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

Thu Apr 6 13:35:42 UTC 2006

Gavin Chait wrote:

>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.
>
>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.
>
>
>
>--
>Gavin Chait
>  
>
I was trying to point out that even putting a disclaimer at the top of a 
page suggesting that "the activity is illegal and it is only a 
description of the activity for academic research" is not sufficient for 
content like this to remain on a Wikimedia project.

And to point out the two examples you gave, "How to launch a hostile 
leveraged buyout", while perhaps distasteful to some individuals would 
not necessarily have to explain how to avoid getting caught by security 
regulators, although suggesting that certain kinds of activity while 
performing a leveraged buyout might be considered illegal and you should 
avoid doing that might be reasonable to include in a book like this.

On the other hand, I don't know any legal means to send Anthrax by mail 
or by any common courrier system except for pure reserach by clinical 
laboratories.  A discussion on how to manufacture anthrax by extracting 
a new strain of it from dirt in your backyard is a discussion that I 
would personally not like to see on a Wikimedia project.  Or at least it 
should be restricted in some way.  This isn't really about having a 
neutral point of view, because all you are doing is describing how the 
process works, and it is not an advocacy about what to do the Anthrax 
once you have a couple of plastic milk jugs full of the biological agent 
in concentrated form.

We simply can't have content that has to go through the Jimbo test every 
time something questionable comes up.  This is where Jimbo looks at it 
and says it shouldn't be there, so it fails the Jimbo test.  He is a 
nice guy and all, but Jimbo doesn't have the time to review everything 
like this, nor am I expecting him to do it either.

And as I pointed out on the Staff Lounge, a book about teaching high 
school physics or an organic chemistry textbook is really what Wikibook 
is primarily about.  If you havn't been to Wikibooks for some time, come 
in and take a look at what is being done.  Some incredible content is 
being developed, and books about controvercial topics really are just 
the fringe of Wikibooks as well.  The huge worry here is if having books 
like "How Anthrax is made" might detract from more serious textbook 
efforts and drive potential contributors away.  Of if we are trying to 
get the Wikijunior Solar System book put into an elementary school, they 
will reject it because of the fact that Wikibooks also permits these 
fringe books as well.

As an administrator with the ability to delete this content, I feel 
compelled to not just follow my gut instinct on removing this content 
but to also get a concensus from the community before it is removed. 
 And the community concensus is to keep the content, or at least there 
is no huge cry to remove it and often some very vocal contributors who 
insist that the content should remain.  So I go away and leave the 
content alone even if perhaps it doesn't feel right to keep it.

-- 
Robert Scott Horning