Karl Krueger wrote:
What's wrong with censorware tagging? Where to
start? Here's the
biggie: tagging is incompatible with Wikipedia's existing commitments.
No system of tags is compatible with Wikipedia's commitment to
neutrality. The dimensions, biases, and extremes of any system of tags
are created from a particular non-neutral point of view. Wikipedia is
categorically forbidden from taking on such a point of view as its own.
Well, actually, there is a system that *would* work while maintaining
Wikipedia's commitment to neutrality: an *external* tagging system.
Imagine a separate website with a domain name of, say, "ob.noxio.us."
Like del.icio.us, it would be a tagging system that lets anyone post
their own bookmarks, with keywords. The difference would be that
whereas del.icio.us tags web pages that have content they LIKE,
ob.noxio.us would tag pages with content they DISLIKE. This would
create a sort of censorware folksonomy. It would then be a fairly
simple matter to design a system that filters content on pages (not
just on Wikipedia but on the entire web), according to whatever
categories they choose: nipples, images of excrement, the face of
Bill O'Reilly, whatever.
If people are really concerned about the content on Wikipedia, I
think they should devote their energies to developing an external
solution along these lines. After all, the problem they're describing
isn't just a problem with Wikipedia. If you're worried about your
boss getting mad when your web browser displays nudity, Wiipedia
isn't the only (or even the most likely) place where this is likely
to happen. A web-wide solution would be more appropriate to the scope
of this problem, and it would allow Wikipedia to continue doing what
it does best without worrying about yet another layer of
administration and contention.
--Sheldon Rampton