On 12-11-2002, Ray Saintonge wrote thusly : Ray Saintonge wrote : Good, logical and useful idea. But I think it should not be an in promptu solution but rather a design solution and implemented early on in the project's history. Funny, I remember similar proposals when we had less than 15000 comma articles. Regards, Kpjas.

Anthere wrote: <snip good discussion> > 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. Regards, Mike Irwin

Anthere wrote: 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! 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. This presumes that the only value minors can extract from the Wikipedia site or community is the NPOV articles. 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. 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. As a result, this is probably a discussion for either: 1. Later. After a means of establishing, documenting and fairly enforcing community standards is available as per Mav and Ed suggestions. 2. Another site with broader educational goals than spoon feeding allegedly authoritative NPOV material to users for non critical consumption or resuse. I agree that currently minors should probably not be participating here. However, full participation of minors would provide an educational benefit to them (and others) which may out weigh the value of the actual encyclopedia data ingested here. Team building and participation skills are at an increasing premium in the modern workplace. Perhaps we are merely a free encyclopedia project and not an educational process or opportunity. If this is the case then I think we are wasting a lot of economic potential and actually slowing down the improvement of our processes and our material. As Axel has pointed out elsewhere, more crap is not what our quality goals should be about if we are serious about providing even just a free encyclopedia. I agree but I think I am missing your point. If you mean that there is no reason that "tmc" should be deleted as an account name if it can be filtered I am wishy washy. I think it is fine for his personal page. If someone is offended by his page they can leave and easily stay away. Currently the account name is spread throughout Wikipedia anytime he used a signature, thus difficult to avoid. That seems to me to be a problem. Moving away from sex for a change: Does the debate change if someone moves on to account names such as: "Einstein was an idiot because e=cm^2" (factual distortion from e=mc^2 while diverting the victim with an opinion "Einstein was an idiot") or "VANDALISM IN PROGRESS" (potentially disruptive to other editors if they stop to go check only to find it was a diversion) or "Kill all Lawyers" (offensive to some, and we need experts in law) or something similarly disruptive to our purpose of providing NPOV material, a pleasant educational environment, an effective review log, etc.? Regards, Mike Irwin

Anthere wrote: Agreed. Apparently not. A "Jimmy says" flash has removed this specific thorn. The discussion can now move on to the best way to avoid future rose bushes or be discontinued until next time a wild rose patch appears in our garden. Yes exactly. The point where a new citizen responsible for their own actions emerges. In the U.S. it has indeed been getting murkier and murkier. I am aware that substantial variance exists within various societies. This is consistent with my personal observations as well. Responses in sequence: By observed behavior I suppose. Good question .... perhaps we should discourage appeals to authority and simply explain ourselves to each other. It may appear to take some extra time initially (and we are not an educational institution are we ???? are we a learning organization ???? How do our contributors improve their editing skills .... or do they? Do we want them too?) beyond that necessary to dictate the correct answer, but it may actually be more efficient overall. I hope not. Although sometimes it can be useful, if someone volunteers the information, to help establish an initial starting point for the dialogue. Certainly the information can be abused or misused in a variety of ways. I would tend to agree with the reservation that many people expect a loose correlation. One approach would be that in order for the superior knowledge to recognized by someone who does not know it, it must be demonstrated or laid out in detail for scrutiny for the less educated or informed. Of course some pedagogical value might accrue while wasting the subject expert's time .... If the debate were preserved somehow so that additional future waves of ignorant masses might inform themselves ... Bah! We are not an educational institution or a debate club. Good point. I am not multi-lingual so I am not exposed to attempting to reason with non English teenagers regarding the few subjects I actually know quite a bit about. I do not envy our multi-lingual contributors this challenge but I admire and respect their community contribution when they undertake it. True. It seems to be non instinctive learned behavior displayed grudgingly in the face of superior force. It seems sometimes friendship, love, or respect for another makes it an easier behavior for homo sapiens but I often wonder how this relates to "stockholm syndrome". Is this simply another brain chemistry situation or is free will involved. Can one simply decide one day to enjoy be polite to others? Agreed. I would think such a kiddypedia would be structured around highly leveraged participation of parents and educational authorities. The advantage might be the opportunity to expose your kids to community screened adults and educators. If a thousand parents and a hundred educations spent a few hours a month participating there (after the initial community fabric is knit) maintaining the tone and lubricating the machinery .... how many kids could be served or exposed to civilized discourse from which to learn by example? Current U.S. babysitting methods average 18 to 30 students per adult and produce poorly motivated instructors and poorly prepared graduates. A properly written grant should be able to attract some capital investment from the United States government to explore this concept. It has the potential to be quite cost effective, provide quantitative proof of its efficacy, and address several political issues that have been growing in the U.S. for the last twenty years. It could also easily be setup within the budget of a few parents, a PTA group, or a local U.S. school. I do not follow this conclusion. Everybody lives in the real world. Perhaps the kiddypedia's would have to be structured around specific categories of interest to parent/kid teams. We (the community or the site owner?) might even require/allow them to use the same account handles or interchange them occasionally. Lots of gimmicks and approaches could be incrementally experimented with. Different techniques might be required for success for sites specializing in musical interests vs. sites committed to incubating entrepreneurial space tech teams. Funding sources might also have to vary. The musical sites might support themselves by taking a small cut of properly licensed music distributed by the site (Say this music may be freely downloaded and given away in any media whatsoever but there can be no charge of any kind, no handling charge, no media fee. Professionally packaged version are available at this site and the musicians receive 50% gross revenue and the site receives 50% gross revenue.) while the space tech sites might sell advertising or solicit sponsorship by U.S. defense behomeths and/or U.S. military recruiters. Further regarding funding ... big brothers and big sisters of America organizations seem to spend a lot of money in the U.S. soliciting funds and volunteers via television advertising. A proper business plan and some ecommunication with them might develop adequate funding to experiment with this type of mentoring site. They seem seriously interested in getting some mentoring into ghettos where kids (and immature adults) often lack a variety of role models to observe. Regards, Mike Irwin