[WikiEN-l] Writing about sexual topics responsibly is not censorship

Sun Feb 13 21:29:07 UTC 2005

Robert wrote:
> In any case, our encyclopedia is useless if people refuse
> to read it...and thousands of schools will ban its use if
> it continues to offer pornographic images (and eventually,
> videos.)  What good is our work if few people can access
> it?  Even if it is not officially banned by entire schools,
> many teachers will tell their students that Wikipedia is
> not reliable or professional if we continue this course of
> extreme sexual explicitness.

Jimbo himself has said that one of his dreams is to have a copy of 
Wikipedia on the desk of every schoolchild in Africa. That won't 
happen whilst Wikipedia is being used as a repository for images 
which those schoolchildrens' teachers will view as pornographic. It 
is perfectly possible to present matter-of-fact information about 
such articles by the use of description and, if need be, a simple 
line drawing.

I'm sure there must be enough talented artists contributing to WP 
who would be more than capable of producing such an image (if indeed 
one is *really* needed, which in the case of [[Autofellatio]] I 
would disagree) specifically for WP.

Personally I think people ought to be bearing in mind that WP is 
*not* a sex manual and as such, perhaps it out to be rethought as to 
exactly how explicit such articles should be in the first place.

regards,
Arkady