Stan Shebs wrote:

It's not so much whether people know how to operate the web browser, it's that it makes referring to WP an unduly risky activity. For instance, suppose I'm in the office of a less-clueful boss, and am trying to get the boss to understand a detail, and I know WP has a good explanation; it's not going to help my case if I have to ask the boss to turn off image display before I have him/her bring up a WP page.

This is another variant on the child-safe debate, and maybe the filtering needs to be done by a downstream organization (who could make a nice bit of money from a subscription service I bet), but if WP gets a reputation as risky to look at, and companies feel compelled to forbid its use at work, that's going to cut us off from a large population of professionals that we would really like to have participating, and during the day, not just nights and weekends.

Rampant inclusionism, in the name of "categories are one step down the slippery slope of pandering to the lowest common denominator", is pushing Wikipedia to a fork.

One, for creating articles.

Two, for "work-safe" *viewing* of the articles.

Once again, it's the clamor of the "in your face, get used to it" minority trying to hijack the project. They're insisting that viewers NOT BE ALLOWED to choose what they get: it's all or nothing. Filtering, categorization, version-marking, "sifter" - it's all the same to them: restriction on their "right" to be as offensive as they dare.

Note that no one is saying to include child porn. Somehow the "editorial decision" to leave out the worst type of exploitative images never gets slapped down as censorship. But, oh, try to hide a pecker or a teat, and all hell breaks loose.

Well, I for one am not going to debate this forever. My friend's proposal was approved, and I'm going to spend the next 2.5 years or so helping him package Wikipedia articles for a print/DVD edition. And as editor in chief, he won't be handicapped by endless debates on how sexy to make the article base. Because his sponsor's boss believes that women shouldn't even expose their belly buttons! (Don't worry, the anatomy articles will have a very medical-looking image of a human navel tucked away somewhere :-)

"Goodbye, and thanks for all the fish!"

Uncle Ed