On Tue, 29 Mar 2005 07:26:33 -0500, Gregory Maxwell gmaxwell@gmail.com wrote (in part):
I'm having a problem getting over the cognative dissonance here. People have differing views of what is right and wrong, this is true for people of the same culture or people of differing cultures. When we attempt to modify the article to fit our views and exclude others, this is non-neutral and this is censorship.
I don't think the issue is really about "right" or "wrong". I think that most people in most cultures would agree that "murder" is wrong (though they may define murder in differing ways). However, it would take a _very_ extreme position to suggest that we not have an article about murder in Wikipedia. Its wrongness does not at all suggest that is should not be covered.
However, I suspect you'd find much less agreement about including in that article a photo or a movie showing an actual murder. Again, this is not about right or wrong. It's about appropriateness. In this case, you might find substantial cultural variation, as well as differences of opinion within some cultures.
Making a decision to include or exclude such an image/movie from an article is not a question of censorship. It's a question of what is appropriate, which is subjective and will vary between cultures.
To, for example, insist that an article on murder _must_ include an image/movie showing murder if a free, informational one is available, is to become enslaved to the concept of censorship as much as insisting that the article must not have such an image/movie. Either way, we are sacrificing our ability to apply editorial judgment.
-- Rich Holton
en.wikipedia:User:Rholton