Yes, this is the critical thing.
We work reasonably well as a repository of *all knowledge*. As Nathan says, that is still imperfect, but out of scope of this discussion (I'd certainly recommend looking into it though).
We also work quite well as a filter of information. And it is improving this that we are currently discussing.
Improving the filtering of information is a critical facet of making it accessible to as many people as possible. If a Muslim refuses to go to Wikipedia because of our image policy - which we (realistically) impose on him - then we have failed in our core objective.
@Nathan;
It does that already, in a lot of ways.
True, but that is not the intended mission. They day that happens, that is a terrible day.
Tom
On 9 March 2012 14:06, Neil Babbage neil@thebabbages.com wrote:
And it misses the point that the purpose of providing knowledge is for it to be used. Wikimedia projects will be unavailable to those who would benefit from them if they continue to provide content that is unsuitable or unwanted with no mechanism for the consumer to control it.
If you ran a charity store committed to providing educational products free to all who needed them you wouldn't get many children as customers if you put hardcore sex products right by the entrance. You also wouldn't manage to give anything away if nobody could find what they wanted
Wikimedia is not supposed to be some kind of exercise in perfection for perfection's sake. It's supposed to be open, accessible and useful.
Neil / QuiteUnusual@Wikibooks
-----Original Message----- From: Nathan nawrich@gmail.com Sender: foundation-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org Date: Fri, 9 Mar 2012 08:50:57 To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing Listfoundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Reply-To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List < foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org> Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Image filter
On Fri, Mar 9, 2012 at 5:30 AM, Thomas Morton morton.thomas@googlemail.comwrote:
Give as a clear message, that Wikipedia/Wikimedia will never assist in hiding knowledge.
The day that Wiki*edia changes its mission from providing access to free knowledge to "enforcing our view of knowledge on you", would be a
saddening
day.
Tom
It does that already, in a lot of ways. As catholic as it attempts to be, the "knowledge paradigm" that Wikimedia represents is only a small sliver of the sum of knowledge in the world. That's just one way in which it enforces its view of knowledge; acceding to or refusing to filter content in any way is also enforcing a particular view of both knowledge and the world. It would do both sides well to approach this argument with a little less arrogance and self-righteousness.
Nathan _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l