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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