[WikiEN-l] Re: Suggestions for a work-safe encyclopedia

Thu Apr 14 17:03:32 UTC 2005

Tony Sidaway wrote:

>Stan Shebs said:
>
>>It's not so much whether people know how to operate the web
>>browser, it's that it makes referring to WP an unduly risky
>>activity. For instance, suppose I'm in the office of a less-clueful
>>boss, and am trying to get the boss to understand a detail, and I
>>know WP has a good explanation; it's not going to help my case if
>>I have to ask the boss to turn off image display before I have
>>him/her bring up a WP page.
>>
>
>Precisely. You're blaming Wikipedia for your boss's cluelessness.
>
>
Are you fifteen years old or what? I'm describing the realities
of the workplace - responsible adults with mortgages and families
depending on them don't get themselves fired just to make a free
speech point. You can fulminate about it all you want, but that's
not going to change anything.

A WP with nudity on every page (which sounds great to me actually,
much more interesting than what we have now :-) - I can contribute
scans of my "nudes on postage stamps") is certainly doable, and
will no doubt have a contingent characterizing the result as a
"great encyclopedia", but its readership will be rather limited.
You can expect to see a great many forks at that point, and most
editors will likely migrate to one of them, because they're going
to go where the readers are to be found. So the situation will
resolve itself in favor of a somewhat restrictive image policy
sooner or later; just a question of whether you want to do it now,
or after a painful forking process.

Stan