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

Phil Nash phnash at blueyonder.co.uk
Fri Sep 9 23:58:25 UTC 2011


MZMcBride wrote:
> 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

Don't [http://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page Simple] and 
[http://schools-wikipedia.org/ Schools Wikipedia] fulfil that goal? Perhaps 
I've missed the point you are making, but also, perhaps, WMF should make it 
clear that alternatives exist, and this is not a case of censorship, rather 
than targetting an approriate readership.




More information about the foundation-l mailing list