[Wikipedia-l] Censorship and bowdlerization

[Steve Callaway]

This is a very dangerous area indeed and a seriously slippery slope. I can
see the arguments for it but the obverse side of this coin is that if it's
possible to introduce sexual censorship in this way it is entirely
conceivable that political censorship could be attained by a similar
mechanism. This is NOT a genie to be let out of the bottle. There is enough
political and social hypocrisy and outright political propaganda in the
corpus of Wikipedia already without introducing convenient new mechanisms
for the thought & ideas police.

rgds

Steve Callaway
----- Original Message -----
From: "Poor, Edmund W" <Edmund.W.Poor at abc.com>
To: <wikipedia-l at wikipedia.org>
Sent: Wednesday, November 13, 2002 2:47 PM
Subject: [Wikipedia-l] Censorship and bowdlerization


> I like the idea expressed by Anthere and others of finding a way to shield
tender eyes from "adult" stuff. A significant minority of users believe that
young people of a certain age should not be exposed to certain materials.
>
> This is totally without prejudice to the debate over whether sexuality is
"sinful", just a reflection of the desire of many parents and educators to
introduce some subjects step by step, keyed to the maturity level of the
learner.
>
> Someday, we plan to make the Wikipedia available on CD-ROM for schools and
libraries that don't have T-1 lines (or the patience to tolerate the "lag"
problem). It would be very useful to allow a parent or educator to filter
out a few articles such as [[****-piercing]] or [[fisting]] or whatever.
>
> A rating system would facilitate this.
>
> I myself would like to be able to filter out the following (in no
particular order):
> * Any mention of TMC's username (as in Recent Changes, his user page and
user talk page)
> * All articles on bizarre sexuality (BDSM, etc.)
>
> I would like to retain the articles related to homosexuality, since they
are so well written (i.e., NPOV rather than pro-gay) -- but I might be
biased by pride of workmanship since I put a lot of effort into some of
them.
>
> Those who don't want this filtering should be able to bypass it easily.
>
> So it could be a user option, with the default set to NO FILTERING.
>
> Ed Poor
> Tolerant Absolutist
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at wikipedia.org
> http://www.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>