I really think this comes down to an issue of accessibility. If we're aiming to build a large, open and accessible encyclopedia, then I don't think it helps that cause to effectively limit its readership to the most extremely liberal people on the planet - which rules out a vast amount of our potential readers and contributors. By definition, it particularly rules out a rather large proportion of people in non-Western countries, which can't be good for our content.
I'm really tired of feeling like a conservative on Wikipedia. Somewhere, it seems we lost a bit of basic common sense. If there's a good reason an image is likely to offend people (and there's justification for it being there it all), then make people use a second click to access the image. In that instance, no information is lost, it's still just as accessible, and the amount of people likely to be offended/not use Wikipedia drops markedly.
-- ambi
On 4/15/05, Zach Alexander zdalexander@gmail.com wrote:
Faraaz Damji wrote:
No, Wikipedia will never be completely safeguarded, just like it will never be completely finished. But if we use a keyword system (either instead of or complementary to a rating scheme), then images can have metadata that users can filter out. So if people are offended by images of women's face, then they can block "girls, women, etc."
The best thing about this is that it won't interfere with normal users, since people will have to opt IN to it.
Exactly, this is the way to go. I just wrote pretty much the same thing in another email.
Zach
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