[Wikipedia-l] Censorship and bowdlerization

Wed Nov 13 18:39:21 UTC 2002

Anthere wrote:

>--- Steve Callaway <sjc at easynet.co.uk> wrote:
>
>>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.
>>
>Indeed it is very dangerous. For how would we decide
>which articles are to be put in the list of "to
>filter" or not "to filter"?
>
We can only make whatever filtering mechanism we choose available, and 
generally defaulted to "off".  The choice to apply it lies with the user.

>What is better
>1- that articles are not there at all, because too many
>people threaten to leave if they are and fight for
>them to be removed.
>2- that articles are here, but might be put in a
>"special" list in case the readers really find reading
>them too much to bear
>3- that articles are here, free and open, but that the
>encyclopedia is not used because too offensive.
>
I prefer 2, which gives choice to the reader.

>Maybe a two-level reading could solve the matter - one
>expurged, and one not. With the choice for the
>expurged one.
>
Not practical.  We have enough difficulties with NPOV; getting the 
contributors to make two versions of articles may not get many writers 
out.  On top of that tolerance is not simply an off/on switch.  For 
example, some people believe in open sexual discussion, as long as it 
doesn't involve "perverted" sex.  The "meaning" of "perverted" then 
becomes an open question.

>Again, I know this is dangerous in terms of
>censorship. I agree. Still, that ought to be adressed.
>
Your idea of using the "XX" code as a filter is good.  I would extend 
that to saying that any "X" code could be used for articles with some 
kind of restriction.  This would allow for a gradation of explicit 
articles where the "XX" might be used for the most offensive ones of the 
"goatse" variety, and "XS" could refer to something that a relatively 
small portion of the readers might find offensive.  One possible use of 
other "X" codes could be using "XC" for copyright restricted, when 
copyright problems arise.  Access to this category might be restricted 
to sysops while the copyright problems are being resolved, and the 
restrictions removed when the review is complete.

I"m still waiting for comments from someone about the technical 
feasibility of my letter code idea.

>(My own level of tolerance is pretty high on the
>sexual scale - hope there is no misleading hint here)
>
I have no plans to visit France in the forseeable future.  Hypothesis 
testing will just have to wait.

Eclecticology