Gavin Chait wrote:
I think you will continue to have a problem with
contentious content if the
only means of controlling it is the NPOV.
Encouragement to genocide can be
presented very dispassionately.
It may be against the spirit of Wikimedia but the
only way to control this
is to have some declared rules about where you
stand. Perhaps you should
consider the idea of a general constitution or
bill
of rights. An
instruction book on "How to launch a hostile
leveraged buyout" could be
offensive to people with ambivalent attitudes to
capitalism. An instruction
book on "How to send anthrax by mail"
will offend
others. Clearly, though,
if you wish to be entirely neutral you have to
host
all this information.
As soon as you start to judge and select what
content is allowed and what
isn't, you are choosing sides.
If you choose sides, make it quite clear where the
line is and don't let
anyone cross.
And you have to decide.
--
Gavin Chait
I was trying to point out that even putting a
disclaimer at the top of a
page suggesting that "the activity is illegal and it
is only a
description of the activity for academic research"
is not sufficient for
content like this to remain on a Wikimedia project.
And to point out the two examples you gave, "How to
launch a hostile
leveraged buyout", while perhaps distasteful to some
individuals would
not necessarily have to explain how to avoid getting
caught by security
regulators, although suggesting that certain kinds
of activity while
performing a leveraged buyout might be considered
illegal and you should
avoid doing that might be reasonable to include in a
book like this.
On the other hand, I don't know any legal means to
send Anthrax by mail
or by any common courrier system except for pure
reserach by clinical
laboratories. A discussion on how to manufacture
anthrax by extracting
a new strain of it from dirt in your backyard is a
discussion that I
would personally not like to see on a Wikimedia
project. Or at least it
should be restricted in some way. This isn't really
about having a
neutral point of view, because all you are doing is
describing how the
process works, and it is not an advocacy about what
to do the Anthrax
once you have a couple of plastic milk jugs full of
the biological agent
in concentrated form.
We simply can't have content that has to go through
the Jimbo test every
time something questionable comes up. This is where
Jimbo looks at it
and says it shouldn't be there, so it fails the
Jimbo test. He is a
nice guy and all, but Jimbo doesn't have the time to
review everything
like this, nor am I expecting him to do it either.
And as I pointed out on the Staff Lounge, a book
about teaching high
school physics or an organic chemistry textbook is
really what Wikibook
is primarily about. If you havn't been to Wikibooks
for some time, come
in and take a look at what is being done. Some
incredible content is
being developed, and books about controvercial
topics really are just
the fringe of Wikibooks as well. The huge worry
here is if having books
like "How Anthrax is made" might detract from more
serious textbook
efforts and drive potential contributors away. Of
if we are trying to
get the Wikijunior Solar System book put into an
elementary school, they
will reject it because of the fact that Wikibooks
also permits these
fringe books as well.
As an administrator with the ability to delete this
content, I feel
compelled to not just follow my gut instinct on
removing this content
but to also get a concensus from the community
before it is removed.
And the community concensus is to keep the content,
or at least there
is no huge cry to remove it and often some very
vocal contributors who
insist that the content should remain. So I go away
and leave the
content alone even if perhaps it doesn't feel right
to keep it.
--
Robert Scott Horning
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foundation-l(a)wikimedia.org
The way I see it Wikibooks has formed a community
consensus about the format of the content (i.e.
Wikibooks presents information in a instructional
format). However I do not think the community has has
ever decided on the type of content itself. Right now
the content can be described as an indiscriminate
collection of information (within the aforementioned
format). My suggestion would be to try and come to a
consensus about the inclusion guidelines. It seems to
me, that Wikibooks has many exclusion guidelines on
content and only inclusion guidelines on format. If
the community could reach consensus on the content to
include, then you could require each module to have
some sort of "mission statement" (i.e. Cookbook
provides instruction on the preparation of food for
human consumption). Then you can weed out the mission
statements that fall outside the scope of the agreed
upon inclution guidelines, and enforce that the
material adhere to the mission statements that are
acceptable.
I realize this is much easier said then done. The
English Wikisource is currently working through some
of the same issues with what we want to include, and
it is diffuclt to codify these things. However I
think most people in the community will agree they do
not want Wikibooks to be an indiscriminate collection
of information. If they do want to be that, tell them
Wikisource has some source code we will be sending
their way ;)
Birgitte SB
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