[Foundation-l] wikicouncil

[Oldak Quill]

On 20/11/06, Anthere <Anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> A chinese delicacy :-)
> Okay, it is not a young suggestion
>
> Let's do an omelet with wikicouncil, single login, wikidata, children
> filters, and other ancient concepts.

I've not read the entire discussion so I've no idea whether we're
seriously considering children filters. If this is purely a joke,
forgive me for the humour failure.

I don't think Wikimedia or any of its projects should filter content
for children (see the Wikipedia guidelines on this). Different
children--even within the same nation, society or culture--are raised
with differing cultural values. In many Christian countries, for
example, there is a tendency to vilify sex and sexual content. I was
raised without a sense of "wrongness" relating to sex and would not
have appreciated it being thrust upon me.

If some Council were charged with creating filters for content, I am
not in much doubt that it would be hijacked by those who wish to
overly censor our content for "the sake of children". After all,
surely the people most interested in creating filters are those who
think Wikipedia is overly "liberal" (appalling word) in the content we
serve and are overly lax about whom this content is served to?

Parents, using ISP and software "nannies" (or even sitting in the room
with the child), should have the power to control what their children
see. To that level, we should be entirely free and unrestricted in
what our users are able to see.

-- 
  Oldak Quill (oldakquill at gmail.com)