[WikiEN-l] Wikipedia and "indecent" content

[George Herbert]

On Mon, Dec 22, 2008 at 6:10 PM, Thomas Larsen <larsen.thomas.h at gmail.com>wrote:

> > A) Yes it's appropriate, because we claim to be not censored.  We
>  already
> > do
> > tons of things that Brittanica doesn't do, so it's not fair to try to
> > compare us to any other encyclopedia.  We are a new item.
>
> We claim to be an encyclopedia.
>
> > B) Yes it's in accordance with the standards we have established.
>
> No, because one of our standards is "Wikipedia is an encyclopedia",
> and that means "Wikipedia provides the summary of all knowledge in
> accordance with good scholarly practices". The English language may be
> changing, but I think that the word "encyclopedia" still has this
> meaning and association.
>

There has never been a single encyclopedia which even vaguely attempted the
scope and depth that Wikipedia's driving towards.

We are nearly everything to nearly everybody, other than bleeding edge
researchers.

What we are trying to consistently do is include everything that is more
than negligibly of general interest, and do so in a consistent
(encyclopedic) style and depth.

In those terms... yes, the article on the image is clearly relevant, and
yes, the image is relevant to the article, both by our own internal
standards, and by standards of both industry/social commentary on albums
(reviews, commentary typically and routinely include the album cover) and
academic commentary on them (same).


It sounds like you want to cut this little topic out of Wikipedia, as an
exception, to justify your unease over the photo.

While I agree with and am sympathetic to your unease, what you are trying to
do is in fact antithetical to what we want to accomplish as a project.  You
*are* targeting our core values with this line of argument.  Your assertion
that you aren't doing so is being clearly seen though by a number of
respondents.

The stuff we're uncomfortable about is unfortunately some of the stuff which
NOTCENSORED was intended to strongly urge us to keep.  We're not the
encylopedia of topics which we're comfortable talking about - we put forth
deep discussions on homosexuality for devout christians to find, articles on
pornography for prudes to read, articles on God which might offend the
atheist.

We draw the line at illegal (obscene or otherwise), and offensive without
encyclopedic content.  But this image is by all evidence not illegal, and
has encyclopedic value both illustrating the album and in discussions of its
own controversy.


-- 
-george william herbert
george.herbert at gmail.com