Dante Alighieri wrote:
Jimbo, I'm puzzled. Where is it written that
Wikipedia contains content
that needs filtering?
Right here, by me: "Wikipedia contains content that would be widely
regarded as thoroughly objectionable by reasonable people, and this is
a problem for the project."
What are these mysterious standards that we refuse to
implement?
Well, we aren't refusing anything yet. We're having a vigorous
discussion about what to do. :-)
Who, exactly, is it that should be choosing which
content on our
site is "objectionable"... and objectionable to whom?
End users should be able to choose the view of our content that is
appropriate for their circumstances.
How are we irresponsible?
We currently provide parents and children absolutely no tools by which
they might seek to provide age-appropriate views of our content.
I am of the opinion that Wikipedia does NOT contain
content that
needs filtering. Ideas are both MORE dangerous and LESS dangerous
than most people realize. Of course, the proponents of filtering
universally want to filter the less dangerous stuff and let the more
dangerous stuff through. (i.e., sexuality is not dangerous, but
ideas like freedom/rationality/logic ARE dangerous... at least to
people who think sexuality IS dangerous....)
Believe me, I'm sympathetic to that viewpoint. But it *is* a
viewpoint, a viewpoint which we should not let manifest itself in
ramming our own ideas down other people's throats.
Consider this -- if I let all my personal preferences rule what goes
into Wikipedia, it would be far different from what it is now. I
couldn't be trusted to write articles on religion, for example,
because if it was "up to me" in the relevant sense, they would all end
up hostile to religion generally.
But we have a higher principle than that, the NPOV principle, and we
need to apply it carefully and conscientiously *even at the level of
policy*. Which means: giving our editors the means to introduce NPOV
metadata, *even if we don't approve* of what some readers might do
with it.
Lastly, I find the assertion that we're being
somehow irresponsible,
or refusing to handle the issue responsibly insulting. Holding the
view that censorship is unnecessary or undesirable is not
irresponsible.
"Censorship" is a complete red herring here. I hold that censorship
is unnecessary and undesirable. I do not advocate censorship or
anything resembling it.
At the same time, on my home television system, I have my cable box
programmed so that I don't surf across the shopping channels or the
religious channels. I don't like those channels, and I don't want my
TiVo to waste disk space recording them.
Since there are only 300 or so channels to choose from, it wasn't hard
to customize my system for my own preferences.
Someone at TiVo might have argued thusly: "People should watch a
variety of shows, and not be such prudes, or such anti-capitalists, or
such anti-religionists. They should keep all channels accessible at
all times. So we must not build into the system any tools to allow
people to "filter". If they want filters, they can build their own
device for doing it. But we aren't going to help."
That'd be silly. And it's just as silly for us to not flag content
with some meta-data, even if we think people are silly (and I don't)
for using it.
--Jimbo