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

[Ray Saintonge]

Erik Moeller wrote:

>Jimmy-
>
>>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."
>>
>
>That's fair enough. I will add the appropriate disclaimers to all the  
>pages about Christianity, which I consider potentially dangerous to  
>children. Of course I will do so in an NPOV way. ;-)
>
>Can you see where this is going? Standards for what is and isn't  
>appropriate for children or adults vary so greatly that any offensiveness  
>disclaimer is bound to be either POV (because we only add it to some  
>pages) or useless (because we add it to all pages). We can't really solve  
>this in the wiki way, *if* we are going to add disclaimers/filters, these  
>have to be configurable. One size doesn't fit it all.
>
To me, the filtering ability of coding boxes is incidental to having an 
indexing system that can be scaled up to an ever larger Wikipedia.  The 
filtering possibilities would be rudimentary.  There could be a place on 
the preferences page for a user to indicate the codes for articles not 
to be downloaded.  Thus (without prejudice to what the codes might 
actually become), he could enter SEX, REL, or GEO for sex, religion or 
geology.  (There is a risk that an article on geology could be preaching 
evolution. ;-) )  In many cases where the parent would use the filter 
the kid is often smarter, and can probably figure out the override long 
before the parent realizes.  I may not always admit it to him, but I 
feel proud when my 13 year old does things better than I do.

Choosing whether an article will be subject to a particular filtering 
code is so subjective as to often be meaningless, but having this sort 
of thing available has a tremendous public relations value..Some porno 
sites put a long list of unlikely words on their home page to improve 
the chance that a search engine can find them.  Filtering them all can 
be a losing battle.

Ec