elian wrote:
"Poor, Edmund W" Edmund.W.Poor@abc.com writes:
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.
Wikipedia is open content, the wikipedia software is open source. Any Library, university, school or whatever institution which wants a filtering system can develop one for itself.
Very true. They can also create an appropriate fork if they desire to retain full interactive access for their students with the medium.
A sifter-L (absent the P'hd requirements and stacked by any bias the controlling authorities choose to institutionalize) type activity could initialize their fork project and then occasionally augment as desirable from the base Wikipedia material.
I consider filtering or censuring articles on Wikipedia itself a blatant violation of its NPOV-policy.
How so? Are we to provide a mandatory reading list and track what users read to assure that they receive fully balanced doses of human knowledge in accordance with our mythical and unclearly defined NPOV policy?
This would clearly be silly. Sort of like failed liberal education requirements which require engineers to study literature but which allow mathmatically (perhaps even arithmetically?) illiterate P'hd "scholars" to teach engineering students literature.
Our ideal (according to the NPOV as I understand its intent) is to provide as closely as possible all applicable information or knowledge summarized as neutrally or objectively as possible.
Allowing the reader to move away from our default full view to a self (or guardian) selected filtered view is far different from applying an externally (user frame of reference) imposed censorship filter regardless of the filtering criteria or purpose.
Besides, entries about sexual "perversions" are found in "normal" encyclopedias as well, the parents in question would in logical consequence have to deny their children access to britannica, too.
Not necessarily. Access via paper is by index and organization. In principle it should not be hard to rip out offending sections with an exacto knife.
Note that I do not insist on imposing this method on you, merely that it is possible for me to use prior to handing the paper to minors for whom I am temporarily responsible.
In practice, I suspect parents with extreme concerns will simply purchase or provide access to a children's encyclopedia with published standards that look appropriate, by their standards.
How is this different from allowing a parent to set a filtering mechanism within their children's account at Wikipedia?
If the child resets the filter criteria without parental permission inappropriately (or appropriately), that is between them, their guardian authority, and any involved societal authorities.
I have no other encyclopedia to check at the moment, but I am almost sure to find more dangerous and misleading information in it than in wikipedia, where the articles in these areas were written by well informed and responsible practitioners.
This is a manifestation of incompleteness of Wikipedia more than any existing merit. Eventually some knowledgeable engineers (or crackpots or "terrorists") will show up and explain in detail how to build ballistic missiles, truck bombs, etc. out of common household materials or materials and energy found in any cubic mile of earth with surface access to atmosphere and sunlight.
Much of this is not explicitly available in existing paper encyclopedias due to lack of space and editorial selection. Online Wikipedia has no immediate space constraints and the person who feels lack of knowledge is not the best way to constrain societal behavior and choices may show up anytime.
Of course others may routinely delete the detailed information if they feel it is too dangerous or explicitly simple but a window of availability will occur occasionally no matter how rigorously we apply the community consensus to removing inappropriate material (notice at the moment we have no way to ratify guidelines regarding "inappropriate" or uniformly apply them, so let the edit wars begin!).
Does this mean the NPOV is violated if a meta tag is inserted to allow parents to filter out detailed specific information and blueprints on bomb building?
I do not think so. Information does not get any more neutral or unbiased than hard engineering data and plans. The bomb design either works or it does not. The universe will let us know when a garage or building blows up accidentally, a stump is removed, or the police find a failed pipe bomb at the site of a mass murder suicide) The Wikipedia site has no way to determine a priori whether the bomb information is going to be used well or poorly by our standards. It may be very appropriate to give responsible guardians the ability to slow down juvenile access to materials which a mature farmer needs to improve his productivity or society.
Notice I am not concerned with adults. This may change if the U.S. successfully convicts U.S. citizens for attending Al Quaeda training camps. I doubt that members of TINC, or Wikipedians at large, wish to be stuck in a cell with me for assisting preadolescent or puberty striken "terrorists" in learning how to spray offensive graffiti on the Pentagon any more than I wish to be stuck there with them for complicity in learning how this could be done or assisting others with learning how this could be done. If we are successful then it is merely a matter of time until some criminal fingers us (Wikipedia) for providing information he needed to attempt to commit a crime.
Extreme example: "I learned that a bar of steel can be rubbed on concrete to create a sharp edge at Wikipedia. Whereupon I used it to assault a homeland security officer who wished to search me. I say this now freely and voluntarily to the juvenile court so that my murder conviction can be reduced to 2 weeks public service and I can be remanded into the custody of my clearly capable parent/guardian of 12 years and parole office of 4 years."
More extreme example: "The jury finds you guilty of accessing information at Wikipedia, the same site that the Pentagon taggers used to learn how to assault the Pentagon."
The server currently resides in the U.S. so, it is clearly in our best interest to put a meta tag system in place to allow parents to filter out tagging technology and methods in the D.C. area before the Pentagon gets tagged. Our defense becomes the technology was available to the parent or irresponsible adult to avoid the tainting information which was allegedly responsible for their crime spree.
I contend that the NPOV attempts to state only that we write in such a way as to not villify the chemical composition used in attempts to assassinate Hitler or to glorify the design of the atomic bombs used to incinerate Japanese non-combatants. It does not (nor intended?) to address whether parents (or Wikipedia) have a responsibility to keep plans for pipe bombs out of the hands of minors until (in the judgement of the guardian) the juvenile has adequate judgement to determine when to make a pipe bomb and throw or plant it and when to not even think about it.
Clearly Wikipedia currently assumes to a great extent that adult users are responsible for how they use the information they attain at Wikipedia, not the Wikipedia site or the providers of the information.
If our target audience does not include minors then we should acknowledge that and post a warning that this is an adult only site. Then someone else can establish the kiddypedia sifter list and everyone will be happier.
If children are in our target audience then I think the maturity meta approach has a lot of merit from a functional requirements standpoint.
The capability might be useful to other sites using the GPL'd software and FDL'd data even if Wikipedia chooses not to use it.
For example: A site setup to deal with potentially hazardous engineering projects and information might require users to attain a certain trusted certification prior to providing access to dangerous data (in the hands of the ill informed, overly optimistic, or careless) regarding chemical propellants or explosives so useful in some farming/space flight applications. No sense letting interested novices blow themselves up through sheer incompetence.
Regards, Mike Irwin