On Mon, Mar 27, 2006 at 08:40:25AM +0200, Steve Bennett wrote:
On 3/27/06, Oskar Sigvardsson oskarsigvardsson@gmail.com wrote:
Regardless of what you call it, the discussion has been held many times. There simply isn't anything near consensus for any sort of censorship in the community (and it is censorship, don't kid yourself, just read the first sentance in [[Censorship]]). The discussion has been had, lets just levae it at that.
First sentence of [[Censorship]]: "Censorship is the control of speech and other forms of human expression, often by (but not limited to) government intervention. " Certainly interesting, but doesn't have a lot to do with this discussion, which is about tagging articles "Nudity 3, Sexual themes 4".
There are lots of reasons that censorship rating schemes are no good for Wikipedia ... and, indeed, are against our current rules. For future reference I've given these reasons code-names and taglines.
First off, such rating schemes contravene Wikipedia _core_ policy, namely our Neutral Point of View policy.
NPOV.1 -- Rating schemes are designed to reflect the opinions of those who object to sexual content (and a few other categories). They fail to represent the views of those who are tolerant of that content, but object to different content. For instance, some people are tolerant of nudity but intolerant of (say) particular political positions; particular religious views; _criticism_ of particular religious views; and so on.
(It's worth noting that censorware systems _have_ been written that discriminate against, e.g. "cult" teachings, "extreme" political views (such as the National Organization for Women), and even in one case, against criticism of the Church of Scientology. Are we going to support that wide range of points of view as to what should be censored? Or are we going to just support the anti-sex POV?)
NPOV.1 == "Any rating system has inherent biases (POV)."
NPOV.2 -- Grading any particular content on a rating scale is itself a matter of opinion. It involves making a judgment call on how "bad" or "explicit" an image or a paragraph is. Different people will have different opinions about any given work, but posting a rating requires saying that one of these opinions is right and the others are wrong.
NPOV.2 == "A rating is merely some person's opinion (POV)."
Second, they are in violation of our policy against self-censorship, and the underlying _reason_ we don't want self-censorship: it would produce a worse encyclopedia.
CENS.1 -- The only real proposed purpose of these rating systems is to enable censorship of Wikipedia. Since Wikipedia has a policy against self-censorship (see [[WP:NOT]]), adding material to Wikipedia articles for the purpose of getting those articles censored is against the rules.
This was a major ground for the rejection of [[WP:TOBY]]; you should see that discussion for details on the rationale.
CENS.1 == "Helping others to censor Wikipedia is wrong."
CENS.2 -- Writers want their work to be read. Any censorship system will tend to discourage people from writing on the censored topics. If sex is censored, our coverage on sexual topics will become relatively worse. (And I don't mean porn; I mean anatomy and sexual behavior.)
Likewise, among writers who _do_ still write on those topics, they will be less likely to include accurate detail, for fear of getting slapped with a worse rating. This self-censorship will, again, worsen our coverage of important subjects. Promoting it is, again, a [[WP:NOT]] violation.
CENS.2 == "Censoring Wikipedia will make it worse."
Third, they violate our policies against incivility and personal attacks.
PERS.1 -- Giving something a high rating on a censorship system comes across as saying that it is unworthy (or less worthy) of being read. Usually, this means it is wicked or harmful or the like. Claims that a work should be censored are almost always linked to claims that the writer is immoral. If your work is smut, then you are a smutmonger; if your work is blasphemy, you are a blasphemer. These are personal attacks; we must not make them.
PERS.1 == "Calling my work evil is calling me an evildoer."
PERS.2 -- Even assuming that censorship ratings are not _meant_ as attacks on the morals of the writers whose work is being censored, they are likely to be _taken_ as such. They are predictably likely to cause acrimonious personal disputes. (In a way, rating someone's work as smut is _trolling_.) Civility requires that we try to avoid starting fights.
PERS.2 == "Marking my work for censorship is picking a fight."
If we've had serious discussions about that before, can you point us to some examples? I would like to see the objections. Of course, nothing stops us having the same discussion again.
Please consult the archives of this mailing list. I believe they're full-text searchable ... if not, they darn well should be. Keywords might include "censorship" and "rating system". These points have been made time and again.