[Foundation-l] Discussion Questions for Potentially-Objectionable Content

[Milos Rancic]

On Sun, Jul 25, 2010 at 3:36 AM, Andreas Kolbe <jayen466 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> No, not filtered according to what *we* think, but filtered according to what the local editor community in that project think is appropriate to their cultural context.

I am completely unsure how to react after this sentence: to laugh or
to cry. I am serious. OK, it is not so strong emotion to loudly laugh
or cry, but the emotion is in that range.

You know that you are living in a very nice country when one of the
worst things which foreigners remember about your country is food. UK
is such good country. Or at least England without London. Many of
people from my country were in England because of various reasons. One
of the most important reason is cultural exchange of some kind. (Yes,
paradoxically, England is not usually a place for finding a job.
Austria, Germany and nowdays Slovenia and UAE are, while Canada is for
emigration. But, England is usually for those who prefer to keep in
their English schwa instead of 'r' and think that monarchy is a cool
form of government. OK, many of us like England because of The Clash,
Only Fools and Horses and Rowan Atkinson, but British Council and
other British cultural and quasi-cultural institutions usually don't
promote that part of English culture.)

So, groups from previously described population usually face with
horrible English food in some city which is not London. Some of them
try to convince themselves that chips with mustard are very delicious,
some of them are trying to find some systemic solution, like searching
for the nearest McDonald's and hoping that there are big macs without
mustard.

But, I've heard for one very creative solution. One person was
probably not for the first time in England or she'd previously known
all necessary things about English food. And she wrote inside of the
questionnaire that she is a religious Serbian Orthodox Christian and
that her faith forbids her to eat anything else than pork and beef.
And she got it.

When you are inside of large language area or inside of well developed
society, it is hard for you to imagine that some irrational personal
frustrations could affect one project very hardly. As smaller
community is, as it is more affected by personal worldview of some
contributors. And frustrations are various: from benign to very
serious. All smaller than top ten projects passed heavy struggle in
imposing NPOV. Many of the projects are still inside of that struggle.
Sanctioning that content should be "appropriate to their cultural
context" would mean instantly give a strong argument to the POV
pushers at, let's say, Serbian Wikipedia that nothing bad could be
said against Serbian Orthodox clergy just because Serbia has 90% of
Orthodox Christians formally (including myself, although I've never
expressed that and although if I have to choose some religion, I would
prefer Taoism). In other words "cultural context" is usually just an
excuse for POV pushing of various kinds.

I can understand the aim that we should adapt content to totalitarian
regimes which filter Internet access, like those in North Korea,
Australia and Apple are, for example. I don't have anything against
creating a censored edition of Wikipedia for all of poor people who
are forced to have internet access via iPad. It is the question of
being accessible there or not. But, in all other cases it is about
allowing POV because of some reason or being overcautious toward local
laws. Strictly following, let's say, Swiss law on Romansh Wikipedia is
not so rational according to the Wikimedia goals. Any sane lawyer
would understand that it has to sue WMF before US court after a couple
of sentences with a representative of WM CH. But I understand that it
is more than rational decision for many other places. Like for iPad.

And if we are really really really willing to go into censorship, it
would eat significant part of our resources. I can imagine that I'll
be overloaded with various complaints about POV pushing and "cultural
contexts" as a steward all over Wikimedia projects. Imagine any
political conflict. We would have to analyze carefully is it according
to the "cultural context A" to present facts about "cultural context
B". For example, I am really willing to know what is and what is not
according to the Afghanistan and Pashto Wikipedia "cultural contexts",
not counting regular issues related to Islam.