On 3/28/06, charles matthews <charles.r.matthews(a)ntlworld.com> wrote: Widely is not the same thing as seriously. Spam (the meat) sells well. Does anyone take it seriously? This is one of those arguments I really dislike. "If we try and improve things, people will want us to improve them even more, and it will never end!" Look at it the other way. Don't label a page kid safe. Label it *not kid-safe*. Then if someone edits the pornographic article to remove all the porn, then no harm is done. We shouldn't (can't, really) make any guarantees that no kids will be shocked, but hopefully in time, people can draw their own conclusions about the level of risk. At the moment, the risk is high, because a user can easily stumble on [[autofellatio]] or whatever. If all those pages are tagged correctly, then the only risk is that someone sticks tubgirl on [[GWB]] for 2 minutes - a substantially lower risk. You're right. No warranties. But warnings, and the option to "opt out" with suitable software. Just like with every other site of which "a fairly large portion is pornographic". :) Steve

On 3/28/06, charles matthews <charles.r.matthews(a)ntlworld.com> wrote: That's called living dangerously :) Yes, I am leaping to the conclusion that making Wikipedia an attractive resource for teachers for use with kids is an improvement. What would you call it? Yep. And what do parents do when they're shocked by something their kid saw on Wikipedia? Anything pleasant, useful, or beneficial to the Wikipedia project? Even higher if you type "sex" into the search box, which most kids probably at some time or another. I agree with your point about the random page though (Britannica was way off the mark with "large proportion"). That's a lower risk, to me. I think it's significantly less likely that a person would stumble onto a pornographic site by clicking interwiki links. Hell, the chances of your "average" English speaker clicking on an interwiki link at all are fairly remote, let alone one that took them from a "safe" page to an "unsafe" one. I know that, and you know that. "They" don't though. Steve

On Tue, 28 Mar 2006 17:44:36 +0100, you wrote: For some values of knowledge. I don't really see the merit in copying and pasting the one-sentence "biography" of a minor porn actor from a website which already acts as a repository for such crap if one were needed. Guy (JzG) -- http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:JzG

Matt wrote: On the one hand I agree with you both. But on the other hand (this is me being a handwringing fence-sitter :-) ) there can be quite a bit of value in having all the world's information *all in one place*. Wikipedia is already replacing google for certain kinds of searches for me -- rather than doing a google search and then picking which of the first ten hits is likely to best tell me what I want, I'll cut to the chase and do the same search in one of my always-open Wikipedia windows instead. (But with that said, I'm certainly not trying to condone the irreverent copying of any information, bulk or trivial, mainstream or borderline, from other websites into Wikipedia.)

On Tue, 28 Mar 2006 11:59:19 -0800, you wrote: Depends what you mean by verifiable, doesn't it? As far as the porn community goes, the vast majority are sourced from primary sources (video covers) or unreliable secondary sources (IADB), and the inclusion of what I would consider minimum biographical data - name and date of birth, for example - is sometimes reverted as "too dangerous" because of stalkers. The idea of coverage in non-trivial reliable sources seems to be waived in these cases. Guy (JzG) -- http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:JzG

On 3/28/06, charles matthews <charles.r.matthews(a)ntlworld.com> wrote: Wait, where did anyone mention plaudits? You want to get the encyclopaedia written. I want the encyclopaedia to be useful to people. These goals are not incompatible. You could hope for that. It's in excellent shape. And it's pretty much monolingual anglosaxons who have driven Wikipedia thus far. Of course, if you were trying to insult me, you missed your target :) How about a "safer" Wikipedia? We have spoiler tags on articles about movies and TV shows, and that didn't seem to cause anyone a philosophical crisis. How would content tags be vastly different? Answer: They would be invisible to most users. Steve

On 3/28/06, charles matthews <charles.r.matthews(a)ntlworld.com> wrote: Ok, I've obviously offended you. My remark was intended as a vague sympathetic sigh agreeing that there are vast numbers of monolingual anglosaxons in the US, that do indeed have a great deal of influence, being as numerous as they are. I think "driven" was a pretty poor choice of words - I didn't mean to imply that they were somehow the leadership of the Wikipedia effort, but rather, the meat and potatoes or something. Not that I really have any idea. My apologies again. Steve (only claim to fame is that I'm bilingual and living in France)

Steve Bennett wrote: You want Wikipedia to be "safe for work", where "work" includes in classrooms. The logical conclusion is that being "classroom-safe" will earn us plaudits from teachers. "Wow, a free encyclopedia, which doesn't include all the naughty things which are illegal to teach in Texas/Kansas/North Korea!" That an openly editable, largely unmoderated, uncensored website will be "safe for minors"? OTRS gets enough complaints from *adults* about "pornographic vandalism". Why should we offend minors any less? Odd, I could have sworn that it was the German language Wikipedia which had produced three hardcopies of its content... A spoiler warning indicates the *fact* that an article contains "plot or solution details" on the subject of the article. Content warnings would be incredibly objective and POV - once you start putting up "offensive content" tags, it's a slippery slope to... "Warning: This article contains graphic descriptions of electron flow" in [[electricity]]. Really? So, if they're "invisible to most users", what's the point of having them? Why not just leave them out altogether? -- Alphax - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax Contributor to Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia "We make the internet not suck" - Jimbo Wales Public key: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax/OpenPGP

Steve Bennett wrote: Earlier you wrote "Yes, I am leaping to the conclusion that making Wikipedia an attractive resource for teachers for use with kids is an improvement." Ok, so someone else could fork us and produce a meta-stable "clean" version. Wait, doesn't answers.com do that already? Whoops, we should probably swap all instances of "subjective" and "objective" in those two paragraphs. However, "offensive" is most definately a subjective term - the term "bugger" can be offensive in certain contexts, as can the infamous phrase "so where the bloody hell are you"... So, you're willing to tag *all* articles based on their content? Are you then willing to tag the list of tags? "Warning: this set of articles have been identified of being of a biologically accurate/theologically dubious/unscientific nature"? (sex, evolution, and creation respectively) Braille on food products is expected by people with impaired vision. Who is going to which readers do and don't see the warnings? Please stop trying to build strawmen... -- Alphax - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax Contributor to Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia "We make the internet not suck" - Jimbo Wales Public key: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax/OpenPGP

geni wrote: Maybe our tagline should be "From Wikipieda (Hi mum!), the communist's free encyclopeedia that anywun can eddit ON WHEEELS!!1!!eleven (buy V1aGr4)" (No, this is *not* a suggestion for April Fools Day...) -- Alphax - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax Contributor to Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia "We make the internet not suck" - Jimbo Wales Public key: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax/OpenPGP

"Steve Bennett" wrote Naked breasts - the last thing young kids should be exposed to. No, wait. The first thing young kids should be exposed to. No, wait, the breasts should be exposed to the kid, but one at a time. Good thing newborns have good enough grasp of subjectivity and objectivity not to be confused. Or offended. No wait, they grasp fingers, but I think they don't really grasp ... never mind, the confusion seems to lie elsewhere ... Charles

Sean Barrett wrote: So, a girl can't look at her own breasts then. -- Alphax - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax Contributor to Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia "We make the internet not suck" - Jimbo Wales Public key: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax/OpenPGP

Steve Bennett wrote: Neither do I. <snip> Okay, I just wasn't sure how you'd make them "invisible to most users" and yet still useful... -- Alphax - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax Contributor to Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia "We make the internet not suck" - Jimbo Wales Public key: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax/OpenPGP