[WikiEN-l] Wikipedia can never be fully "safe" and also open...

Mon Feb 21 02:02:22 UTC 2005

As regards that Macbeth story, I think sheer common sense applies as to what an encyclopedia should have. I'm certainly not against an article on wombs. 

Arno

----- Original Message -----
From: dpbsmith at verizon.net
To: wikien-l at Wikipedia.org
Subject: [WikiEN-l] Wikipedia can never be fully "safe" and also open...
Date: Sun, 20 Feb 2005 16:44:02 -0500

> 
> Even if there were total agreement among Wikipedians proper 
> content, so long as Wikipedia is open to "zero-threshold" editing, 
> it will always contain a certain among of material that does not 
> belong. The equilibrium between the rate at which such material is 
> inserted and the rate at which it is removed guarantees this.
> 
> Even if we had a consensus so clear that "obscenity" could be a 
> valid speedy candidate, removal would still not be _instantaneous._ 
> As things stand, questionable articles will remain visible for at 
> least five days--and the very existence of the VfD discussions 
> makes it easy for anyone who wishes to attack Wikipedia to find 
> them.
> 
> No matter what technical mechanism we put into place, tagging an 
> article as offensive likely to be considered debatable and require 
> several days to ascertain consensus before the tagging becomes 
> stable.
> 
> This doesn't affect the broad questions we've been discussing, but 
> it does mean that Wikipedia will _always_ be vulnerable to those 
> who wish to attack it for containing offensive material. The only 
> way to change this would be to subject every article to _prior_ 
> review before release into the main namespace.
> 
> I think it's pointless to discuss making Wikipedia "safe for 
> classrooms." Any teacher who lets his or students access Wikipedia 
> will always be taking some risk with their career. The risk is 
> small, and that a prudent teacher in the right circumstances might 
> deem it acceptable, but it will always be there. The risk of a 
> student running across one of these pages _by accident_ is very 
> small, but in the fifties my little friends and I were certainly 
> getting _our_ giggles looking up "rape" and "carnal" and "vagina" 
> in the dictionary, and discoveries are quickly shared.
> 
> In George Orwell's novel, _A Clergyman's Daughter_, a schoolteacher 
> inadvisedly presents "Macbeth" to her students. They reach the 
> words "Macduff was from his mother's womb/Untimely ripp'd," and a 
> student asks the fatal question, "Please, Miss, what does that 
> mean." She explains "haltingly and incompletely--but she did 
> explain," and the following evening she is confronted by angry 
> parents who feel "it is a disgrace that schoolbooks can be printed 
> with such words in them; I'm sure if any of us had known that 
> Shakespeare had that kind of stuff, we'd have put our foot down at 
> the start.... If I had my way, no child--at any rate, no 
> girl--would know anything about the Facts of Life till she was 
> twenty-one."
> 
> Fast forward to Holden Caulfield's tombstone, and Wikipedia.
> 
> --
> Daniel P. B. Smith, dpbsmith at verizon.net
> "Elinor Goulding Smith's Great Big Messy Book" is now back in print!
> Sample chapter at http://world.std.com/~dpbsmith/messy.html
> Buy it at http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1403314063/
> 
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l

-- 
_______________________________________________
Find what you are looking for with the Lycos Yellow Pages
http://r.lycos.com/r/yp_emailfooter/http://yellowpages.lycos.com/default.asp?SRC=lycos10