[WikiEN-l] Just to throw this out there...

[Jimmy Wales]

Erik wrote:
>On a wiki, we risk "flagging wars", and by defining what "can be  
>considered offensive" we are leaving NPOV behind.

When I first read this, I thought I agreed, but overnight I realized
that I really don't agree.

Of course we do risk 'flagging wars' -- but that's par for the course
-- we risk 'edit wars' and so on all the time.  The best way to
minimize such wars is to approach tagging *as NPOV meta-data*.

No one can say whether or not children should be exposed to an article
about 'felching' without taking the sort of stand that Wikipedia
avoids as a rule.  It is not for wikipedia, the reference work, to
decide such matters.

If we were writing disclaimers at the top of some pages, we would
require the disclaimer to be NPOV.  We wouldn't say "This page is bad
for children."  And we wouldn't say "Anyone who doesn't let children
read this is a stick in the mud."  We would say "Some may consider
this page inappropriate for children."

Similarly, a flag for 'possibly mature content' just means that some
people may think so.

If the *consequences* of that flag were *huge*, then it'd be a
problem.  I.E., if people couldn't view mature content without proof
of age (credit card, fax me a copy of your driver's license, etc.!)
that'd be a very bad thing.

But if the consequences of the flag are mild, i.e. that people can
choose, optionally, to 'Turn on Safe Search' with a click, or to turn
it back off with a click, then there's no need for there to be edit
wars.

--Jimbo