[WikiEN-l] Just to throw this out there...

[Jimmy Wales]

Axel Boldt wrote:
> There's one question we haven't investigated yet: would our filtering
> really lower the likelihood that schools will eventually block us
> completely? 

I have some experience with filtering software.  For sites like ours,
what is likely is that specific pages will be blocked automatically
based on keyword analysis, but that the site as a whole will not.

> I doubt that we could ever create a system that even comes close to 
> preventing school kids from getting the Wikipedia content they want. 
> At one point, a school administrator will find objectionable content in
> Wikipedia, will investigate the filtering option with the various
> categories, and will realize that kids can still get to the
> objectionable pages, e.g. by typing in the direct URL. Then our whole
> domain will be blocked.

Possibly, but it really depends on the software they are using.

Sometimes blocks are that crude, but more often, they are not.

--Jimbo