Even more than what Ray says:
if we do not offer comprehensive free uncensored but reliable
information, who will? Other sites may feel they have to censor;
other uncensored sites may and mostly do have little standards of
reliability. Some uncensored reliable sites are likely to require some
form of payment, either directly or through advertising or government
support. If there is a audience for compromised sources of
information, there are many organizations eager to provide it.
Other free uncensored reliable projects can be very important in their
sphere, but we have an almost universal range. We're at present
unique, which we owe to the historical fact of having been able to
attract a large community, committed to free access in every sense,
operating in a manner which requires no financial support beyond what
can be obtained from voluntary contributions, and tied to no groups
with pre-existing agendas--except the general agenda of free
information. That we alone have been able to get there is initially
the courage and vision of the founders, their correct guess that the
conventional wisdom that this would be unworkable was erroneous, the
general world-wide attractiveness of the notion of free information,
and, at this point , the Matthew effect, that we are of such size and
importance that working here is likely to be more attractive and more
effective than working elsewhere--and thus our continuing ability to
attract very large numbers of volunteer workers of many cultural
backgrounds.
We have everything to lose by compromising any of the principles. To
the extent we ever become commercial, or censored , or unreliable, we
will be submerged in the mass of better funded information providers.
On the contrary, they have an interest in supporting what we do,
because we provide what they cannot and give the basis for
specialized endeavors. If there is a wish for a similar but censored
service, this can be best done by forking ours; if there is a wish to
abandon NPOV or permit commercialism, by expanding on our basis. We do
not discourage these things; our licensing is in fact tailored to
permitting them--but we should stay distinct from them. We have
provided a general purpose feed and suitable metadata, and what the
rest of the world does is up to them--our goal is not to monopolize
the provision of information. We need not provide specialized
hooks--just continue our goal for improved quality and organization of
the content and the metadata.
That China has chosen to take parts of our model and develop
independently in line with its government's policy, rather than
forking us, is possible because of the size of the government effort
and, like us, the very large potential number of interested and
willing highly literate and well-educated participants. All we can do
in response is continue our own model, and hope that at some point
their social values will change to see the virtues of it. If some
other countries do similarly, we will at least have contributed the
idea of a workable very large scale intent encyclopedia with user
input. All information is good, though free information is better. If
those in the Anglo-american sphere wish to censor, they know at least
they have a potent uncensored competitor that it practice will also be
available, which cannot but induce therm to a more liberal policy than
if we did not have our standards.
I wish very much Citizendium had succeeded--the existence of
intellectual coopetition is a good thing. Even as it is, I think they
have been a strong force in causing us to improve our formerly
inadequate standards of reliability--as well as demonstrating by their
failure the need for a very large committed group to emulate what we
have accomplished, and also demonstrating the unworkability of
excessively rigid organization and an exclusively expert-bound
approach to content. I'm glad Larry did what he did in founding
it--had it achieved more ,so would we have also.
David Goodman, Ph.D, M.L.S.
On Wed, May 12, 2010 at 2:55 PM, Ray Saintonge <saintonge(a)telus.net> wrote:
Milos Rancic wrote:
On Tue, May 11, 2010 at 8:35 PM, Ray Saintonge
<saintonge(a)telus.net> wrote:
Milos Rancic wrote:
> On Sun, May 9, 2010 at 11:28 PM, Sue Gardner <sgardner(a)wikimedia.org> wrote:
>
>> Let me know if I'm missing anything important.
>>
> Actually, yes. In spite of multicultural nature of Wikimedia, this
> process shouldn't be formulated as purely related to sexual content,
> but as related to cultural taboos or to "offensive imagery" if we want
> to use euphemism.
>
> Under the same category are:
> * sexual content;
> * images Muhammad;
> * images of sacral places of many tribes;
> * etc.
>
I'm sure you mean "sacred" instead of "sacral" :-) .
I've just went to Wikipedia [1] (accidentally, instead of Wiktionary)
to see the difference between "sacral" and "sacred" and I've seen
that
those words are synonyms. Anyhow, it is good to know that "sacral" is
at leas ambiguous. ("Sacral" is a borrowed word in Serbian, too; and
Latin words make life easier to one native speaker of Serbian when he
speaks English [and some other languages] :) )
Borrowed words can also be false friends. "Sacral" as "sacred" tends
to
be a more recent and specialized usage of the word, applicable to,
according to the Oxford English Dictionary, anthropology and religion.
Sometimes for me the danger is to know the language too well, and in the
present context that started with pornographic images I only too easily
imagined a series of photos about the "sacral places" of individuals. :-D
Censoring
by default puts us back in the same old conflict of having to
decide what to censor. Given a random 100 penis pictures we perhaps
need to ask questions like what distinguishes penis picture #27 from
penis picture #82. The same could be asked about numerous photographs
of national penises like the Washington Monument or Eiffel Tower.
...
Voting is evil, particularly when it entrenches
the tyranny of the majority.
People should be able to choose categories and to vote about them.
That doesn't seem very practical. The choice of categories would itself
be the source of disputes. If what is seen depends on where one lives
there would be an endless stream of variations that could not be easily
tracked. A 51% vote can as easily go in the opposite direction on the
very next day.
That part of proposal is not about denying to
anyone to see something,
but to put defaults on what not logged in users could see. There
should be a [very] visible link, like on Google images search, which
would easily overwrite the default rules. Personal permission would
overwrite them, too. (If I was not clear up to now, "cultural
censorship" won't forbid to anyone to see anything. It would be just
*default*, which could be easily overwritten.)
I agree that users' choice should be paramount. Making that choice needs
to be carefully worded. Simply putting, "Do you want to see dirty
pictures?" on the Main Page would inspire people to actively look for
those pictures.
The point is that "cultural censorship"
should reflect dominant
position of one culture. My position is that we shouldn't define that
one of our goals is to enlighten anyone. We should build knowledge
repository and everyone should be free to use it. However, if some
culture is oppressive and not permissive, it is not up to us to
*actively* work on making that culture not oppressive and permissive.
The other issue is that I strongly believe that free and permissive
cultures are superior in comparison with other ones.
Reflecting the dominance of one culture is dangerous, and in the extreme
has led to genocidal behaviour, and served to make the great inquisition
holy.
It is somewhat naïve to believe that we can limit ourselves to strictly
factual data. There is implicit enlightenment in the choice of which
facts to present. The encyclopedists of the 18th century likely thought
of themselves as bringers of enlightenment. The 1389 Battle of Kosovo is
of great historical importance to Serbs, but another group might not
attach such importance to a battle from more than six centuries ago and
omit iit entirely.
I agree that liberating oppressed people is not one of our tasks. We
should not be the ones going into China or Iran to make a fuss when
those governments have blocked access to Wikimedia projects. That's up
to the residents of those countries. Nor should we alter our
presentation of data when those governments insist on their version of
the truth. It's unfortunate that some governments would view a
dispassionate treatment of facts as subversive.
So, basically, if residents of Texas decide to
censor all images of
Bay Area, including the Golden Gate Bridge, because they worry that
Bay Area values are transmissible via Internet (as they are), I don't
have anything against it. If more than 50% of Wikipedia users from
Texas think so, let it be. Other inhabitants of Texas would need just
to simply click on "I don't want to be censored" if they are not
logged in, or they could adjust their settings as they like if they
are logged in.
Maybe Texas should not have given up its independence in 1846. The city
of Austin has a reputation for having more liberal views than most of
the state. Should it have its own criteria? Community standards do not
give a stable criterion. Is the Bay Area to be treated any differently
from the Los Angeles area?
But, I would be, of course, completely fine if we
implement censorship
just on [voluntary] personal basis and thus just for logged in users.
(As well as we don't implement censorship at all.)
Of course. If teachers or parents want to restrict what is available to
children they must accept the responsibility for doing so. They can't
go on expecting that broadly distributed websites will do this for
them. If the internet is an inappropriate babysitter it's up to the
parents to hire a better one.
Ec
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