[WikiEN-l] Re: Filtering, etc.

[koyaanis qatsi]

Jimmy writes:
> Sure, and so toward that end, I think we need do no
> more than what google does -- make it a one-click
> easy thing to view the encyclopedia in this way or
> that.  If parents want to *enforce* that their
> children take a certain view, they can do so in
> their own way, perhaps in the same way that they do
> with google or other big websites.

Isn't it relevant that we don't know what criteria
google uses to filter things into "safe" and "unsafe"?

I'm guessing that my previous argument was so
fundamentally flawed that it didn't deserve comment.
Since we don't know and won't be borrowing Google's
system, we will have to establish our own.  At the
risk of embarassing myself, let me ask again:

[[felching]]: "safe" or not?
[[oral sex]]: "safe" or not?
[[Bill Clinton]]: "safe" or not?

For what it's worth, one of those three articles
disgusts me, *but* I don't think that my disgust is
relevant to wikipedia *in any way*, nor should it be. 
Apparently there's a large enough sector of people
that find it perfectly appealing, and so 1) there was
something worth writing about and 2) someone wrote the
article.

At any rate, if any less than three of those articles
are "unsafe" then we are being biased, i.e. POV, in
our application of the filter, and therein lies the
problem.

Similarly, for Julie's benefit, since this is clearly
not only about sex, though sex provides some vivid
examples:

[[murder]]: "safe" or not?
[[infanticide]]: "safe" or not?
[[matricide]]: "safe" or not?
[[genocide]]: "safe" or not?

Would it be ok for children to know about murder, but
not murder of infants, mothers, or entire ethnicities?
 If so, why?  Isn't that POV?  Why should murder of an
infant be considered "less safe" to know about than
murder of an adult?  Why should murder of a mother be
considered "less safe" to know about than murder of a
stranger?  Why should murder of many be considered
"less safe" to know about than murder of one?  Those
are the kinds of issues that will come up in
categorizing articles and establishing the filters.

Deciding what is "safe" to know about carries strong
and undeniable moral connatations.  Why should
wikipedia establish, codify, and *display,
prominently* a moral value system?  If we filter
*murder*, how is wikipedia of any value whatsoever? 
If we don't filter it, but filter other similar
topics, we're exercising moral judgement, which is
incompatible with our goal to be NPOV.

And, while we're on the subject, are we really doing
anyone a service when we forsake our goal of providing
a complete educational resource to implement a system
to allow people to educate themselves only on what
they're already prejudiced towards?  That sounds like
a different project altogether--we could have a
felching-pedia, a drug-abuse-pedia, a
sunshine-and-bubbles-pedia....  If that's what people
want, let them fork.  That's not our project, those
aren't our goals.

kq

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