I think the main misconception that you have is that a content
advisory system should take a position on whether or not content is
'safe for children' or not. It should not, and if it does not, then
it can be NPOV.
koyaanis qatsi wrote:
Isn't it relevant that we don't know what
criteria
google uses to filter things into "safe" and "unsafe"?
Sure, I guess it is. But I think we can take a guess at what they do.
I am not suggesting that we need to replicate what they are doing
exactly, of course. Since our universe of documents is so much
smaller, and our purpose so much narrower, our task in this area will
be much less.
I'm guessing that my previous argument was so
fundamentally flawed that it didn't deserve comment.
Probably not! Perhaps it was just overlooked.
Since we don't know and won't be borrowing
Google's
system, we will have to establish our own. At the
risk of embarassing myself, let me ask again:
[[felching]]: "safe" or not?
[[oral sex]]: "safe" or not?
[[Bill Clinton]]: "safe" or not?
felching: sexual content
oral sex: sexual content
Bill Clinton: politics
I suppose some wag could come along and suggest that an article on
Bill Clinton is 'sexual content', but if it really is, then there's
something wrong with the article on other grounds, I think.
For what it's worth, one of those three articles
disgusts me, *but* I don't think that my disgust is
relevant to wikipedia *in any way*, nor should it be.
Yeah, I'm no fan of Clinton, either. ;-)
At any rate, if any less than three of those articles
are "unsafe" then we are being biased, i.e. POV,
Really? I don't see how. The question is not: "is this unsafe or
not?" The question is: "is this controversial or not?" or "is this
likely to be considered mature content?"
We often say that such-and-such a person is 'controversial', or that
thus-and-so theory is 'controversial', without taking any position on
whether or not it *should* be controversial. Sometimes we as a group
agree, sometimes we don't, but anyway, NPOV saves us from having to
decide.
[[murder]]: "safe" or not?
[[infanticide]]: "safe" or not?
[[matricide]]: "safe" or not?
[[genocide]]: "safe" or not?
I would put all those some content advisory category like 'crime'.
Would it be ok for children to know about murder, but
not murder of infants, mothers, or entire ethnicities?
If so, why? Isn't that POV? Why should murder of an
infant be considered "less safe" to know about than
murder of an adult? Why should murder of a mother be
considered "less safe" to know about than murder of a
stranger? Why should murder of many be considered
"less safe" to know about than murder of one? Those
are the kinds of issues that will come up in
categorizing articles and establishing the filters.
Under the system I'm advocating, none of those questions have any
relevance at all.
And, while we're on the subject, are we really
doing
anyone a service when we forsake our goal of providing
a complete educational resource to implement a system
to allow people to educate themselves only on what
they're already prejudiced towards?
That is hardly much of a concern. We aren't here to cram knowledge
down people's throats. If people don't want to read about something,
then they won't, no matter what we do.
What's important to recognize is that people *do* have valid concerns
along these lines, concerns which we may not share ourselves, but
which we can nonetheless acknowledge.
To bring it back to LittleDan's original issue: if the existence of
'felching' in the encyclopedia gets it banned from all schools, then
isn't that problematic?
Or: if I can't in good conscience send something with a more delicate
temperament than mine to wikipedia, then isn't that problematic, too?
--Jimbo