[WikiEN-l] Britannica quote of the day (Johntex)

[charles matthews]

"Steve Bennett" wrote

> On 3/28/06, charles matthews <charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com> wrote:
>> WP is quoted by top-quality media sources. That's being taken seriously.
>
> That's called living dangerously :)
>
>> Well, you are leaping to the conclusion that a subtraction (to appease 
>> some
>> group offended) is an improvement.
>
> Yes, I am leaping to the conclusion that making Wikipedia an
> attractive resource for teachers for use with kids is an improvement.
> What would you call it?

I would call it a complete change from five years of getting the 
encyclopedia written.  It bears repetition: the mission is to get the 
encyclopedia written, the free NPOV encyclopedia.  Not to try to gather 
plaudits from classroom teachers.  It's an old discussion here: GFDL means 
_someone else_ can perfectly well make the fork that is more child-safe.

>> More assumptions.  I think parents are more likely to be 'shocked' than
>> kids; especially those naive about what one can google for.
>
> Yep. And what do parents do when they're shocked by something their
> kid saw on Wikipedia? Anything pleasant, useful, or beneficial to the
> Wikipedia project?

With any luck, they revise their views on the Internet as a whole.  The 
place is not 'safe for minors'.  I don't know where they might have got the 
idea that it is.

> That's a lower risk, to me. I think it's significantly less likely
> that a person would stumble onto a pornographic site by clicking
> interwiki links. Hell, the chances of your "average" English speaker
> clicking on an interwiki link at all are fairly remote, let alone one
> that took them from a "safe" page to an "unsafe" one.

It's good to know that the fine old tradition of monolingual Anglo-Saxons is 
in such good shape.

But the whole concept of a 'safe' Wikipedia is just crocked.  What we have 
is 'knowledge wants to be free', and a few semi-permeable membrances put up 
on the wiki will not suffice to counter the osmotic pressure.

Charles