[Wikimedia-l] Russian Wikipedia in blacklist trouble again

[Fred Bauder]

> On 9 May 2013 12:19, Anthony Cole <ahcoleecu at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> In your hypothetical case of Russian only being spoken in one country
>> that
>> censors "how to smoke marijuana" information:
>>
>> If you insist on leaving a paragraph on "how to make a bong" in the
>> Russian-language "Marijuana smoking" article, then the article won't be
>> accessible to 140,000,000 people; if you remove that paragraph (and any
>> others that are censored), the article, and its information about
>> psychosis, respiratory effects, geographic distribution, history,
>> correlation with tobacco smoking, gateway to harder drugs hypothesis,
>> etc.
>> will be available to 140,000,000 people.
>>
>
>
> The problem is that in the real world it doesn't stop there. States that
> have found it easy to censor you once will continue doing so. Today its
> about drugs tomorrow its Kirill I of Moscow's watch day after that its
> anything critical of Putin. Since this is Russia I expect coverage of the
> issue of homosexuality could get interesting.
>
>
> --
> geni

The Russian government censors historically and can be expected to do so
in the future. A dryer iteration of the marijuana article, omitting how
to grow and smoke as well as how "wonderful" dope is, will probably pass.
Remember, "assume good faith"? It is easy enough to work around, "Lucy in
the Sky with Diamonds" is not censored. I don't think the "slippery
slope" is all that slippery.

Fred