2009/11/17 Anthony wikimail@inbox.org:
On Tue, Nov 17, 2009 at 10:04 AM, David Moran fordmadoxfraud@gmail.com wrote:
It is correspondingly true that there are many people who would more comfortably use, or let their children use, regular brick and mortar libraries if they could be sure that certain material had been removed from the building. But typically libraries do not cater to people who ask that offensive books be removed, and I don't see any reason why Wikipedia is different.
I'm not sure what your library is like, but the situation at my library is much more controlled than the one at Wikipedia. Yes, there's offensive material in it, and some of the offensive material is in places where children have access, but it's nothing even remotely approaching what's found in Wikipedia - in terms of how graphic the material is, in terms of how easily accessible it is to minors, in terms of the chances of encountering it accidentally, and in terms of the use of children to decide whether or not to keep it.
You never flicked through the photography or modern art section. Sure my library didn't have any of Robert Mapplethorpe's work but it had some fairly explicit stuff. That said I think the winner in that sense was one of the art books my school held.