[Foundation-l] Minors and sexual explicit stuff

Riana wiki.riana at gmail.com
Wed Nov 18 14:15:40 UTC 2009


This discussion seems to have branched out somewhat. Peter's concern was
that underage admins shouldn't be involved in the maintenance of sexually
explicit images. OK, so, legalese aside -

* you could put in place a vetting process for admins akin to what we have
for OTRS - real names, ages, etc.
** Can't see this happening, can you? 1,701 admins on the English Wikipedia
alone - more for Commons, where other images are stored. Many are unwilling,
for what I consider to be practical reasons, to identify themselves even to
the foundation.
** Docs can be faked - in absence of face-to-face verification of identity,
there's not a lot you can do about underage admins.

* I don't suppose it's a great deal of reassurance, but I've interacted with
a fair few underage admins regarding issues like these, and most take a
fairly clinical approach to it all. I realise this is a subjective opinion,
so I won't push this too much.

* The fact that these images exist at all will be a perennial concern. I
dislike the argument that if WP doesn't host them, the kiddies will be bound
to find them somewhere else on the Internet - but this *is* true. I'm fairly
sure most of us on this list grew up without the Internet and still saw our
share of explicit material before the age of 18. There really isn't a lot
you can do.

* I don't think that this sort of moral concern should be completely trashed
outright, as some of the previous posters have done, but our readership and
user base are both so vast that there's honestly not a lot that can be done.
This sounds a bit like admitting defeat - I'm trying not to make it out like
that. But Wikimedia sites are unable to tailor-make their content to
specific users' needs to the extent that would be necessary to satisfy most
of these concerns. (Or we could, and, as someone pointed out, you'd have
Simple English WP). Home Internet filters tackle this more effectively (and
smart kids will still override these).

For what it's worth, my young teenaged brother is still watched like a hawk
by my parents during his limited Internet usage hours. Parents *can* take
the responsibility if they are concerned enough.

-- 
Riana

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Riana
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Riana


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