I have two technical points regarding filtering, and a more fundamental
one.
Jimbo, once you have checked all the categories to exclude from your
mom's Wikipedia experience, what is actually going to happen? I suppose
searches for those topics will return nothing. Links on RecentChanges
to these topics will be suppressed. How about links on non-blocked
pages to blocked ones? Will the hyperlinks simply turn into regular
text?
"Why Jimbo my dear, have you ever heard about this, 'felching'?"
:-)
Now, to prevent an explosion of categories, all slightly different and
designed for different constituencies, turning the system into a
useless mess, you'll have to limit the available categories somewhat.
There
will then very likely emerge one category which most well-meaning sons,
school administrators and parents are going to block; say it's "sexual
content". Can you imagine the ensuing fights about which articles to
label as "sexual content"? Admittedly, (now that we all know what it
is,) [[felching]] won't cause a problem. But how about
[[contraception]], [[AIDS]], [[breast]], [[homosexuality]],
[[homophobia]], [[menstrual cycle]], [[puberty]], [[pregnancy]]?
Now my real point. "Young people are constantly exposed to half-truths
about sexuality by smirking older boys in the schoolyard, by the media,
by internet porn sites. In Wikipedia, we cover those topics in a
respectful, truthful and neutral way. Take it or leave it."
Axel
__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Calendar - Free online calendar with sync to Outlook(TM).
http://calendar.yahoo.com