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