Erik Moeller wrote:
Or rather, for their parents... while sex information etc seems to have a home in the wikipedia, parents might not be thrilled at the idea of Junior reading up on anal penetration, cock rings, and other 'adult' concepts. I know I wouldn't if it was my kids... some things are just not for juvenile eyes, if only because too much information leads to very awkward questions.
I strongly object against this. This implies that the concept of obscenity is generally shared, which it isn't. If you get your obscenity warning label, I want my "religious content" warning label. And someone else may want a warning label that Wikipedia may be offensive to people having suffered from certain traumas. And maybe the creationists and anti-abortionists want one, too.
Wikipedia is an *encyclopedia*. That implies certain things. If you don't want your children to learn, don't allow them to read -- that is your right as a parent. But not everyone wants children to be kept ignorant of sexual matters (or the ideas that lead to such indoctrination to be perpetuated uncritically).
I can agree that if we give the parents the opportunity to block sexually explicit material, they should also have the opportunity to block religiously material, as well as other categories. Some may even want to block mathematically explicit material. In regards to my son I would keep the filters off, but I know from my involvement in educational politics that my view on this represents a minority of parents. To a large measure the issue is about the rights of parents to decide what their own children will be able to see. Parents already feel powerless about the decisions they make for children in the face of the homogenizing tendencies of educational systems. Why should we further erode that right by arrogating to ourselves the decision of what should be accessible for their children?
What I am advocating is a scheme to identify articles that "could" fall into a blockable category. Of course there will be categorization errors over just how bad some paricular article really is, but if we recognize varying degrees of unacceptability the articles will eventually get to the right place..
Eclecticology