[WikiEN-l] Re: Filtering, etc.

[Geoffrey Thomas]

JeLuF saith:
>On Fri, Jun 13, 2003 at 08:56:30PM -0700, Geoffrey Thomas wrote:
>> 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.
>
>B*******. I can accept that American schools may not indoctrinate
>a religion to their pupils. But that they may not even mention
>religion is stupid. Saying "There are people who believe in divine
>beings. Jews, Christians and Moslems believe in only one God while
>Hindus believe in many Gods" is just facts. Schools shouldn't have
>a problem with the neutral presentation of facts.

Yes. I said, "except for historical articles on the religion[, such]
as one might find in a history textbook". This is just for basic
content. But even though we _may_ mention religion, do we _need_ to?
I'm thinking on the lines of a science-and-math-topics 'pedia -
religious articles, despite their legality, wouldn't be relevant.

>If an article isn't neutral, it has to be refactored. But not
>censored. What about the "free speech" principle so many of you
>have defended? In an American's eye it is OK to say "No Jews
>have been gased during WWII" but you may not say "There are
>people believing in a divine being" ??

Apparently so. Free speech, though constitutionally guaranteed,
is not practically guaranteed - just look at the [[Dixie Chicks]]
after they said something unfortunate.

We're not looking at _legal_ constraints (the Wikipedia is
perfectly legal) - we're just looking at what would schools have
problem with on the Wikipedia. Profanity is perfectly "legal" -
but that's the first target of filtering software.

>I have been working in some school projects as a technical tutor,
>and I learned that pupils should not be confronted with the Internet
>without the supervision of a teacher. No matter how good your
>content filter might be, pupils find a way to content not supposed
>for youngsters.

They don't understand that yet. Remember, they're politicians whose
job is to make it _look_ like something's being done, not actually
_do_ something.

>Don't censor wikipedia. It's the responsibility of the teacher to
>do so.
>
>Regards,
>
>	JeLuF

And if the teacher or school board nukes the whole thing? I'm thinking
based on the axiom _someone's_ going to censor the Wikipedia. We have
the ability to do it ourselves - filter the main site, fork to a filter,
fork a filtered version, etc. The schools don't have as much control
over censoring as we do, and they'll no doubt choose false positives
(even if there are false negatives they haven't found yet).

Also, Stevertigo saith:
>OF the two choices - a split portal system to the same DB - or an endless
>serious of mindnumbing "alternatives" to the REAL DEAL - then what the hell
>do you think is going to happen?

A split portal system. I wrote my message before I saw that possibility.
It's much superior to a complete article fork.

Just, can we have a few articles forked, e.g., [[Anagram]] which contains
some questionable examples?

-[[User:Geoffrey]] Thomas

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