See you if come back Julie - WP has lost a good number of concientious objectors over the last twelve months - notably Isis, who had some sorta GNU copyleft issue .... Weve lost other professionals as well, - largely due (I think) to the realization that academics should find non-academic hobbies.

Anyway - for you to characterize everyone that disagrees with you - as strawmen, Thatcherite, Ayn Rand-types, is kinda low. We simply raise the flag that adding protections under the waving flag of protectionism (similar to the war on terror issue) then that itself smells like a SLIPPERY SLOPE argument -- and some of us "radical libertarians" must be quick to raise the issue.

I cant speak for anyone else - but personally the flag that raises with me is implementation - how would such protocols be implemented, and would they be in the spirit of the WP true purpose? Does WP have a "true purpose" is it written down? If not - why?

It was only a natural consequence - that the issue be boiled down to its essence - apologies if the debate covers unintended ground.

Happy Trails, Steven MacGrieves

The initial question/suggestion was to place a visible advisory that the wikipedia contains information that some people might find objectionable. From there, there were many straw men raised about the POV-ness of "objectionable". Me, I agree that lots of stuff might be objectionable (-- and so what?), but that there are certain (mostly) sexually explicit articles that your average surfer might not expect to find, and that even a fairly conscientious parent (or child, in Jimmy's case) might miss when glancing over the site for age-appropriateness (or even some kind of family-imposed moral or religious code -- unless KQ, Erik, et al. mean to suggest that parents should not be allowed any say in when they want their children intentionally exposed to certain information -- religious, political, sexual, whatever, by religious, atheist, or just plain struggling-through-something-far-too-easy-to-screw-up-and-don't-need-inp ut-from-strangers parents, that is).

The entire conversation has been not-very-subtly changed to be one over filters and wikipedia-imposed censorship. It's one that I consider to be total bullshit, by the way -- well-calculated deviation that blurs any dealing with any type of deeper social responsibility. Some of you have managed to prove that Thatcherism is not dead (you know, the nice lady who said "there is no such thing as 'society'"?). Nor is the ridiculous world of Ayn Rand, where one can pretend that one's actions have no wider consequences than those other people allow them to have. How utterly depressing that so many people who consider it important to write very good articles that raise awareness of the global interconnections of scientific, political, and religious issues (among others) refuse to accept that their own actions (or refusal to act) might also have widespread effects.

How very sad that the very people

who consistently argue for NPOV try to use it as some kind of shield of non-censorship, thus forcing their own POV on others. Please don't say you aren't -- there have been all too many "religion and prudery damage kids, and they'd learn this stuff anyway, so it might as well be right" arguments to deny it. What is more NPOV than to say clearly on the main page that the wikipedia respects the fact that people operate under many different value systems, and that there may be information on the site that could be objectionable?

Oh -- and BTW, if we stuck to "wikipedia is not a dictionary", most of the articles that make a lot of wikipedians squeamish would be deleted anyway -- my guess is that no one wants to be seen as less than open-minded. Felching is certainly a dictionary-type definition.

And also -- DW is dangerous in any form. I'm almost positive he was also Triton, and Jacques Delson. The time he takes from other people's efforts is hardly worth any contributions. HJ also made some very good contributions.

Julie Kemp wrote:

The entire conversation has been not-very-subtly changed to be one over filters and wikipedia-imposed censorship. It's one that I consider to be total bullshit, by the way -- well-calculated deviation that blurs any dealing with any type of deeper social responsibility.

Are you alleging that the opponents of the content disclaimer changed the topic to filters in order to destroy the content disclaimer? This seems untenable, for several reasons: * Opponents of the disclaimer also tend to oppose the filters, yet now we may get both. * There are quite a few people legitimately supporting the filters. * Discussion on the content disclaimer has continued at [[Wikipedia talk:Content disclaimer]]. This has diminished lately, but discussion of something else on the mailing list didn't cause that. * A content disclaimer now exists at [[Wikipedia:Content disclaimer]]. Current debate is focussed on how broadly to advertise it, not much any more on whether it should exist at all.

Some of you have managed to prove that Thatcherism is not dead (you know, the nice lady who said "there is no such thing as 'society'"?). Nor is the ridiculous world of Ayn Rand, where one can pretend that one's actions have no wider consequences than those other people allow them to have. How utterly depressing that so many people who consider it important to write very good articles that raise awareness of the global interconnections of scientific, political, and religious issues (among others) refuse to accept that their own actions (or refusal to act) might also have widespread effects.

Allow me to be as insulted as Rand's fans that you've compared her position to mine -- for directly opposite reasons. ^_^ More broadly, I'd like to remind everybody of the existence of left-wing libertarianism. Despite the rhetoric of (say) the US Republican Party, the right wing has no monopoly on freedom.

Oh -- and BTW, if we stuck to "wikipedia is not a dictionary", most of the articles that make a lot of wikipedians squeamish would be deleted anyway -- my guess is that no one wants to be seen as less than open-minded. Felching is certainly a dictionary-type definition.

[[Felching]] should be folded into [[List of unusual sex practices]]. I haven't done this myself yet to avoid conflating different issues; this one belongs primarily to the debate on ideal article length. But isn't it interesting that the primary example of discussion has been subtly changed from [[Fisting]] (a lengthy article) to [[Felching]] (a tiny stub)?

Anyway, as I say below, I'll check the list until my requests below are answered. Thanks and peace.

I don't know if you're still reading the list, so I'm copying this reply to your email address. But it is on <wikiEN-l>, if you want to reply there.

Julie Kemp earlier wrote to Jimmy Wales:

I really believe that NPOV is vital to the Wikipedia. I really believe that censorship is antithetical to the project. BUT -- that doesn't mean I don't think that we should use those principles to abdicate our responsibilities to a larger society. It's all good is a nice phrase, but it isn't exactly true. Some things aren't good. And sometimes giving things that aren't good more 'airtime' than they deserve helps to inure people and even, I think, encourages a tacit acceptance that this is all part of society.

They are, of course, all part of society. That doesn't make them all good. But should Wikipedia take a position on what's good? You have your opinions and I have mine, but they differ (at least as regards children reading about sex), but the point of NPOV is that Wikipedia should avoid deciding.

Certainly Wikipedia must not say in any article �This is not good.� -- and you're not advocating that -- but further Wikipedia should avoid giving that impression by the topics that it chooses to cover, and how it covers them. This means that we cover ideas to different degrees according to neutral criteria, such as how interested Wikipedia editors are in writing about them and how widespread a practice or belief is in society. Irrelevant is how /good/ Wikipedia editors think that something is, or how /accepted/ a practice or belief is in society.

We even have a natural way to balance these criteria when they conflict. For example, some Wikipedia editors wanted to write about certain unusual sex practices, but these aren't widespread. Thus we don't give much space to these on [[Human sexual behavior]], and none at all on the more general article [[Sex]]. But we do link to articles on these topics from [[Human sexual behavior]], so that people can write about them without giving them too much emphasis. We do similar things outside of the sex area of Wikipedia too.

As for disclaimers on these pages themselves, they should all begin along the lines of "'''Xxx''' is a [[sexual behaviour]] involving ...". Then the reader is warned right away that they're reading about sex, and they can choose to stop reading just as they might upon seeing a disclaimer about sexual behaviour. After all, beginning the article "''[[Wikipedia:Content disclaimer|Disclaimer]]: "This article discusses [[human sexual behavior]] "and thus may be inappropriate for certain readers. " "'''Xxx''' is a [[sexual behaviour]] involving ..." is hardly going to be any additional help. (Some of the articles may not begin with appropriate context. If so, then such context should be added, not a boilerplate disclaimer.)

I'll reiterate at this point that I have no objection to [[Wikipedia:Content disclaimer]] itself. One might even fold it into [[Wikipedia:About]] if it fits there well.

Me? I'm just a leftwing democrat ancient and medieval historian. Maybe it has something to do with having read all that stuff on the individual's place in and responsibility to society -- that "man is a being of the polis" stuff. Maybe it's growing up in the "ask not what your country can do for you ...", Great Society world. Maybe it's because I deal with young people daily, and have read and seen enough to know in my gut that children are *supposed* to be protected by adults (and not in the crazy Adam/Lir "de Mausian psychohistory" way) -- and that even when kids seem to be able to deal with things, it doesn't mean they really are. There's lots of evidence to back that, despite what KQ and others would like us to believe.

I asked for this evidence on [[Wikipedia talk:Content disclaimer]], but you never replied. (Perhaps you stopped reading that talk page.)

Anyway, I would appreciate it if you could also "erase" me from the site. If you must leave things in, perhaps you could change me to a set of unrelated initials, or a number.

I would object to removing mention of Julie entirely from the site, since she played a major role in many things, such as: * Various standards for history articles; * The development of banning policy; and * The specific cases of banning HJ and DW. Understanding how these issues developed would be difficult without a way to refer to an influential individual. But I have no objection to always referring to her as, say, "Professor XYZ". We should certainly be able to do this for anybody with no more work than it would take to remove them entirely.

-- Toby