On Sat, Sep 10, 2011 at 5:28 AM, Phil Nash <phnash(a)blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:
MZMcBride wrote:
If someone wants to make Conservative Wikipedia
or Kid-Friendly
Wikipedia or Tiananmen Square-Free Wikipedia, they're free to. They
can even sell it. Contributors made that deal long ago with the open
license of the sites.
Wikimedia's goal is to provide free educational content to the world.
The world is then free to make its own filters ("personal bubbles")
or even impose them on others (in the workplace, at school, at public
libraries), but not with Wikimedia's help or harm. Wikimedia should
remain neutral in the matter. The content is available and it is
possible to fork and/or filter with technology today. (And, in fact,
some places undoubtedly already filter particular Wikipedia titles,
ineffective as some of these approaches surely are.) Leave the issue
to third parties / a free market. If there's really demand for
School-Friendly Wikipedia, someone will make it. But it's not
Wikimedia's place to say who should and shouldn't have access to the
sum of all human knowledge and what particular pieces of it
constitute (graphic violence, pornography, etc.).
MZMcBride
Don't [
http://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page Simple] and
[
http://schools-wikipedia.org/ Schools Wikipedia] fulfil that goal?
Perhaps
I've missed the point you are making, but also, perhaps, WMF should make it
clear that alternatives exist, and this is not a case of censorship, rather
than targetting an approriate readership.
They are different, simple wiki is a different content project and
schools-wikipedia is a sanitized, hand-picked, individually collected
version from past dumps for schools, as in a not up-to-date version
(2008/9). MZ is referring to bubbles- certain governments, corporations,
schools etc. can make to protect their own standards and effectively live in
bubbles themselves, without any involvement from Wikimedia.
I absolutely agree that Wikimedia should remain neutral in this matter. The
sum of all human knowledge can not and should not, be sanitized or censored
for anyone. If there is a clear need for it, someone will fill it until then
it is our responsibility to remain completely open, unbiased and neutral.
Theo