read the felching article. Why do their work for them? If they want a filter, let /them/ write it. Let /them/ argue what it should filter. Let's leave Wikipedia just the way it is.
In what we are we held hostage just by including content metadata and allowing people a simple option for how they want to view the wikipedia? I think such dramatic analogies would be appropriate if our only possible course of actions were to either self-censor or let it all hang out, but it seems to me that we have several promising alternatives that pose a useful compromise.
Again, I ask you to think not of schools and their issues, but of me and my issues. I'm a modern person offended by almost nothing. And yet, I wouldn't like to be showing my mother wikipedia and say, o.k., here is how you edit, and over here is where people can see the recent changes, and OH MY!!, er, well, uh, really, this isn't about porn, ma.
--Jimbo
--- Jimmy Wales jwales@bomis.com wrote:
Dante Alighieri wrote:
I'm sorry, but if other people want to censor
information from themselves
and children in their charge, that's /their/
problem, not ours. I don't see
why we need to be held hostage to the Puritanical
views of a few people out
there who think that it would somehow be a
disaster if a child read the
felching article. Why do their work for them? If
they want a filter, let
/them/ write it. Let /them/ argue what it should
filter. Let's leave
Wikipedia just the way it is.
In what we are we held hostage just by including content metadata and allowing people a simple option for how they want to view the wikipedia? I think such dramatic analogies would be appropriate if our only possible course of actions were to either self-censor or let it all hang out, but it seems to me that we have several promising alternatives that pose a useful compromise.
Again, I ask you to think not of schools and their issues, but of me and my issues. I'm a modern person offended by almost nothing. And yet, I wouldn't like to be showing my mother wikipedia and say, o.k., here is how you edit, and over here is where people can see the recent changes, and OH MY!!, er, well, uh, really, this isn't about porn, ma.
--Jimbo
I understand your desire to protect your mother Jimbo, but I don't see what your mother has to do with this.
I somehow read that here, you are suggesting that articles flagged as porn along your mother principles, are not to be seen in recent changes either ? This will become very complicated then.
I see no "real problem" I guess with setting flags but I definitly see one in defining which will be under one flag or not.
The current editors will decide together what is supposingly ok to most, and what is supposingly not ok. But, how are these supposed to know what is offensive in one culture and not offensive in another ? This is different in each culture, and each situation. So that has to be defined accordingly, not uniformally for every culture.
I admit some might desire some sort of censorship might be necessary for full access to knowledge along certain standards of decency or whatever.
Say, if you want to propose an short-wikipedia to american schools - such a wikiUSchildrenpedia set for american education, you need certification teams coherent with american education standards.
But, a wikiBritishchildrenpedia set for british education might not require the same censorship standards. Perhaps the definition of what is porn or not porn will be different. Maybe some points not acceptable for american will be acceptable by british standards and reversely.
Each of these set of people need to define *themselves* what is ok and what is not ok.
So, we need to provide *everything*, and that is *their* job to decide to keep or not to keep the information. Not our job. So we need to provide the flagging system for an extracted wiki perhaps, but certainly not to define the nature of the censorship ourselves.
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Anthere wrote:
I understand your desire to protect your mother Jimbo, but I don't see what your mother has to do with this.
I somehow read that here, you are suggesting that articles flagged as porn along your mother principles, are not to be seen in recent changes either ? This will become very complicated then.
Before this gets into a "you called my mother a what?" kind of tiff here... (hehe) I must say that Anthere is right to point out that getting too specific with our analogies (and assuming they are universal and applicable ). And Jim is right in reasoning out a case where the WP may be limited by its choices of topics.
I would remind people of something that Johnathan once said here that he deliberately tried to advance the Wikipedia to his Muslim friends - and they all ran upon seeing what they percieved as an entreched anti-Arab bias in its coverage of Is-Pal conflict issues - and the fighting that would tend to result in challenging it assumed authority. I'm a fucking expert. Muslims are perhaps a more important demographic group to cater to - should we be interested in changing the Wikipedia - (Dressing it up as it were). Which I'm not, frankly. Where issues of balance are concerned, there needs to be respect for voices that have some balance - the puritans and the heathens be damned.
Still, it would be a nice thing for Jim to someday show his Ma the site - God knows the Bomis site would be too tacky. "Show me what your spending your time on, Dear" is a question most of us hear - and cringe at if we cant explain it exactly - if it doesnt fit exactly into the mold. "I design porn sites for Larry Flint Mom" or "Im one of those ladies you see on Sutter and Polk street on the party nights Mom" tend to be hard to leave the lips.
Nevertheless, WP is bigger than all of us - thank goodness, and attempts to change the character and personality of something destined to become the knowledge base for the next generation, should be damned if it cowtows to the particular interests of nuclear-family era mothers everywhere - or our Oedipal-Pavlovian fear of them. On the practical side - a color scale of content could be devised. It could run as a fuzzy logic circuit. http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuzzy_logic . This could be set with a tag in each page to score a value for each page - and parents and nannys and teachers and the PMRC and the Bible belt Christians could all look at WP without trippin too hard.
I remind people that the protection isnt really to provide security - rather its just there to let people feel like theres some security effort - absolving the site managers of any wrongdoing. Its a rather cynical view, I'll admit.
Yes, Momma I'm sending my email now... No, Momma I didnt take out the trash... OW, Ma that hurts!...
-SM
We could research the standards for a number of english-speaking countries and only include (in the censored database) pages that follow all of them.
Anthere anthere6@yahoo.com wrote:Say, if you want to propose an short-wikipedia to american schools - such a wikiUSchildrenpedia set for american education, you need certification teams coherent with american education standards.
But, a wikiBritishchildrenpedia set for british education might not require the same censorship standards. Perhaps the definition of what is porn or not porn will be different. Maybe some points not acceptable for american will be acceptable by british standards and reversely.
Each of these set of people need to define *themselves* what is ok and what is not ok.
So, we need to provide *everything*, and that is *their* job to decide to keep or not to keep the information. Not our job. So we need to provide the flagging system for an extracted wiki perhaps, but certainly not to define the nature of the censorship ourselves.
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Jimmy Wales wrote:
Again, I ask you to think not of schools and their issues, but of me and my issues. I'm a modern person offended by almost nothing. And yet, I wouldn't like to be showing my mother wikipedia and say, o.k., here is how you edit, and over here is where people can see the recent changes, and OH MY!!, er, well, uh, really, this isn't about porn, ma.
My first reaction on seeing one of the sex articles was "whoa!", and the second reaction was "OK, this is a serious encyclopedia, it has *everything*." Have you actually showed your mother wikipedia? If not, her reaction might surprise you.
I'm doubtful about the metadata idea, tags will become lightning rods for POV dispute or be ignored. I suspect that a bit of linkage analysis will show the problematic articles fall into a self-referencing group, and if so the nice folks implementing bowdlerpedia.org can use that to filter the "bad" articles and keep the "good" ones.
Stan
At 06:16 AM 6/9/2003, you wrote:
Dante Alighieri wrote:
I'm sorry, but if other people want to censor information from themselves and children in their charge, that's /their/ problem, not ours. I don't
see
why we need to be held hostage to the Puritanical views of a few people
out
there who think that it would somehow be a disaster if a child read the felching article. Why do their work for them? If they want a filter, let /them/ write it. Let /them/ argue what it should filter. Let's leave Wikipedia just the way it is.
In what we are we held hostage just by including content metadata and allowing people a simple option for how they want to view the wikipedia? I think such dramatic analogies would be appropriate if our only possible course of actions were to either self-censor or let it all hang out, but it seems to me that we have several promising alternatives that pose a useful compromise.
Again, I ask you to think not of schools and their issues, but of me and my issues. I'm a modern person offended by almost nothing. And yet, I wouldn't like to be showing my mother wikipedia and say, o.k., here is how you edit, and over here is where people can see the recent changes, and OH MY!!, er, well, uh, really, this isn't about porn, ma.
Well, I'm making a straight slippery slope argument. The first step is of course, reasonable, it's the eighth step that worries me.
----- Dante Alighieri dalighieri@digitalgrapefruit.com
"The darkest places in hell are reserved for those who maintain their neutrality in times of great moral crisis." -Dante Alighieri, 1265-1321
Did you ever show your mother Bomis? That really is pornography.
Jimmy Wales jwales@bomis.com wrote:Dante Alighieri wrote:
I'm sorry, but if other people want to censor information from themselves and children in their charge, that's /their/ problem, not ours. I don't see why we need to be held hostage to the Puritanical views of a few people out there who think that it would somehow be a disaster if a child read the felching article. Why do their work for them? If they want a filter, let /them/ write it. Let /them/ argue what it should filter. Let's leave Wikipedia just the way it is.
In what we are we held hostage just by including content metadata and allowing people a simple option for how they want to view the wikipedia? I think such dramatic analogies would be appropriate if our only possible course of actions were to either self-censor or let it all hang out, but it seems to me that we have several promising alternatives that pose a useful compromise.
Again, I ask you to think not of schools and their issues, but of me and my issues. I'm a modern person offended by almost nothing. And yet, I wouldn't like to be showing my mother wikipedia and say, o.k., here is how you edit, and over here is where people can see the recent changes, and OH MY!!, er, well, uh, really, this isn't about porn, ma.
--Jimbo _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@wikipedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
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----- Original Message ----- From: Daniel Ehrenberg To: wikien-l@wikipedia.org Sent: Monday, June 09, 2003 7:04 PM Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Re: Filtering, etc.
Did you ever show your mother Bomis? That really is pornography.
Jimmy Wales jwales@bomis.com wrote: Dante Alighieri wrote: > I'm sorry, but if other people want to censor information from themselves > and children in their charge, that's /their/ problem, not ours. I don't see > why we need to be held hostage to the Puritanical views of a few people out > there who think that it would somehow be a disaster if a child read the > felching article. Why do their work for them? If they want a filter, let > /them/ write it. Let /them/ argue what it should filter. Let's leave > Wikipedia just the way it is.
In what we are we held hostage just by including content metadata and allowing people a simple option for how they want to view the wikipedia? I think such dramatic analogies would be appropriate if our only possible course of actions were to either self-censor or let it all hang out, but it seems to me that we have several p! romising alternatives that pose a useful compromise.
Again, I ask you to think not of schools and their issues, but of me and my issues. I'm a modern person offended by almost nothing. And yet, I wouldn't like to be showing my mother wikipedia and say, o.k., here is how you edit, and over here is where people can see the recent changes, and OH MY!!, er, well, uh, really, this isn't about porn, ma.
--Jimbo _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@wikipedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
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--- Jimmy Wales jwales@bomis.com wrote:
To bring it back to LittleDan's original issue: if the existence of 'felching' in the encyclopedia gets it banned from all schools, then isn't that problematic?
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.
===== Christopher Mahan chris_mahan@yahoo.com 818.943.1850 cell http://www.christophermahan.com/
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