[Wikimedia-l] Who invoked "principle of least surprise" for the image filter?

[Anthony]

On Wed, Jun 20, 2012 at 1:06 AM, Todd Allen <toddmallen at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Tue, Jun 19, 2012 at 9:23 PM, Anthony <wikimail at inbox.org> wrote:
>> On Tue, Jun 19, 2012 at 1:52 PM, Todd Allen <toddmallen at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> My middle one can very
>>> briefly go online alone to a few sites I've already agreed to, and I
>>> check up on her a lot.
>>
>> Is Wikipedia one of those few sites?
>
> Yes, actually, along with several other educational ones, some with
> children's games, her school website, etc. The chances that she would
> randomly stumble across a sexual image on Wikipedia are -vanishingly-
> slim,

Really?  How old are we talking about?

And what do you mean "randomly stumble across"?  I don't think it
would be random.  It would be one link leads to another, leads to
another, leads to another...

Also, how do you deal with the external links?  Do you have any type
of blocking software set up, or does your daughter recognize the
different shades of blue and know that she's not allowed to click on
the blues of a lighter shade without permission?

> and quite realistically, if it were to happen, I would much
> rather it occur in the context of a dispassionate article giving a
> frank but rather dry account of what it means, than a porn site with
> flashing banners and descriptions designed to shock, titillate, etc.

Wikipedia is better than a porn site.  But "better than a porn site"
doesn't mean it's necessarily a place I'd like my child to go to to
learn about a sexual topic.

> Her main interest is in dinosaurs, horses, and veterinary medicine,
> though-not exactly controversial sections of the project.

You've never gotten any of the "tough questions"?  The ones that I
claim, and you don't seem to deny, are not best answered by a
Wikipedia article.

>>> But the whole point is, that's -my- job, not anyone else's, just like
>>> it's my job to teach them how to drive, not everyone else's to get the
>>> hell off the road before they start to. Why are we figuring this to be
>>> any different?
>>
>> Well, surely it is different.  If you leave your keys in your car with
>> the car running, and my ten year old hops in and takes it for a
>> joyride, you don't think you're partially responsible for what
>> happens?
>
> My ten year old kid isn't stupid enough to do that. If yours is, you
> failed long before they got in the driver's seat.

Well, I don't have a ten-year-old kid, let alone one that would hop
into a car and go for a joyride.  But hypothetically speaking, maybe
s/he has a mental disability which is not a failure of mine at all.

> So no, I wouldn't
> particularly feel responsible-if your kid is that immature and prone
> to rash behavior, you shouldn't have let them out of your sight.

Well, first of all, every parent has to, at some point, let their kid
out of their sight (if nothing else, at some point they have to
sleep).  So, the failure is not necessarily that of the parent.  It
could be the failure of the baby-sitter, or the failure of the school
bus driver, or the action of a kidnapper, or any of a number of other
possibilities.

But, in any case, my point is not that the current caregiver of the
child is not at fault.  My point is that the person who left their car
running, unattended, with the doors unlocked, in it is *also* at
fault.

The law would certainly agree with me on this.  I guess you would
disagree with this aspect of law?

>> The question, really, is whether or not Wikipedia (or, at least, a
>> cordoned off section of Wikipedia) wants to be one of those safe
>> places.
>
> And like I said, and have seen with my own kids, the vast majority of
> it is. I would wager that a far higher percentage of Wikipedia is
> "child-safe" than the percentage of the Internet at large.

Well, yes, if you go by word count or article count.  If you go by
number of pageviews, I'm not so sure.  There are large portions of
Wikipedia which are perfectly safe for Wikipedia, and also completely
ignored by almost everyone.

> I have no
> problem recommending that my kids go read a Wikipedia article on
> something they're curious about, and then go look at the sources cited
> in it for more information.

So, you'd let them go on the Internet unsupervised.

> If someone wants to make a Kidopedia, with everything nuked out that
> they consider child-unfriendly, more power to them. They're welcome to
> host that wherever they like. They could even work at having the
> project in language aimed more at children, and perhaps making a point
> to cite children's education sources in articles in addition to
> newspapers, science journals, etc. This is free content, and someone's
> absolutely welcome to go and do that.
>
> But that's not -this- project, its aim is to be comprehensive.

What exactly do you mean by "this project"?  Are you talking about
Wikipedia, or about WMF in general?

WMF already does have a Kidopedia of sorts - Wikijunior.

> If you hire a babysitter, sure, it becomes their job-they accepted it
> as such. The same if you have family, etc., who help with your
> children, as well as teachers and the like who voluntarily assume
> responsibility for your child while in their care. That's fine. But
> you shouldn't be able to force total strangers to accept the
> responsibility of supervising your children because you can't be
> bothered to do it,

Of course not.  This is, in fact, what I've said.

> and you certainly shouldn't be able to insist that public places be childproofed.

Insist how?  I certainly should be able to verbally insist that public
places be childproofed.

As for using force (via government), I'd say that a place which is
open to the general public, especially one which markets itself to
children, has a duty of care to its visitors.  That said, I don't
think Wikipedia is breaching this duty of care, as I don't think the
harm rises to the level of "foreseeable" which justifies government
action.

> Now if someone wants to take on that Kidopedia project, hey-all they
> need is a DB dump, a webhost, and the time to nuke out whatever they
> don't want.

We've had this discussion, though if you'd like to revisit it we can do that.

Forking Wikipedia is not easy.

> Given our categorization system, the time part's probably
> not even as onerous as it sounds at first.

Choosing which articles to *add* would probably not be that bad (the
problem with that route would be technical/legal).  Choosing which
articles to *delete* would be quite time-consuming if you wanted to
get them all.

> If no one wants to do it,
> despite the fact that they don't need anyone's consent at all to get
> started on it right this minute, guess it's not that big a deal after
> all, is it?

Again, this has already been discussed.  1) It's not a very easy thing
to do; and 2) the license makes it hard to profit off doing it.
Because of 2, it would probably be a non-profit organization which
would be more likely to do it.  Citizendium, quite infamously, tried.
And it failed for many reasons which need not be replicated in the
next attempt.  But I'm not sure the whole idea is particularly great.

I think you'd have an easier time creating a child-friendly
encyclopedia from scratch than from using Wikipedia.  Maybe along with
some hand copy/pasting from Wikipedia, though this raises tricky
issues of how to handle attribution (issues which were partly resolved
by the point.

This seems to be the approach of Wikijunior, which they've snuck into
the WMF via Wikibooks (as many projects which raise the ire of some
Wikipedians have done).

> I think we should facilitate
> the creation of a comprehensive educational resource. What parts of
> that resource parents will allow their children to look at is up to
> the parents, right squarely where that decision belongs.

I agree with that.  The decision of what parts of Wikipedia parents
should allow their children to look at is up to the parents.

I just think there should be tools which help parents implement those
decisions.  And I think WMF is in the best position to provide them.

In fact, I would argue that providing the information which can be
used by these tools would be part of the comprehensiveness of a
comprehensive educational resource.  A comprehensive educational
resource would be an educational resource which can be used by all
people, not just adults.  And that means different content for
different people.

> Adults, on
> the other hand, should have the option of looking up any topic they
> like, and finding it covered frankly and fully, as should any parents
> who perhaps have children with questions on sex and sexuality, and
> might like to have a resource that discusses such things in a neutral,
> educational tone, but still covers the topic frankly and without
> treating it as disgusting or shameful. That's the project I think we
> should choose to continue building.

I definitely disagree on the "neutral" part.  In fact, I'd say
"neutral" is directly opposed to "educational".  When answering
questions from children on sex and sexuality, parents should
definitely teach their children about right and wrong.  In fact, you
seem to agree with this yourself, as you suggest that these parents
want to teach their children that sex and sexuality is *not*
disgusting or shameful.  The position that sex and sexuality is not
disgusting or shameful is not one that is "neutral".