[Foundation-l] Adult and Illegal content on Wikimedia projects

Thu Apr 6 06:59:37 UTC 2006

I think you will continue to have a problem with contentious content if the
only means of controlling it is the NPOV.  Encouragement to genocide can be
presented very dispassionately.

A book documenting how to build a nuclear bomb is a textbook.  A book on how
to build a nuclear bomb and then place it on a commuter train is an
instruction book on terrorism.

It may be against the spirit of Wikimedia but the only way to control this
is to have some declared rules about where you stand.  Perhaps you should
consider the idea of a general constitution or bill of rights.  An
instruction book on "How to launch a hostile leveraged buyout" could be
offensive to people with ambivalent attitudes to capitalism.  An instruction
book on "How to send anthrax by mail" will offend others.  Clearly, though,
if you wish to be entirely neutral you have to host all this information.
As soon as you start to judge and select what content is allowed and what
isn't, you are choosing sides.

If you choose sides, make it quite clear where the line is and don't let
anyone cross.

And you have to decide.

Where do analysis of Sun Tzu's "Art of War", or Klauswitz "On War", find 
itself within the current imbroglio?  Both books give a penetrating and 
illustrative guide to waging war.

--
Gavin Chait