[Foundation-l] wikicouncil

[Ray Saintonge]

Oldak Quill wrote:

>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.
>
While I wouldn't want to guess how a Wikicouncil might deal with this 
issue, there is a reasonable argument to say that it should at least 
consider the matter. 

I agree that we should not be doing the censoring, but a mechanism that 
recognizes different sensitivities, and makes it easier for parents to 
apply such software '''on their own computers''' to the degree that they 
feel appropriate would not be out of the question.

Ec