[WikiEN-l] Re: Filtering, etc.

[Geoffrey Thomas]

I normally wouldn't say this, because I am quite Christian myself,
but I agree we need a 'pedia with NO religion entries, except for
historical articles on the religion as one would find in a history
textbook, and in the same vein NO explicit topics, or anything of
that sort - we should have a separate, school-topics-only Wiki
encyclopedia for use at schools or other filtered environments.

The Wikipedia as a whole, as the large project to create a
comprehensive encyclopedia, is doing quite well in that respect.
If it wants to even implicitly support fair use and challenge
filters, let it do so. ''However'', these cannot be the goals
of a project that wants to serve as a research reference and
educational source for schoolchildren. And I think that there
should be such a project, even if it is not the Wikipedia.

I see so far three (ok, 2.5) reasons to implement filters: 1) to
protect the Wikipedia from a site-wide censor, 2) to protect those
who shouldn't see some content (this point is debatable), and 3) to
protect those who don't want to see some content. I realize now that
the first reason cannot be effectively implemented without impeding
the Wikipedia's larger goals. The second, apparently, is loaded with
too much POV (though I still don't see why we have to ''not'' censor
content because some people might censor ''too much''...). The third
I still believe should be implementable. Surely there can be no
subjectivity in labeling [[Transubstantiation]] as "Christianity",
and people like Toby Bartel's friend (was it?) can easily block that
for him/herself and his/her kids. Leave the "dangerous" stuff there,
just '''allow''' us (don't '''force''' us) to block it - why not?

Thus, in order to develop a useful reference for schools, I do believe
we have to run a separate project (Edupedia, PediaPedia, WiKidPedia,
call it what you may) with the rule of '''no''' religion, '''no'''
explicit content, etc. - go to the [[Wikipedia]] for those. As long
as Wikipedia is still not banned, it should suffice. But if/when
it becomes blocked, we should be able to have the benefits of a
Wiki encyclopedia, even behind school firewalls, NetNanny, etc.

So I think at some point we'll either have to fork or implement some
type of good Sifter - and for a school-targeted encyclopedia, forking
the necessary content seems better. Or, we could even start from scratch
with a new encyclopedia and have it as a separate sister project, written
at a slightly lower reading level and focusing on a separate set of
subjects.

Is there any Sifter code available? Is there a way to download, in a
serveable form, only selected articles without taking the entire 1GB tarball?

-[[User:Geoffrey]] Thomas

=====
-Geoffrey Thomas
geoffreyerffoeg at yahoo.com

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