[Foundation-l] Statement on appropriate educational content

[Excirial]

Is it really our task to worry about the impact certain content might have
in a certain culture? There will always be people who are offended by a
certain image, phrase or comment, and we cannot possibly accommodate
everyone. I would argue that we *should not *consider ourselves educators
who's goal is to teach students. Instead, we should think of ourselves as
enablers - we create a large repository of (as far as possible) unbiased
information that anyone can access and learn from if desired. If someone
objects to certain content he or she can choose to discuss it, or otherwise
they can refuse to "Learn" from it. Yet if they refuse, it is not our task
to appease them by changing our content.

Neither should we strive to be family friendly or politically correct.
Sexual and medical images might be entirely inappropriate for children, but
they provide valuable information for other groups of people - for example,
a gynecologist or a medical student might have a completely non sexual
reason to look at certain content. Protecting one group might well mean that
we deny valuable data to another. We should also keep in mind that the
Internet hosts vast quantities of porn, which is often easier found then
looking it up on Wikipedia. Therefor i would argue that a well written
article illustrated with (possibly) explicit content can have educational
value as well, if only to offset "Porn industry" style education.

Having said all that i would also point out that i wholeheartedly agree we
are not a porn repository or a web host for images. We don't need a million
pornographic images just "to have them"; There are only so many places where
those images have added value anyway. And equally we should stay well within
bounds of the law, and take care that we don't go overboard adding explicit
content;  Any objectionable content should be handled with care, and has to
be added in limited amounts as there is no need to offend people just for
the sake of being offensive. But that doesn't mean we should swing the
entirely opposite way. Removing old paintings because they contain nudity
is, in my eyes, not helping anyone.

~Excirial


On Sat, May 8, 2010 at 10:04 PM, Fred Bauder <fredbaud at fairpoint.net> wrote:

> It comes down to the size of the tent. If you want students in Saudi
> Arabia to be able to use Wikipedia it has to be structured one way. If
> you want to please gay college students you structure it another way.
>
> Really there is no right or wrong; it's a matter of who the resource is
> going to be available to. We have no power to resolve the cultural
> differences. We can only be aware and make decisions accordingly.
>
> Fred Bauder
>
> > Hmmmm...
> >
> >> The vast majority of that material is entirely uncontroversial, but the
> >> projects do contain material that may be inappropriate or offensive to
> >> some audiences, such as children or people with religious or cultural
> >> sensitivities.
> >
> > Time to delete
> >
> > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/God_is_dead
> >
> > I guess...
> >
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