[WikiEN-l] Re: Filtering, etc.

[Christopher Mahan]

--- Geoffrey Thomas <geoffreyerffoeg at yahoo.com> wrote:
> groan...I have to retype this reply because I accidentally closed
> the window...

I feel for you man...

> 
> Christopher Mahan saith:
> > --- Geoffrey Thomas <geoffreyerffoeg at yahoo.com> wrote:
> > > Christopher Mahan wrote:
> > > >Perhaps not, in fact, because the majority of people in the
> world
> > > >want an unbiased source, and almost everyone knows that
> education
> > > >material is biased. Being banned from schools might actually
> be to
> > > >the project's benefit.
> > > 
> > > Mff. I go to a school. I want Wikipedia there.
> > > 
> > > If educational material is biased, all the more reason for an
> NPOV
> > > Wikipedia available from schools to independently verify the
> > > story given to us from the textbooks. And [[There is no Cabal]]
> > > of teachers intentionally giving us biased facts. I think I'm
> > > missing your logic somehow - could you explain how it would
> > > help the 'pedia if it were banned from schools?
> > 
> > The most effective and deadly weapons are banned from civilian
> hands
> > (Armored personnel vehicles, Combat aircraft, heat-guided rocket
> > launchers, grenades, C-4, full-auto M-16s (the list goes on)),
> and
> > they are the ones professionals prefer, because of their
> > effectiveness in their intended area of use.
> 
> Suppose you were designing a heat-guided launcher for profit. Would
> you allow it only to launch rockets, and then be marketed solely
> to professionals? Or would you instead enable launching water
> balloons
> for the citizens, and allow rocket-mode for the professionals only?
> For profit, I would choose the latter - more customers. But I'm
> still
> not _destroying_ the rocket-launching mechanism. I'm _disabling_ it
> for those who should only launch water-balloons. Same with the
> Wikipedia.
> We don't need to _remove_ potentially "dangerous" content. We
> merely
> need to _restrict_ it for those who shouldn't/wouldn't see it.

[sarcasm] Is that why F-16 jet-fighters come in a non-military
version? [/sarcasm] hum sorry.

> > Likewise the W, as a comprehensive resource of unbiased,
> in-depth,
> > well-referenced and pored over the world over tool of learning
> and
> > referencey, 
> 
> a what?? a "pored over the world over tool of learning and
> referencey"!?

pored over: looked over, investigated, viewed in detail.

the world over: all over the world

referencey: my bad. Typo. should be "reference".

> 
> >             would make any entity that is unconfortable with
> anthing
> > except their own version of the truth du jour wish to curtail its
> use
> > among the more tender member of its society.

> So we _allow_ the truth du jour to show in Wikipedia, but block the
> truth
> de la nuit*. Don't misunderstand me - I am fundamentally _not_ for
> censorship.
> I just think we need proactive smart censorship to defend from dumb
> censorship
> (think: school blocking software). If we want the Wikipedia to
> grow, we need
> to make it available in as many places as we can - and a prime
> place is in
> schools, whose role is, like the Wikipedia, to educate mankind.
 
> *nuit=night, it's a word play/double-entendre

Being french, I got your ref.

I want to block no truth, but I want to be NPOV.
Schools are not there to educate mankind. Schools are there to make
people efficient workers.
Libraries and bookstores educate people (which is to say people
educate themselves.) (and by extension, encyclopedias are effectively
self-education-enablers, so it would make twisted sense for them to
be banned from schools).

As far as where to put the W where it can be seen by the most people
in the world, I think http://www.wikipedia.org/ was a pretty good
spot already.

> > I would rather the W become famous among leading geneticists and
> PHDs
> > in history than among 9 graders.
> 
> How'd you guess my grade!?

The luck of the Irish, I guess.
 
> To become famous among geneticists and Ph.D.'s, it must first
> become
> famous among the ninth-graders. We grow up, you know, and we _are_
> the
> leading geneticists and Ph.D.'s twenty years hence. The more the
> general
> knowledge we have, the more the specific knowledge we can in the
> future
> learn - or create. Many famous persons in history have taught
> themselves
> Latin, or calculus, or something of the sort at a young age. The
> Wikipedia
> makes this easy. Opening it to 9th-graders will _increase_ the
> likelihood
> of the Wikipedia becoming famous among the famous.

Yes, but ninth graders don't have access to the same computing
resources scientists do, so should supercomputer manufacturers make
computers for nine-graders first? You use the right tool for the job.

I envision the W will in a few years become the peer-reviewed of all
peered-reviewed resources, with article histories going back years,
with references and cross-references that would make the most wizened
librarian teary-eyed.

 
> Yes, I said _opening_. Again, the point of self-censorship is to
> create
> _more_ readership in the Wikipedia. No, this isn't some "war is
> peace"
> backwards talk. Either we censor now or somebody will do it for us.

Like they censored Linux.

Anyway, censorship is bad, but most especially self-censorship.

 
> > I would *like* 9 graders to be able to use it, but not at the
> expense
> > of seeming to the rest of the world to be a water-pistol in a
> world
> > of precision-guided munition.
> 
> If we censor properly, do so only where necessary, not actually
> _remove_
> content, and continue as we have been doing, we'll seem to the
> world like a
>
tachyon-positron-laser-beam-parallel-universe-three-second-destroyer
> in
> contrast to ordinary, *boring* precision-guided munitions <yawn>.
> And yes, we'll
> seem like water-pistols to students, but in a world of drippy
> faucets. At
> least we won't be a disconnected faucet.

If the article is censored yet not removed, access must be restricted
somehow. who controls the access? Jimmy? Sysops? the US Secretary of
Education? a rabbi? a consortium?

If the access is not controlled, it might as well not be there. 
 


=====
Christopher Mahan
chris_mahan at yahoo.com
818.943.1850 cell
http://www.christophermahan.com/

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