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

Thu Apr 14 18:41:10 UTC 2005

> It's been rehashed here time and again.  The evidence of the massive
> conflicts over [[Clitoris]] and other articles should make it clear that
> giving people more stuff to fight over is NOT a recipe for a peaceful
> Wikipedia.
>
> Hell, Wikipedia contributors manage to have flamewars over whether an
> article should have an {{NPOV}} dispute tag on it.  If we can have a
> dispute over *whether a dispute exists* then I don't think we can be
> trusted to label articles _obscene_ or not -- that's just an invitation
> for worse conflicts.

No you have shown that the images already cause conflicts you have
failed to show that any method of labeling would increase them.

> What's more, these conflicts are basically POV in nature.  People have
> fundamentally different opinions about what is appropriate for children,
> or for office workers for that matter.  Inviting people to fuss over
> whether a given article should be tagged "child-safe" or "work-safe" is
> just not a very good idea for the civility and advancement of the
> project.
> 

So what? {{cleanup}} {{wikify}}{{stub}}{{substub}} they are all POV
> Chilling effects are a known problem with any restriction on expression.
> Because people do not want to run afoul of the restriction, they self-
> censor expression that comes close to the boundary.  On Wikipedia, this
> would mean that people would tend to avoid contributing particular
> material to articles because they didn't want the article to be
> recategorized as "not child-safe" -- even though the added material
> might be highly informative and useful.  Our purpose here is to produce
> an informative encyclopedia -- and since a "child-safe" attitude
> endangers that goal by dint of chilling effects, "child-safety" is not a
> compatible goal to seek.
> 
In my expearence people on wikipedia play right up to any boundary. If
you don't belive me see [[WP:AN/3RR]]

> 

> Of course not.  But we shouldn't be taking actions "because Wikipedia
> could get sued" without advice from the Foundation's lawyers for that
> very reason -- it isn't our job; we're likely to have it wrong; and we
> may even expose the project to *more* risk thereby.

But you went beyond that. You went so far as the say the person was wrong.

> Uninformed speculation about legal matters leads to all kinds of moronic
> conclusions.  Just take a look at some of the nonsensical speculation
> about open-source software licensing out there.  My point is that we
> should *NOT* be basing our actions on speculations of risks that have
> simply not been demonstrated.

No we should find out if those risks exist or not. You made an
absolute stament that they did not.

-- 
geni