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

[koyaanis qatsi]

Michael writes:
>People have suggested rating system, or flagging
>systems.  I think they all sound good.  

Well, I'm not so sure.  I'm a bit ambivalent about
them: on the one hand, I don't mind that Google has a
SafeSearch feature and some people like to use it.  On
the other hand, I do think it's relevant that we don't
know exactly what is and is not included in the
SafeSearch.

If I can take a short divergence before getting back
to the point:

Chain supermarkets in the United States typically have
an "ethnic" food aisle, apparently under the
misapprehension that ethnicity is something their
white owners and CEOs don't have.  Similarly, a few
years ago one of my colleagues at work asked me why I
was so political.  The best parry I could think of was
that complacence is also a political position.

The point is: given that heterosexuality is still a
sexuality, what will we flag as potentially unsafe? 
Will it lean more towards fisting and felching, or
will it include all sex?  Will we fall into that
common censorware trap of marking [[breast]] "sexual
content", with the implication that breasts are more
often for--or more importantly for--sexual
gratification than they are for nutrition?  Does
[[George Michaels]] get flagged because of the
bathroom incident?  Is [[oral sex]] too risque?  If
so, aren't we compelled to flag [[Bill Clinton]]?

These sound like idle or rhetorical questions, but
they're not.

I think that any rating system would indicate a
political position, whether to the left, right, or
center, and be a clear and unequivocally POV
annotation of what we intended to be a neutral
article.

I think also that much bickering, tampering, and bad
vibes would result from trying to "rate" articles as
safe or not safe for children; and that anyone with
questions about whether wikipedia is "safe" for their
children ought to assume it is not; and that we should
continue as we are without giving it much more
thought.  The world is an odd place, full of actions
that are sometimes beautiful and reassuring, and
sometimes ugly, sordid, and wearying; and if we're
going to report on as much as we can, as neutrally as
we can, we're going to have to cover things that
people will find offensive.  First, it's impossible
not to since there's such a broad range of potentially
offensive topics; and second; it's just the completist
thing to do.

Personally, I don't mind being offended
occasionally--the affront to my sensibilities reminds
me of what my sensibilities are, and also makes me
consider whether they are what they should be.

Given that we're encouraged not to talk about
political issues on the list because of the raw
emotion and hostility the discussion causes--would
wikipedia survive an attempt to annotate its articles
with ratings?  Think of all the political hot topics:
gun rights, abortion, homosexuality, drug use,
Christopher Columbus' name...  ;-)

I would have to hear a lot more about the proposed
systems, but as I understand them right now,* I have
grave reservations.  The fairest thing I can think of
would be a list of all possible axes on which a person
could be offended, and ratings for each compiled from
user votes and coupled with a toggle for each of them
in user prefs (Sex:Off, Religion:On, etc.)  And,
honestly, categorizing all the articles and rating
them is bound to be contentious and inflammatory,
aside from being enough work to keep all of us busy
for another five years.  Is it the best use of our
time?  Is it even a *good* use of our time?

kq

*It is, as always, possible that I've misunderstood
something vital.  :-/

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