Anthere wrote:
--- Steve Callaway <sjc(a)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