[WikiEN-l] Re: Putting Wikipedia on a CD or DVD

Thu Mar 24 18:57:44 UTC 2005

Matt R wrote:

> Hang on...isn't this discussion in the context of shipping CDs out to parts of
> the world without easy Internet access? In which case, the aforementioned
> schoolchildren would not be able to access these things online.

And I guess this points out that Wikipedia (Wikimedia Foundation and we editors) are not really responsible for granting anybody access to anything.  What we are responsible for is making our data easy to use and palatable to the guardians of schoolchildren.

Nathan Wong wrote:

> Tom Haws wrote:
>
>> They are going to get it anyway.  They may as well get it from me?  
>> Is that the reasoning?
>
>
> No, merely that you would no more be 'responsible' for a school age 
> child accessing that information from a Wikipedia CD/DVD than you are 
> for it being on Wikipedia atm, or a teacher/headmaster would be for 
> providing access to it (there's no reason not to have a sign that says 
> "Warning: this is an encyclopedia and there may be some articles that 
> you find objectionable".
> On the other hand, if we were to initiate a review system there is no 
> reason that it cannot have some form of content warning/aging anyway 
> (though I think that just a "mature content notice" would be best). 
> From this, you could produce two version of Wikipedia - one which is 
> censored (if you see fit - though it could be argued that this is 
> against the "wiki-way").

Right, Estel.  It really is not our choice who reads our stuff.  Other 
than our responsibility to be honest about the nethermost recesses of 
Wikipedia and what they may containt, it kind of boils down to a market 
decision regarding what we have to do or want to do to be relevant in 
the world.  If we want headmasters to use us for their schools, we 
probably are going to have to give those headmasters the tools to 
select/filter our database (enter Mangus's Wikitag system again).