[WikiEN-l] Re: Filtering, etc.

[Toby Bartels]

Sean Barrett wrote in large part:

>Geoffrey Thomas wrote:

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

>Here's a clue for any products of the American public
>education industry: the Bill of Rights is a list of things the
>/government/ is not allowed to do.  It says /nothing whatsoever/ about
>what individuals may or may not do.  I can tell you to shut up if I want
>to, I can choose to not buy your CD if I want to, and if I am a business
>owner, I can decline to do business with you.  None of those actions is
>an infringement of your right to free speech.  What happened to the
>Dixie Chicks was the free market in action, not government censorship.

Certainly it was not *government* censorship --
and therefore it didn't violate the US Constitution --
but there was censorship by private institutions
(such as Clear Channel IIRC).

>The only force observed to regularly get school boards to change what
>passes for their minds is public ridicule.  I would be /delighted/ if a
>school board censored the Wikipedia, and the more false positives we can
>mock them for, the better.

Witness the public ridicule of the Kansas State Board of Education
when they removed evolution from the guidelines for science teaching --
not forbidding it, not mandating creationism, just taking it off the list.
The board members that came up for reelection next were voted out,
and the next board undid the change.

What evidence do we have that /any/ school might ban Wikipedia?
Somebody made a reference to our already being blocked somewhere;
did anybody follow that up and see if they would remove the ban?
(«We've decided that the block was in error and have removed it.»
seems to be a common response when sites speak up about these things).
Have any of the schoolkids on the mailing list (there are 2, right?)
asked their schools if they think that Wikipedia is acceptable?
(One should probably ask in a neutral way, of course:
«Do you think that <http://www.wikipedia.org/> is a safe website?»,
not «Do you think that <http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Felching>
is a safe webpage?».)


-- Toby