[Wikipedia-l] Censorship and bowdlerization

Wed Nov 13 20:33:44 UTC 2002

Steve Callaway 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.

Are you saying that Wikipedia should be designed to make
it difficult for parents or guardians to exercise their 
responsibility in the oversight of minors' education?

This seems rather radical and beyond the scope of
an encyclopedia project even if it is intended as
an educational resource.

Most societies that I am aware of implicitly place
at least some responsibility for controlling access
to information for irresponsible persons (a juvenile
is not a responsible adult or citizen in my opinion,
although increasingly U.S. courts attempt to claim
they are at random whim of proscutors) upon their
responsible guardian.

Regards,
Mike Irwin