Anthere wrote:

--- Steve Callaway sjc@easynet.co.uk wrote:

...

This is a very dangerous area indeed and a seriously slippery slope. I can see the arguments for it but the obverse side of this coin is that if it's possible to introduce sexual censorship in this way it is entirely conceivable that political censorship could be attained by a similar mechanism. This is NOT a genie to be let out of the bottle. There is enough political and social hypocrisy and outright political propaganda in the corpus of Wikipedia already without introducing convenient new mechanisms for the thought & ideas police.

Indeed it is very dangerous. For how would we decide which articles are to be put in the list of "to filter" or not "to filter"?

We can only make whatever filtering mechanism we choose available, and generally defaulted to "off". The choice to apply it lies with the user.

What is better 1- that articles are not there at all, because too many people threaten to leave if they are and fight for them to be removed. 2- that articles are here, but might be put in a "special" list in case the readers really find reading them too much to bear 3- that articles are here, free and open, but that the encyclopedia is not used because too offensive.

I prefer 2, which gives choice to the reader.

Maybe a two-level reading could solve the matter - one expurged, and one not. With the choice for the expurged one.

Not practical. We have enough difficulties with NPOV; getting the contributors to make two versions of articles may not get many writers out. On top of that tolerance is not simply an off/on switch. For example, some people believe in open sexual discussion, as long as it doesn't involve "perverted" sex. The "meaning" of "perverted" then becomes an open question.

Again, I know this is dangerous in terms of censorship. I agree. Still, that ought to be adressed.

Your idea of using the "XX" code as a filter is good. I would extend that to saying that any "X" code could be used for articles with some kind of restriction. This would allow for a gradation of explicit articles where the "XX" might be used for the most offensive ones of the "goatse" variety, and "XS" could refer to something that a relatively small portion of the readers might find offensive. One possible use of other "X" codes could be using "XC" for copyright restricted, when copyright problems arise. Access to this category might be restricted to sysops while the copyright problems are being resolved, and the restrictions removed when the review is complete.

I"m still waiting for comments from someone about the technical feasibility of my letter code idea.

(My own level of tolerance is pretty high on the sexual scale - hope there is no misleading hint here)

I have no plans to visit France in the forseeable future. Hypothesis testing will just have to wait.

Eclecticology

On Wed, 13 Nov 2002, Anthere wrote:

Indeed it is very dangerous. For how would we decide which articles are to be put in the list of "to filter" or not "to filter"?

Using ICRA/RSCAI labelling ?

Imran

If we don't do this, we're going to find that Wikipedia is being filtered out by dumb parental control software and the protective filters in place with such search engines as Google. Then of what use will it be to anyone? Zoe Steve Callaway sjc@easynet.co.uk wrote:This is a very dangerous area indeed and a seriously slippery slope. I can see the arguments for it but the obverse side of this coin is that if it's possible to introduce sexual censorship in this way it is entirely conceivable that political censorship could be attained by a similar mechanism. This is NOT a genie to be let out of the bottle. There is enough political and social hypocrisy and outright political propaganda in the corpus of Wikipedia already without introducing convenient new mechanisms for the thought & ideas police.

rgds

Steve Callaway ----- Original Message ----- From: "Poor, Edmund W" To: Sent: Wednesday, November 13, 2002 2:47 PM Subject: [Wikipedia-l] Censorship and bowdlerization

I like the idea expressed by Anthere and others of finding a way to shield

tender eyes from "adult" stuff. A significant minority of users believe that young people of a certain age should not be exposed to certain materials.

This is totally without prejudice to the debate over whether sexuality is

"sinful", just a reflection of the desire of many parents and educators to introduce some subjects step by step, keyed to the maturity level of the learner.

Someday, we plan to make the Wikipedia available on CD-ROM for schools and

libraries that don't have T-1 lines (or the patience to tolerate the "lag" problem). It would be very useful to allow a parent or educator to filter out a few articles such as [[****-piercing]] or [[fisting]] or whatever.

A rating system would facilitate this.

I myself would like to be able to filter out the following (in no

particular order):

• Any mention of TMC's username (as in Recent Changes, his user page and

user talk page)

• All articles on bizarre sexuality (BDSM, etc.)

I would like to retain the articles related to homosexuality, since they

are so well written (i.e., NPOV rather than pro-gay) -- but I might be biased by pride of workmanship since I put a lot of effort into some of them.

Those who don't want this filtering should be able to bypass it easily.

So it could be a user option, with the default set to NO FILTERING.

Ed Poor Tolerant Absolutist _______________________________________________ Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@wikipedia.org http://www.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l

_______________________________________________ Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@wikipedia.org http://www.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l

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Steve Callaway wrote:

Mike Irwin wrote (for full text see beneath):

...

If a minor has not established sufficient trust/respect with his or her guardian to be trusted online without censorship or spy software enabled ..... then perhaps it would be better (for the project and possibly for the child) if they were not participating at Wikipedia?

You could quite easily extend that argument, replacing "guardian" with government and "child" with "people". Just a thought.

Steve Callaway

Consider that in the U.S.A.; We, the people, are sovereign; while George W. Bush is a paid employee, with some specifically delegated responsibilities and authority. These are not small despite being constitutionally limited, as the Taliban discovered and as Saddam Hussein (who is also sovereign but who apparently has few fellow sovereigns nearby with the desire or means necessary to constrain his actions) is about to find out.

A juvenile in the U.S. is considered incompetent to manage their own affairs and is assumed to have a guardian. If the authorities become aware that they do not have a competent guardian, one is appointed by a court. Thus we may conclude that in the U.S. the juvenile's self sovereignty has been deferred somehow despite its inalienibility. Essentially enough adults in our society have agreed to certain constraints and have enough collective force available to implement these constraints. Our founding poetry is not allowed to get in the way of survival and prosperity on a practical day to day basis.

The argument extension you propose above could be made easily only if rights are alienable and the government could convince enough people of that to maintain their authority by guile, force or divine right.

IMO, George W. Bush is making the case to the American people effectively (they believe him and support his actions and preparations for war to date) that we can no longer rely on common sense and the sovereign Iraqui people to constrain Saddam Hussein's potential use of weapons of mass destruction should conflicting interests in the Middle East lead to warfare.

I hope this clarifies things regarding the U.S.A. I have very limited exposure or detailed understanding of other cultures.

Regards, Mike Irwin

elian wrote:

"Poor, Edmund W" Edmund.W.Poor@abc.com writes:

...

Someday, we plan to make the Wikipedia available on CD-ROM for schools and libraries that don't have T-1 lines (or the patience to tolerate the "lag" problem). It would be very useful to allow a parent or educator to filter out a few articles such as [[****-piercing]] or [[fisting]] or whatever.

Wikipedia is open content, the wikipedia software is open source. Any Library, university, school or whatever institution which wants a filtering system can develop one for itself.

Very true. They can also create an appropriate fork if they desire to retain full interactive access for their students with the medium.

A sifter-L (absent the P'hd requirements and stacked by any bias the controlling authorities choose to institutionalize) type activity could initialize their fork project and then occasionally augment as desirable from the base Wikipedia material.

I consider filtering or censuring articles on Wikipedia itself a blatant violation of its NPOV-policy.

How so? Are we to provide a mandatory reading list and track what users read to assure that they receive fully balanced doses of human knowledge in accordance with our mythical and unclearly defined NPOV policy?

This would clearly be silly. Sort of like failed liberal education requirements which require engineers to study literature but which allow mathmatically (perhaps even arithmetically?) illiterate P'hd "scholars" to teach engineering students literature.

Our ideal (according to the NPOV as I understand its intent) is to provide as closely as possible all applicable information or knowledge summarized as neutrally or objectively as possible.

Allowing the reader to move away from our default full view to a self (or guardian) selected filtered view is far different from applying an externally (user frame of reference) imposed censorship filter regardless of the filtering criteria or purpose.

Besides, entries about sexual "perversions" are found in "normal" encyclopedias as well, the parents in question would in logical consequence have to deny their children access to britannica, too.

Not necessarily. Access via paper is by index and organization. In principle it should not be hard to rip out offending sections with an exacto knife.

Note that I do not insist on imposing this method on you, merely that it is possible for me to use prior to handing the paper to minors for whom I am temporarily responsible.

In practice, I suspect parents with extreme concerns will simply purchase or provide access to a children's encyclopedia with published standards that look appropriate, by their standards.

How is this different from allowing a parent to set a filtering mechanism within their children's account at Wikipedia?

If the child resets the filter criteria without parental permission inappropriately (or appropriately), that is between them, their guardian authority, and any involved societal authorities.

I have no other encyclopedia to check at the moment, but I am almost sure to find more dangerous and misleading information in it than in wikipedia, where the articles in these areas were written by well informed and responsible practitioners.

This is a manifestation of incompleteness of Wikipedia more than any existing merit. Eventually some knowledgeable engineers (or crackpots or "terrorists") will show up and explain in detail how to build ballistic missiles, truck bombs, etc. out of common household materials or materials and energy found in any cubic mile of earth with surface access to atmosphere and sunlight.

Much of this is not explicitly available in existing paper encyclopedias due to lack of space and editorial selection. Online Wikipedia has no immediate space constraints and the person who feels lack of knowledge is not the best way to constrain societal behavior and choices may show up anytime.

Of course others may routinely delete the detailed information if they feel it is too dangerous or explicitly simple but a window of availability will occur occasionally no matter how rigorously we apply the community consensus to removing inappropriate material (notice at the moment we have no way to ratify guidelines regarding "inappropriate" or uniformly apply them, so let the edit wars begin!).

Does this mean the NPOV is violated if a meta tag is inserted to allow parents to filter out detailed specific information and blueprints on bomb building?

I do not think so. Information does not get any more neutral or unbiased than hard engineering data and plans. The bomb design either works or it does not. The universe will let us know when a garage or building blows up accidentally, a stump is removed, or the police find a failed pipe bomb at the site of a mass murder suicide) The Wikipedia site has no way to determine a priori whether the bomb information is going to be used well or poorly by our standards. It may be very appropriate to give responsible guardians the ability to slow down juvenile access to materials which a mature farmer needs to improve his productivity or society.

Notice I am not concerned with adults. This may change if the U.S. successfully convicts U.S. citizens for attending Al Quaeda training camps. I doubt that members of TINC, or Wikipedians at large, wish to be stuck in a cell with me for assisting preadolescent or puberty striken "terrorists" in learning how to spray offensive graffiti on the Pentagon any more than I wish to be stuck there with them for complicity in learning how this could be done or assisting others with learning how this could be done. If we are successful then it is merely a matter of time until some criminal fingers us (Wikipedia) for providing information he needed to attempt to commit a crime.

Extreme example: "I learned that a bar of steel can be rubbed on concrete to create a sharp edge at Wikipedia. Whereupon I used it to assault a homeland security officer who wished to search me. I say this now freely and voluntarily to the juvenile court so that my murder conviction can be reduced to 2 weeks public service and I can be remanded into the custody of my clearly capable parent/guardian of 12 years and parole office of 4 years."

More extreme example: "The jury finds you guilty of accessing information at Wikipedia, the same site that the Pentagon taggers used to learn how to assault the Pentagon."

The server currently resides in the U.S. so, it is clearly in our best interest to put a meta tag system in place to allow parents to filter out tagging technology and methods in the D.C. area before the Pentagon gets tagged. Our defense becomes the technology was available to the parent or irresponsible adult to avoid the tainting information which was allegedly responsible for their crime spree.

I contend that the NPOV attempts to state only that we write in such a way as to not villify the chemical composition used in attempts to assassinate Hitler or to glorify the design of the atomic bombs used to incinerate Japanese non-combatants. It does not (nor intended?) to address whether parents (or Wikipedia) have a responsibility to keep plans for pipe bombs out of the hands of minors until (in the judgement of the guardian) the juvenile has adequate judgement to determine when to make a pipe bomb and throw or plant it and when to not even think about it.

Clearly Wikipedia currently assumes to a great extent that adult users are responsible for how they use the information they attain at Wikipedia, not the Wikipedia site or the providers of the information.

If our target audience does not include minors then we should acknowledge that and post a warning that this is an adult only site. Then someone else can establish the kiddypedia sifter list and everyone will be happier.

If children are in our target audience then I think the maturity meta approach has a lot of merit from a functional requirements standpoint.

The capability might be useful to other sites using the GPL'd software and FDL'd data even if Wikipedia chooses not to use it.

For example: A site setup to deal with potentially hazardous engineering projects and information might require users to attain a certain trusted certification prior to providing access to dangerous data (in the hands of the ill informed, overly optimistic, or careless) regarding chemical propellants or explosives so useful in some farming/space flight applications. No sense letting interested novices blow themselves up through sheer incompetence.

Regards, Mike Irwin

On 13 Nov 2002, Erik Moeller wrote:

...

Does this mean the NPOV is violated if a meta tag is inserted to allow parents to filter out detailed specific information and blueprints on bomb building?

YES! By establishing a standard of what information may be desired to be filtered by parents and which information may not, we are grossly violating NPOV. What if a hypothetical parent wanted their children to be isolated from religious ideas?

Then they could do so easily by filtering out pages with the words God/Demon/Christ/occult/belief. However this will also get pages which aren't about religous ideas filtered.

Labelling isn't to let people filter more, it's to let people filter less by letting them use more advanced methods (Labelling as opposed to keyword search).

In the long term we want some generalized categorization system, but in the short term we should move towards that goal by providing categorization where it is most needed.

Imran

|From: Imran Ghory imran@bits.bris.ac.uk |Date: Wed, 13 Nov 2002 23:28:18 +0000 (GMT) | |On 13 Nov 2002, Erik Moeller wrote: | |> > Does this mean the NPOV is violated if a meta tag is inserted |> > to allow parents to filter out detailed specific information |> > and blueprints on bomb building? |> |> YES! By establishing a standard of what information may be desired to be |> filtered by parents and which information may not, we are grossly |> violating NPOV. What if a hypothetical parent wanted their children to be |> isolated from religious ideas? | |Then they could do so easily by filtering out pages with the words |God/Demon/Christ/occult/belief. However this will also get pages which |aren't about religous ideas filtered. | |Labelling isn't to let people filter more, it's to let people filter less |by letting them use more advanced methods (Labelling as opposed to |keyword search). | |In the long term we want some generalized categorization system, but in |the short term we should move towards that goal by providing |categorization where it is most needed. | |Imran |-- |http://bits.bris.ac.uk/imran |

Shouldn't we be encouraging and facilitating filtering? That is, isn't there a model of the Wikipedia that says people can take our Wikipedia and make their own version? There certainly is a possibility of filtering everything but popular culture, ending up with brilliant coverage of the Simpsons and Tolkein, say, or a science and technology filter, or (wait for it) a gazeteer about all the little towns in America. In that context, why shouldn't people also filter out smut, or Christianity, or whatever?

Tom Parmenter Ortolan88

|From: Erik Moeller erik_moeller@gmx.de |X-Priority: 3 (Normal) |X-Authenticated-Sender: #0003262782@gmx.net |X-Authenticated-IP: [193.175.135.118] |X-Flags: 0001 |Sender: wikipedia-l-admin@wikipedia.org |Reply-To: wikipedia-l@wikipedia.org |Date: Thu, 14 Nov 2002 17:27:21 +0100 (MET) | |> Shouldn't we be encouraging and facilitating filtering? | |Everyone can copy and filter Wikipedia. | |I do not have any objections to a generic, open filtering system as part of |Wikipedia, such as my proposed certification system. What I (and probably |others) do have a problem with are highly specific filters or warnings, such as |a "family filter". | |Regards, | |Erik

And I'm saying that if we facilitate filtering generally, perhaps by making it easy to put hooks in for independently developed filters, which might be any topic under the sun and moon, then "family filtering" is just one more category. There might be a dozen or more variations just on that single category. If you'd left the rest of my post in the message, that would have been clear, at least to those who don't have a knee-jerk reaction to what they imagine to be censorship.

Tom Parmenter Ortolan88 |

Tom Parmenter wrote:

There certainly is a possibility of filtering everything but popular culture, ending up with brilliant coverage of the Simpsons and Tolkein, say, or a science and technology filter, or (wait for it) a gazeteer about all the little towns in America.

Wow! We could even put it all on a CD suitable for sale in Walmart!

Ec

I can't find the email, but in the last few days someone mentioned that if Wikipedia no longer allowed open editing, they would consider leaving.

The ability of all to edit seems to be a very important principle, and one that we're sticking to at a time when we seem to be bombarded with edit wars, disruptive users and vandalism.

Yet now we're suggesting that we don't allow everyone the right to read?

I'd rather we cleaned up objectionable articles.

Steve Callaway wrote:

It's much easier just to delete the pages you don't like or which don't suit your agenda, though, isn't it Magnus?

Before you delete them you have to know that they are there.

Some terms like "pussy" have both ordinary and ribald meanings. How often on "Are You Being Served?" did we here about Mrs. Slocum's pussy? From our perspective the filtering would only be used to identify the articles. It is then up to the end user to adjust his preferences accordingly if he wants things filtered.

Eclecticology

Steve Callaway wrote:

It's much easier just to delete the pages you don't like or which don't suit your agenda, though, isn't it Magnus?

Often when working with information one wishes to filter according to varying criteria.

For example:

If designing a curriculum in physics one would typically start from the simple approximatations and work towards the more correct complex information. Material accessed via an maturity level index of some kind might be very useful in writing lesson plans and supporting material.

If researching business opportunities one might wish to start with simple overviews and then start requesting more complete detailed information or even raw data for personal analysis.

When you say agenda are you referring to the site's agenda or the users agenda?

Regards, Mike Irwin

Erik Moeller wrote:

Instead of complaining about the lack any of this, you can help fix it on wikitech-l.

Are we at the pointless complaint stage already? 8)

I thought we were discussing the possibilities with a view towards achieving consensus on what the policy/technology options are and what the community thinks should be done. Meanwhile mixing in the lobbying or case arguments in favor or against various options as per private agendas or personal beliefs.

More seriously, we can only develop alternate technologies on wikitech-l ..... and only after arduous study and effort.

In some cases, only the benevolent god king (or an authorized developer) influenced by the Wikipedia-L can "fix" Wikipedia.org after a technology becomes available by implementation on the server.

In other cases the community can begin immediate implementation by deleting offending account names and material.

In some cases I think the censorship has already begun merely by calling it vandalism or POV and proceeding forthrightly (or obnoxiously or self righteously) to delete the offensive material.

regards, Mike Irwin