> --- "Michael R. Irwin" <mri_icboise@surfbest.net>
>> > Anthere wrote:
>> > > We could put tmc in the offensive xx category ?
>> > This would presumably censor his home page.
>> > The issue of his signature scattered through
>> > random talk pages, the recent log, other
>> > meta pages and mailing lists would remain.
>> If user names were to be censored, and in particular tmc one
>> 1) recent changes will only last a couple of days
>I am uncertain what you mean here unless you are saying
>tmc would be censored from the recent changes by correctly
>selecting the filter criteria. Excellent!
>> 2) maybe some technical magic can take care of
>> converting his full name in tmc in talk pages and such
>> ?
>IMO Poor approach. It creates more work for the
>developers than for a random nit wit. This would
>leave us vulnerable to standard Denial of Service
>tactics and possibly exhaust our limited developer
>resources to the detriment of the project.

It is a poor approach if done on a real time basis, as a filtering tool. But not to clean up a database "spoiled" by an offending name (in article and page history (contributions), and in user and talk pages).

Hence, a one shot query on tables and conversion might be a good option. Of course, this requires tmc agreement, and of course, that is changing *History*. Big brother/sister Wikipedia and Thought Police. Brrrr.

>> 3) mailing lists and meta pages may have no reason of
>> being censored. It seems that most offended by X
>> issues are concerned by kids looking at the
>> questionable names. Mailing list and meta are for
>> building teams, not encyclopedic articles. So, not
>> supposed to be read by kids.
>This presumes that the only value minors can extract from the Wikipedia site or community is
>the NPOV articles.

Hum. How would you define minors ?

Is it juridical minority you are thinking of ? If so, juridical minority is not set at the same age in every country. I am still abashed by the usa situation where kids are big enough to elect ...whoever, but not big enough to have a beer. Not talking of african countries where girls are head of a family of three before the american boy can vote, and could potentially nearly be grandmothers by the time he is legally allowed to drink that beer.

If you are talking in term of maturity, we all here sometimes behave with less maturity than a 16 year old girl/boy.

>Personally I see no reason that civilized community
>standards can not be achieved such that minors can
>participate fully to the extent of their ability.

Sure. But, how are "adults" supposed to know the minors are minors ? And why would "minors" accept "adult" guiding on the account that these "adults" are pretending themselves "adults" ? We are not going to ask people their age before contributing, are we ?

>Participating with adult teams and politely yielding
>to superior knowledge or phrasing would be beneficial
>(educational for minor, available effort for the team)
>and is within the skills of most children if consistently
>predominantly presented examples worthy of emulation.
>At the moment I suspect minors would tend to diverge
>frequently from civilized behavior
>along with the rest of us. Some adults attempting to
>pull seniority on misbehaving or impolite minors while
>ignoring other adults would probably merely accelerate
>the divergence.

True. But, again, that is not a question of age. That's a question of maturity and tolerance.

Politely yielding to superior knowledge is not only age-related, it's recognition of another one superior knowledge, without knowing the extent of his expertise really. Tough!

And notice that politely yielding to superior phrasing is something most non-english speakers have to accept on the en.wiki also, 'even' when the superiority is from a 20 years younger american teenager. Also tough!

Polite retreat is not a kid "privilege".

In another message, you mentionned the possibility to set up a kiddie wiki.

If it's a read-only wiki, I see very little difference between a carefully censored (by who?) kidipedia, and a "censored-able" wikipedia. It is just another name, but it is has to do with censorship. If only, that's worse, for WE would choose what they should see, rather than their educators, who might know more of what is fit for them to read.

If it's a read&write wiki, it is unlikely the kids will learn from adults, for there won't be many adults, or few adults representative of the real world. Maybe not the best choice in terms of education.