On 10/22/06, Tim Chambers <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > A vigorous discussion titled "Offensive Content" is taking place at > http://textop.org/smf/index.php?topic=49.0 > > <>< Tim > Larry states many times during the discussion that he "want[s] the Citizendium to be family-friendly, which means appropriate for viewing by people of all ages." All ages is underscored in another post of his, where he talks about how easy it would be for a "six-year-old" to click on an "adult content" button. Larry lays this policy down as one of those non-negotiable principles. As larry says: "If you aren't comfortable with this, then I suggest that you find another project to contribute to."
J. Noel Chiappa replies with a problem, "that there is a lot of material which is inappropriate for children (especially younger children), but which is vital to include for adults." David Goodman continues this concept with an example: "how are you going to make an article on DH Lawrence family-safe?" David Marshall objects, saying that he "see[s] no difficulty at all." ZacharyPruckowski seems to come up with a decent summary. He presents 4 different categories of articles. The first, which make up the vast majority (he uses the figure "95 percent"), have "positive value and no questionable content". The fourth category consists of articles "with no redeeming educational value". These two categories are the easy ones. The other two require more thought. A category 2 article has "Some questionable content, but is an article that has other redeeming value (the Statue of David IRL, discussion of books with sexual topics)". Putting this in terms of my own personal values, and considering a discussion of a book with sexual topics, I don't think I'd be comfortable having my son, at the age of six, reading the same article as me. And I think I'm on the more liberal end of the spectrum. But category 3 is worse. Category 3 articles are ones "where inappropriate content is heavily tied to the topic, but an article we probably need to keep in some form ([[reproduction]], [[Sexual intercourse]], [[Rape]], [[Penis]], etc.)". I have to say (this is my opinion) that I don't think it's possible to create articles on these topics which are at the same time comprehensive enough for an adult but still family-safe to the point where I'd let my son loose (unsupervised) on such a site when he turns six. Larry says that creating a site which is family-safe is non-negotiable, and I accept that. But creating a site which is informative to adults is non-negotiable for me. I have to say that I firmly agree with the principle that the same article should not be created for an adult, a six-year-old, a high-schooler, and a college student. So I think that leaves some sort of access control mechanism. The simplest from an implementation standpoint which remains tight enough from an access standpoint would be to just mark entire articles as not family-safe. If it's true that 95% of articles are uncontroversial, and I think this is a reasonable estimate, then this wouldn't be too bad. Of course, I still won't let my son read CZ unsupervised at the age of six, at least not if the site still has an open editing policy in 2012, but that's just me. The other 5% of articles will simply require some sort of verification before you can access them. Let me close by saying that I think Wikipedia has a number of articles which are gratuitously offensive even for adults. Even the 5% of articles which are access controlled should be toned down from that. But writing in a way as to be safe for a 6-year-old is altogether different. As a final example, which at least eliminates the issue of sex, many parents would not want their six-year-old reading an uncensored article on [[Santa Claus]]. Anthony _______________________________________________ Citizendium-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.purdue.edu/mailman/listinfo/citizendium-l
