[Foundation-l] Statement on appropriate educational content

[Excirial]

*You agreed yourself that there were certain images that were "inappropriate
for children", but would be educational and/or informative for certain niche
professionals.  That sounds to me like a choice needs to be made.  It's just
like the choices that are made in every encyclopedia article on Wikipedia.
Present the topic in a way geared toward niche professionals, or present it
in a way geared toward the general public.  I wouldn't consider either
choice to be "censorship", not by any reasonable definition of the term.*

Educational and inappropriate are not static terms, as the definition can
vary between groups of people. Ergo, take the group "pre-puberty kids".
Plenty of parents would find it objectionable if their children would
encounter any nude material, even if it is not remotely sexual. Based upon
that definition we would have to remove every image we have that depicts a
reproductive organs, including but not limited to photographs, diagrams and
paintings. That would - in essence - be required for a child friendly
encyclopedia.

Referring back to my previous response - in that reply i mentioned the
gangrene page, which contains some rather gross images. Fit for children to
stare at? Many parents would answer that with a firm no. However, we should
again take into account that man will not run into these images unless
looking for the topic, or for a related topic. Ask yourself - why would any
child be at the gangrene or sexual organ page, if not for their own
curiosity? Explicit images tend to be placed on pages that children should
not be at in the first place. In other words, we don't really make a choice.
We describe the topic as well as we can, even though that might mean that
certain groups disagree. Another example: Sesame Street. It is a topic that
is likely to attract children, but i can assure you that the
page<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sesame_Street>will be quite cryptic
for them as it is written for an adult audience. Why?
Because we added all the relevant information without specifically aiming
for a certain group, and therefor it becomes unintelligible for children.

*Supplying "all the data" and letting "the user" decide what they want to
access is not at all helpful.  A raw dump of facts is not helpful.  No,
choices have to be made in order to turn that raw dump of facts into an
educational resource.  And that means choosing your audience.

*That is why we have content guidelines and policies, but i do not believe
they ever explicitly refer to a certain group of people. Instead they form a
framework which might or might not appeal to certain groups. Hence, i
clearly said that we take all the raw data and distillate it into
information as long as it is relevant for the article. We do not say "Hey,
that image of a penis is inappropriate on the penis page as children could
look at it". Instead it is deemed relevant information for that particular
page. There is, however, no need to use explicit images if not required. If
it does not illustrate an article in a reasonable way it should go.  *

Am I saying that audience should be families, and there is no other
acceptable choice.  No, I'm not.  There are plenty of other acceptable
choices.*

How about undergraduate or masters educated males aged 26,8 years without
partners or children? :)
(Link<http://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/Strategic_Plan/Movement_Priorities#Encourage_Diversity>)

~Excirial
On Sun, May 9, 2010 at 2:12 AM, Anthony <wikimail at inbox.org> wrote:

> On Sat, May 8, 2010 at 5:55 PM, Tomasz Ganicz <polimerek at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > 2010/5/8 Anthony <wikimail at inbox.org>:
> >
> > > I dunno, when framed that way it seems the answer is to be
> > family-friendly,
> > > and to let the specialists get their information in specialist
> resources.
> >
> > So... are we now going to start writting "USfamilyfriendlypedia(tm)" ?
> > There is plenty of stuff to be delete then... not only penis and
> > vagina pictures... For example delete all biographies of porn-stars,
> > articles about addictive violent computer games, and there is tons of
> > things to be deleted in order to make our projects more "family
> > friendy".
> >
>
> I don't know what you're going to do, but that's certainly not what I was
> suggesting.  I was thinking more the content that's "educational" only to a
> narrow niche of abnormal psychologists and/or medical professionals.
>
> On Sat, May 8, 2010 at 6:24 PM, Excirial <wp.excirial at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > Why do you believe that there is a need to make a "choice" between groups
> > of people?
>
>
> You agreed yourself that there were certain images that were "inappropriate
> for children", but would be educational and/or informative for certain
> niche
> professionals.  That sounds to me like a choice needs to be made.  It's
> just
> like the choices that are made in every encyclopedia article on Wikipedia.
> Present the topic in a way geared toward niche professionals, or present it
> in a way geared toward the general public.  I wouldn't consider either
> choice to be "censorship", not by any reasonable definition of the term.
>
> We can easily supply all the data - it is up to the user to decide
> > if they want to access it.
> >
>
> Supplying "all the data" and letting "the user" decide what they want to
> access is not at all helpful.  A raw dump of facts is not helpful.  No,
> choices have to be made in order to turn that raw dump of facts into an
> educational resource.  And that means choosing your audience.
>
> Am I saying that audience should be families, and there is no other
> acceptable choice.  No, I'm not.  There are plenty of other acceptable
> choices.
>
>
>
> On Sat, May 8, 2010 at 6:37 PM, Mike Godwin <mnemonic at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > For what it's worth, I personally don't see the issue as one of making
> > Commons (or Wikipedia or any other project) "family-friendly."
> >
>
>
> > If we judge Commons content simply on the basis of "Does this content
> > serves the mission of the projects?" there is no doubt that some content
> > will removed, some offensive content will not be removed, and Commons
> will
> > no longer be a kind of "dumping ground" for anything and everything
> > regardless of whether content lacks encyclopedic usefulness.
>
>
> I don't think so.  At least not by the standard deletion processes that are
> currently in place.  Just about any content can be said to "contain
> encyclopedic usefulness" if you take that to mean it could conceivably be
> used for educational purposes by someone.  Even the most obscene and
> information-lacking content can be argued to be "educational", if for no
> other purpose than the purpose of giving an example of content which is
> obscene and information-lacking (and moreover, I've seen these types of
> arguments being made).  "Encyclopedic usefulness" is meaningless without
> first defining your audience.
>
> Yes, the term "family friendly" is often used to mean something akin to
> "prudish christian conservative", but that's not the way I intended it.  I
> intended it exactly the way it is written, content which is useful for
> teaching within the context of a family.  That includes nudity, violence,
> sex, and "Tank Man", all things which a family would be negligent in *not*
> teaching their children about (or at least giving them the materials to
> learn for themselves).
>
> I didn't say anything about whether or not the images are "offensive".  The
> idea that "family friendly" would mean "not offensive to anyone" is a
> bastardization of the English language, not the terminology I was using.
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