[WikiEN-l] Spoiler Boilerplates

[Steve Bennett]

On 6/25/06, Zero <megamanzero521 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>  To whom's decision...? It is censorship. It thrives upon the ideal of a  person perhaps not engaging in the action by merit of another group  selectively in the belief they think it might be "cover-worthy", which  is never the case in any encyclopedia.

You're totally losing me. Not only are templates that give the reader
a way of opting out of some content "censorship", but encyclopaedias
are never selective about their content?

>  In view of "not all encyclopedias are the same", you lost me there.  That's an interesting comparison. I suppose you'll say then that the  implementation of a template derived from the ideal of a networking  site is appropriate in any encyclopedia. There's no need to  differientiate; encyclopedias may focus on

And apparently also I think that any template derived from a
myspace.com-like site would be appropriate at Wikipedia?


>doesn't  change the spirit. An encyclopedia's definition is
universal- to give
>information and leave the responsibility of "handeling dangerous
information" to
>the reader. When one embarks upon the knowledge   pot known as an

I don't think that's true. Encyclopaedias have editors, who make all
kinds of "editorial decisions". They're certainly not open-slather
"all information is good information" repositories.

>encyclopedia (wherever or however it may be) those lads  take it upon
themselves
>to make the decision to  enlighten  themselves in  any capacity. As neutral
>editors, I don't see how  that decision become  our concern. We build an
>encyclopedia, not  selctively dictate who might or might not view it
on a personal
>whim. -  Zero

How a spoiler or porn-warning template amounts to "dictating who might
or might not" read our encyclopaedia is beyond me. In all likelihood,
by including obscene material, we are more likely to be cutting off
whole classes of readers for whom the material is too risky - school
classrooms, for instance. The same applies, to a lesser extent, for
spoilers - the very people most likely to read our articles on books
or movies are those likely to avoid doing so out of fear of being
"spoilt".

Your arguments about censorship just seem totally misplaced here.

Steve