Erik Moeller wrote:
Christopher-
In the US, for example, the press is not supposed to show grossly mutilated bodies. Also, they are not allowed to release the names of underage rape victims. Why is that? Because it endangers and upsets people.
Withholding the names of underage rape victims is based on protecting the rights of the victims.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abu_Ghraib_prisoner_abuse
Does this information endanger and upset people? Yes, it endangers the soldiers who committed abuse and their superiors who tolerated or ordered it, and it upsets those who strongly believe that US troops don't commit such acts of brutality.
How does it endanger them any more than they endangered themselves. Those who don't believe that this sort of thing is happening need upsetting.
Should it be removed? Of course not. It is education where it matters. It is education that can prevent suffering. Similar information, where it applies, should be published about the Chinese government, the Chinese troops, on the Chinese Wikipedia.
AFAIK the Chinese army is not engaging in adventures on the other side of the globe.
You may call that "activism", and you do have a point. If you know anything about the history of encyclopedias, you know that they were born out of enlightenment ideals (and not very NPOV!). People like Diderot deliberately tried to "upset" the status quo in many ways.
We are not like the original encyclopedias in that we don't deliberately promote specific agendas (at least we try not to). But certainly it would make us a parody of an encyclopedia if we went out of our way to prevent information from being distributed that could lead to social change -- it would be the exact opposite of what the original encyclopedists wanted.
The original encyclopedists can oly be judged in the light of their own times. NPOV is radical specific agenda, and it does upset the status quo. That's just fine. Microsoft's and Disney's status quo of maintaining proprietary rights on anything that isn't nailed down are just a small part of the status que that we are confronting.
Ec