[Wikipedia-l] Personal categories.

[Michael R. Irwin]

Anthere wrote:
> 
> --- "Michael R. Irwin" <mri_icboise at surfbest.net>
> wrote:
> >
> >
> > Anthere wrote:
> > >
> >
> > <snip good discussion>
> >
> > > We could put tmc in the offensive xx category ?
> > :-)))
> > >
> >
> > This would presumably censor his home page.
> >
> > The issue of his signature scattered through
> > random talk pages, the recent log, other
> > meta pages and mailing lists would remain.
> 
> Hello Michaël
> 
> If user names were to be censored, and in particular
> tmc one
> 
> 1) recent changes will only last a couple of days

I am uncertain what you mean here unless you are saying
tmc would be censored from the recent changes by correctly
selecting the filter criteria.  Excellent!

> 
> 2) maybe some technical magic can take care of
> converting his full name in tmc in talk pages and such
> ?

IMO Poor approach.  It creates more work for the
developers than for a random nit wit.  This would
leave us vulnerable to standard Denial of Service
tactics and possibly exhaust our limited developer
resources to the detriment of the project.

> 
> 3) mailing lists and meta pages may have no reason of
> being censored. It seems that most offended by X
> issues are concerned by kids looking at the
> questionable names. Mailing list and meta are for
> building teams, not encyclopedic articles. So, not
> supposed to be read by kids.

This presumes that the only value minors can
extract from the Wikipedia site or community is
the NPOV articles.

Personally I see no reason that civilized community
standards can not be achieved such that minors can
participate fully to the extent of their ability.
Participating with adult teams and politely yielding
to superior knowledge or phrasing would be beneficial
(educational for minor, available effort for the team)
and is within the skills of most children if consistently
predominantly presented examples worthy of emulation.  

At the moment I suspect minors would tend to diverge 
frequently from civilized behavior
along with the rest of us.  Some adults attempting to
pull seniority on misbehaving or impolite minors while 
ignoring other adults would probably merely accelerate 
the divergence.

As a result, this is probably a discussion for either:

1.  Later.  After a means of establishing, documenting
and fairly enforcing community standards is available
as per Mav and Ed suggestions.

2.  Another site with broader educational goals than
spoon feeding allegedly authoritative NPOV material
to users for non critical consumption or resuse.

I agree that currently minors should probably not
be participating here.

However, full participation of minors would provide an 
educational benefit to them (and others) which may out 
weigh the value of the actual encyclopedia data ingested
here.  Team building and participation skills are
at an increasing premium in the modern workplace.

Perhaps we are merely a free encyclopedia project and
not an educational process or opportunity.  If this
is the case then I think we are wasting a lot of economic
potential and actually slowing down the improvement of our 
processes and our material.

As Axel has pointed out elsewhere, more crap is not
what our quality goals should be about if we are 
serious about providing even just a free encyclopedia.

> 
> 4) if user can express their political pov on their
> user page, their is no reason why they could not
> express other type of pov.

I agree but I think I am missing your point.  If
you mean that there is no reason that "tmc" should
be deleted as an account name if it can be filtered
I am wishy washy.   I think it is fine for his 
personal page.  If someone is offended by his page
they can leave and easily stay away.  Currently the account
name is spread throughout Wikipedia anytime he used
a signature, thus difficult to avoid.  That seems to 
me to be a problem.

Moving away from sex for a change:

Does the debate change if someone moves on to
account names such as:

"Einstein was an idiot because e=cm^2"

(factual distortion from e=mc^2 while diverting the
victim with an opinion "Einstein was an idiot")

or

"VANDALISM IN PROGRESS"
(potentially disruptive to other editors if they
stop to go check only to find it was a diversion)

or

"Kill all Lawyers"
(offensive to some, and we need experts in law)

or something similarly disruptive to our purpose
of providing NPOV material, a pleasant educational
environment, an effective review log, etc.?

Regards,
Mike Irwin