[WikiEN-l] Re: Filtering, etc.

[Stevertigo]

Anthere wrote:
> I understand your desire to protect your mother Jimbo,
> but I don't see what your mother has to do with this.
>
> I somehow read that here, you are suggesting that
> articles flagged as porn along your mother principles,
> are not to be seen in recent changes either ? This
> will become very complicated then.

Before this gets into a "you called my mother a what?" kind of
tiff here... (hehe) I must say that Anthere is right to point out that
getting too specific with our analogies (and assuming they are
universal and applicable ). And Jim is right in reasoning out a
case where the WP may be limited by its choices of topics.

I would remind people of something that Johnathan once said here
that he deliberately tried to advance the Wikipedia to his Muslim
friends - and they all ran upon seeing what they percieved as an entreched
anti-Arab bias in its coverage of Is-Pal conflict issues - and the fighting
that would tend to result in challenging it assumed authority. I'm a fucking
expert.
Muslims are perhaps a more important demographic group to cater to - should
we be interested in changing the Wikipedia -  (Dressing it up as it were).
Which I'm not, frankly. Where issues of balance are concerned, there needs
to be respect for voices that have some balance - the puritans and the
heathens be damned.

Still, it would be a nice thing for Jim to someday show his Ma the site -
God knows the Bomis site would be too tacky. "Show me what your spending
your time on, Dear" is a question most of us hear - and cringe at if we cant
explain
it exactly - if it doesnt fit exactly into the mold. "I design porn sites
for Larry Flint Mom" or "Im one of those ladies you see on Sutter and Polk
street on the party nights Mom"  tend to be hard to leave the lips.

Nevertheless, WP is bigger than all of us - thank goodness, and attempts to
change the character and personality of something destined to become the
knowledge base for the next generation, should be damned if it cowtows to
the particular interests of
nuclear-family era mothers everywhere - or our Oedipal-Pavlovian fear of
them.
On the practical side - a color scale of content could be devised. It could
run as a fuzzy logic circuit. http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuzzy_logic .
This could be set with a tag in each page to score a value for each page -
and parents and nannys and teachers and the PMRC and the Bible belt
Christians could all look at WP without trippin too hard.

I remind people that the protection isnt really to provide security - rather
its just there to let people feel like theres some security effort -
absolving the site managers of any wrongdoing. Its a rather cynical view,
I'll admit.

Yes, Momma I'm sending my email now... No, Momma I didnt take out the
trash...
OW, Ma that hurts!...


-SM