[Foundation-l] Potential ICRA labels for Wikipedia

[Sydney Poore]

On Sun, May 9, 2010 at 2:34 PM, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell at gmail.com> wrote:

> On Sun, May 9, 2010 at 9:24 AM, Derk-Jan Hartman <d.j.hartman at gmail.com>
> wrote:
> > This message is CC'ed to other people who might wish to comment on this
> potential approach
> > ---
> >
> > Dear reader at FOSI,
> >
> > As a member of the Wikipedia community and the community that develops
> the software on which Wikipedia runs, I come to you with a few questions.
> > Over the past years Wikipedia has become more and more popular and
> omnipresent. This has led to enormous
>
>
> I am strongly in favour of allowing our users to choose what they see.
>  "If you don't like it, don't look at it" is only useful advice when
> it's easy to avoid looking at things— and it isn't always on our
> sites. By marking up our content better and providing the right
> software tools we could _increase_ choice for our users and that can
> only be a good thing.
>

I agree and I'm in favor of WMF allocating resources in order to develop a
system that allows users to filter content based on the particular needs of
their setting.

>
> At the same time, and I think we'll hear a similar message from the
> EFF and the ALA,  I am opposed to these organized "content labelling
> systems".  These systems are primary censorship systems and are
> overwhelmingly used to subject third parties, often adults, to
> restrictions against their will. I'm sure these groups will gladly
> confirm this for us, regardless of the sales patter used to sell these
> systems to content providers and politicians.
>
> (For more information on the current state of compulsory filtering in
> the US I recommend the filing in Bradburn v. North Central Regional
> Library District  an ongoing legal battle over a library system
> refusing to allow adult patrons to bypass the censorware in order to
> access constitutionally protected speech, in apparent violation of the
> suggestion by the US Supreme Court that the ability to bypass these
> filters is what made the filters lawful in the first place
>
> http://docs.justia.com/cases/federal/district-courts/washington/waedce/2:2006cv00327/41160/40/0.pdf
> )
>
> It's arguable if we should fight against the censorship of factual
> information to adults or merely play no role in it—  but it isn't
> really acceptable to assist it.
>
> And even when not used as a method of third party control, these
> systems require the users to have special software installed— so they
> aren't all that useful as a method for our users to self-determine
> what they will see on the site.  So it sounds like a lose, lose
> proposition to me.
>
> Labelling systems are also centred around broad classifications, e.g.
> "Drugs", "Pornography" with definitions which defy NPOV. This will
> obviously lead to endless arguments on applicability within the site.
>
> Many places exempt Wikipedia from their filtering, after all it's all
> educational, so it would be a step backwards for these people for us
> to start applying labels that they would have gladly gone without.
> The filter the "drugs" category because they want to filter pro-drug
> advocacy, but if we follow the criteria we may end up with our factual
> articles bunched into the same bin.  A labelling system designed for
> the full spectrum of internet content simply will not have enough
> words for our content... or are there really separate labels for "Drug
> _education_", "Hate speech _education_", "Pornography _education_",
> etc. ?
>

> Urban legend says the Eskimos have 100 words for snow, it's not
> true... but I think that it is true that for the Wiki(p|m)edia
> projects we really do need 10 million words for education.
>
> Using a third party labelling system we can also expect issues that
> would arise where we fail to "correctly" apply the labels, either due
> to vandalism, limitations of the community process, or simply because
> of a genuine and well founded difference of opinion.
>
> Instead I prefer that we run our own labelling system. By controlling
> it ourselves we determine its meaning— avoiding terminology disputes
> without outsiders; we can operate the system in a manner which
> inhibits its usefulness to the involuntary censorship of adults (e.g.
> not actually putting the label data in the pages users view in an
> accessible way, creating site TOS which makes the involuntary
> application of our filters on adults unlawful), and maximizes its
> usefulness for user self determination by making the controls
> available right on the site.
>
> The wikimedia sites have enough traffic that its worth peoples time to
> customize their own preferences.
>
> There are many technical ways in which such a system could be
> constructed, some requiring more development work than others, and
> while I'd love to blather on a possible methods the important point at
> this time is to establish the principles before we worry about the
> tools.
>

I agree and prefer a system designed for the special needs of WMF wikis and
our global community. We may take some design elements and underlying
concepts from existing systems, but our needs are somewhat unique.

The main objective is not to child proof our sites.  We need to recognize
that the people using the system may be adults who choose to put a filtering
system in place to make it possible to edit from setting where some types of
content is inappropriate or disallowed. This makes WMF projects more
accessible to people which moves us toward our overall mission.

Sydney Poore
(FloNight)

>
>
> Cheers,
>
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