[WikiEN-l] Re: Filtering, etc.

[koyaanis qatsi]

KQ writes:
>> 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?

Jimmy responds:
>felching: sexual content
>oral sex: sexual content
>Bill Clinton: politics
>
>I suppose some wag could come along and suggest that
>an article on Bill Clinton is 'sexual content', but
if
>it really is, then there's something wrong with the
>article on other grounds, I think.

I'm not being a wag; I'm being serious when I say that
if Bill Clinton (and other articles) fit into one
category only, then we're recreating subpages.  If
they fit into several categories, then it's just a
matter of time before Bill Clinton and George Michaels
are labeled "sexual content," and argued over,
complete with edit wars, and/or "filtered" as
"unsafe."  That's where the POV comes in.  Electronic
Freedom Foundation: technology or politics?  Filtered
or not?

It's a lose/lose situation, as far as I can see:
re-establish a hierarchy of articles, or risk
"collateral damage" in filtering--and I expect that
collateral damage to include, for different reasons,
[[breast]], [[Michael Jackson]], [[Kurt Cobain]],
[[Khmer Rouge]], and [[Robert Blake]].  At that point,
wikipedia will have drifted so far from its goal of
being educational that I'd rather read a cereal box. 
:-\

kq

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