[Foundation-l] Personal image filter: leave it to third parties

MZMcBride z at mzmcbride.com
Fri Sep 9 22:49:08 UTC 2011


If someone wants to make Conservative Wikipedia or Kid-Friendly Wikipedia or
Tiananmen Square-Free Wikipedia, they're free to. They can even sell it.
Contributors made that deal long ago with the open license of the sites.

Wikimedia's goal is to provide free educational content to the world. The
world is then free to make its own filters ("personal bubbles") or even
impose them on others (in the workplace, at school, at public libraries),
but not with Wikimedia's help or harm. Wikimedia should remain neutral in
the matter. The content is available and it is possible to fork and/or
filter with technology today. (And, in fact, some places undoubtedly already
filter particular Wikipedia titles, ineffective as some of these approaches
surely are.) Leave the issue to third parties / a free market. If there's
really demand for School-Friendly Wikipedia, someone will make it. But it's
not Wikimedia's place to say who should and shouldn't have access to the sum
of all human knowledge and what particular pieces of it constitute (graphic
violence, pornography, etc.).

MZMcBride





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