[Wikipedia-l] Personal categories.

Thu Nov 14 21:15:45 UTC 2002

Anthere wrote:
> 
>    Part 1.1Type: Plain Text (text/plain)

> > --- "Michael R. Irwin" <mri_icboise at surfbest.net>
> >> > Anthere wrote:
> >> > > 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.
> >> 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.
> 
> It is a poor approach if done on a real time basis, as a filtering tool. But not to clean up a database "spoiled" by an offending name (in article and page history (contributions), and in user and talk pages).

Agreed.

> 
> Hence, a one shot query on tables and conversion might be a good option. Of course, this requires tmc agreement, and of course, that is changing *History*. Big brother/sister Wikipedia and Thought Police. Brrrr.

Apparently not.  A "Jimmy says" flash has removed this
specific thorn.  The discussion can now move on to the 
best way to avoid future rose bushes or be discontinued 
until next time a wild rose patch appears in our garden.

> 
> >> 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.
> 
> Hum. How would you define minors ?
> 
> Is it juridical minority you are thinking of ? If so, juridical minority is not set at the same age in every country. I am still abashed by the usa situation where kids are big enough to elect ...whoever, but not big enough to have a beer. Not talking of african countries where girls are head of a family of three before the american boy can vote, and could potentially nearly be grandmothers by the time he is legally allowed to drink that beer.

Yes exactly.  The point where a new citizen responsible
for their own actions emerges.  In the U.S. it has indeed
been getting murkier and murkier.

I am aware that substantial variance exists within
various societies.

> 
> If you are talking in term of maturity, we all here sometimes behave with less maturity than a 16 year old girl/boy.

This is consistent with my personal observations as well.

> 
> >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.
> 
> Sure. But, how are "adults" supposed to know the minors are minors ? And why would "minors" accept "adult" guiding on the account that these "adults" are pretending themselves "adults" ? We are not going to ask people their age before contributing, are we ?

Responses in sequence:

By observed behavior I suppose.  

Good question .... perhaps
we should discourage appeals to authority and simply explain
ourselves to each other.  It may appear to take some extra time
initially (and we are not an educational institution are
we ????  are we a learning organization ???? How do our
contributors improve their editing skills .... or do they?
Do we want them too?) beyond that necessary to dictate the
correct answer,  but it may actually be more efficient
overall.

I hope not.  Although sometimes it can be useful, if someone
volunteers the information, to help establish an initial
starting point for the dialogue.  Certainly the information
can be abused or misused in a variety of ways.

> 
> >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.
> 
> True. But, again, that is not a question of age. That's a question of maturity and tolerance.

I would tend to agree with the reservation that many people
expect a loose correlation.  

> 
> Politely yielding to superior knowledge is not only age-related, it's recognition of another one superior knowledge, without knowing the extent of his expertise really. Tough!

One approach would be that in order for the superior knowledge 
to recognized by someone who does not know it, it must be 
demonstrated or laid out in detail for scrutiny for the less 
educated or informed.

Of course some pedagogical value might accrue while wasting
the subject expert's time ....

If the debate were preserved somehow so that additional future
waves of ignorant masses might inform themselves ...

Bah!  We are not an educational institution or a debate club.

> 
> And notice that politely yielding to superior phrasing is something most non-english speakers have to accept on the en.wiki also, 'even' when the superiority is from a 20 years younger american teenager. Also tough!
> 

Good point.  I am not multi-lingual so I am not exposed to
attempting to reason with non English teenagers regarding the
few subjects I actually know quite a bit about.

I do not envy our multi-lingual contributors this challenge
but I admire and respect their community contribution when
they undertake it.

> Polite retreat is not a kid "privilege".
> 

True.  It seems to be non instinctive learned behavior displayed
grudgingly in the face of superior force.   It seems sometimes
friendship, love, or respect for another makes it an easier
behavior for homo sapiens but I often wonder how this relates
to "stockholm syndrome".  Is this simply another brain chemistry
situation or is free will involved.   Can one simply decide one
day to enjoy be polite to others?

> In another message, you mentionned the possibility to set up a kiddie wiki.
> 
> If it's a read-only wiki, I see very little difference between a carefully censored (by who?) kidipedia, and a "censored-able" wikipedia. It is just another name, but it is has to do with censorship. If only, that's worse, for WE would choose what they should see, rather than their educators, who might know more of what is fit for them to read.

Agreed.  I would think such a kiddypedia would be structured around
highly leveraged participation of parents and educational authorities.  
The  advantage might be the opportunity to expose your kids to community
screened adults and educators.   If a thousand parents and a hundred
educations spent a few hours a month participating there (after the
initial community fabric is knit) maintaining the tone and lubricating
the machinery .... how many kids could be served or exposed to 
civilized discourse from which to learn by example?

Current U.S. babysitting methods average 18 to 30 students per
adult and produce poorly motivated instructors and poorly prepared
graduates.

A properly written grant should be able to attract some
capital investment from the United States government to explore
this concept.   It has the potential to be quite cost effective,
provide quantitative proof of its efficacy, and address several
political issues that have been growing in the U.S. for the last
twenty years.

It could also easily be setup within the budget of a few parents, a
PTA group, or a local U.S. school.

> 
> If it's a read&write wiki, it is unlikely the kids will learn from adults, for there won't be many adults, or few adults representative of the real world. Maybe not the best choice in terms of education.
> 

I do not follow this conclusion.  Everybody lives in the real
world.   Perhaps the kiddypedia's would have to be structured
around specific categories of interest to parent/kid teams.
We (the community or the site owner?) might even require/allow them 
to use the same account handles or interchange them occasionally.  
Lots of gimmicks and approaches could be incrementally experimented
with.

Different techniques might be required for success for sites
specializing in musical interests vs. sites committed to incubating
entrepreneurial space tech teams.   

Funding sources might also have to vary.  The musical sites
might support themselves by taking a small cut of properly
licensed music distributed by the site
(Say this music may be freely downloaded and given away in
any media whatsoever but there can be no charge of any
kind,  no handling charge, no media fee.   Professionally
packaged version are available at this site and the musicians
receive 50% gross revenue and the site receives 50% gross
revenue.) while the space tech sites might sell advertising
or solicit sponsorship by U.S. defense behomeths and/or 
U.S. military recruiters.

Further regarding funding ... big brothers and big sisters of
America organizations seem to spend a lot of money in
the U.S. soliciting funds and volunteers via television
advertising.   A proper business plan and some ecommunication
with them might develop adequate funding to experiment with
this type of mentoring site.   They seem seriously interested
in getting some mentoring into ghettos where kids (and immature
adults) often lack a variety of role models to observe.   

Regards,
Mike Irwin