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

Thu Apr 6 17:59:48 UTC 2006

Birgitte Arco wrote:

>The way I see it Wikibooks has formed a community
>consensus about the format of the content (i.e.
>Wikibooks presents information in a instructional
>format).  However I do not think the community has has
>ever decided on the type of content itself.  Right now
>the content can be described as an indiscriminate
>collection of information (within the aforementioned
>format).  My suggestion would be to try and come to a
>consensus about the inclusion guidelines.  It seems to
>me, that Wikibooks has many exclusion guidelines on
>content and only inclusion guidelines on format.  If
>the community could reach consensus on the content to
>include, then you could require each module to have
>some sort of "mission statement" (i.e. Cookbook
>provides instruction on the preparation of food for
>human consumption).  Then you can weed out the mission
>statements that fall outside the scope of the agreed
>upon inclution guidelines, and enforce that the
>material adhere to the mission statements that are
>acceptable.  
>
>I realize this is much easier said then done.  The
>English Wikisource is currently working through some
>of the same issues with what we want to include, and
>it is diffuclt to codify these things.  However I
>think most people in the community will agree they do
>not want Wikibooks to be an indiscriminate collection
>of information.  If they do want to be that, tell them
>Wikisource has some source code we will be sending
>their way ;)
>
>
>Birgitte SB
>
>  
>
To put it into a nutshell, I was advocating that Wikibooks should be for 
book-length non-fiction content that doesn't

A) duplicate efforts on other Wikimedia projects.  i.e. don't start up a 
new fork of Wiktionary or Wikipedia in English on Wikibooks.
B) maintains standards common to other Wikimedia projects including NPOV 
and original research exclusion policies

This is pretty straight forward and understandable.  It even makes 
sense, and most of the "What is Wikibooks" page goes into this in fine 
detail where apparently some individuals over the past few years havn't 
understood this principle and need it explained in further detail. 
 There is no reason to have original source texts on Wikibooks if it is 
already being dealt with on Wikisource, for example.

Wikibooks is about books, and for the most part it fills that mission 
fairly well.  The issue here is that books can go into details about 
doing things like building bombs and nuclear reactors just as easily as 
it can go into details about gardening or a physics demonstration 
experiment.  And the "textbooks only" clause is interpreted very loosly 
to the point it really is just about books alone, with only a general 
project goal to help develop actual textbooks that can be used in real 
classrooms eventually.

When a book is interpreted as being more than simply something that you 
would find on a library bookshelf, you get into things like scholarly 
research journals, errata databases, internet services directories, 
phone books, language resource directories, a blog user forum, a 
language translation service, and a philosophical debating forum.  All 
of these have been on Wikibooks recently, with strong protest by the 
users who added this content to keep it on Wikibooks when efforts 
occured to remove this material.  I havn't touched the phone books, but 
there are a couple.

It doesn't help when you have users on other Wikimedia projects openly 
proclaiming that Wikibooks is the place to try these kind of 
experiments.  I tried to stem the tidal wave of projects coming from 
Meta where it was common practice to tell people to start new 
experimental Wikimedia projects on Wikibooks first.  It still happens, 
but to a much smaller degree than what happened before.  Apparently 
Wikipedia is the current source of some of these users, and perhaps I 
need to get more involved in the forums on Wikipedia to help teach 
Wikipedians about Wikibooks' policies.  I find it very painful to tell a 
very eager contributor who has tried very hard and put in sometimes as 
much as several hundred hours worth of work on dozens of pages that the 
content is going to be deleted.  And that has happened as well.

As far as inclusion guidelines are concerned, Wikibooks is about 
textbooks.  If it is a textbook, it is welcome.  If it is not, you are 
on shaky ground, and the less like a textbook it is, the more likly it 
will be deleted.

The problem I brought up, however, with the original thread is that you 
have content which is written like a textbook, using standard features 
for "books" in terms of format, but the content is objectional because 
of the content.  Where do you draw the line here and say that some kinds 
of content simply should not be here nor on any other Wikimedia project? 
 The Manual of Crime was a perfect example, because it was a full 
multi-chapter book, and some effort did go into trying to rework the 
content to a NPOV standard.

Here is one very well written comment that supported deletion of this 
book:  " I don't know if anyone supporting this 'manual' has considered 
this, but the very fact that something is called a 'manual of crime' 
precludes the work's authenticity. I mean, really, are there any /actual 
mobsters/ writing into the 'Racketeering' section? Sensible burglars, 
robbers, and other criminals don't waste time writing about ways and 
means. Essentially, there is little to suggest that most of this 
"manual" isn't just a formatted sounding board, not for actual 
criminals, but voyeuristic /crime enthusiasts./"

Most of the rest of the deletion votes were because it was illegal 
activity that was being promoted through the publication of the book, 
even though none of the pages explicitly advocated committing any 
crimes.  All I'm trying to do is codify this attitude and try to make 
sure that there is a formal policy in place to see that books of this 
nature don't get put back on Wikibooks, and there is a rationale behind 
the policy rather than simply because an admin doesn't like the content 
and wants to censor it.

-- 
Robert Scott Horning