Re: [Bug-gne]Ideologies vs. Practicality in GNE

[Mike Warren]

"Hook" <address@hidden> writes:

> For me, it isn't an issue of "petty differences" at all, it's
> considerably more fundamental and important than that. I think that
> there's a world of difference between a government persecuting
> holders of a view that they don't like (China over things like
> Falungong or Tianemen Square), and individuals being hurt as a
> result of published material ("howto" articles about date rape,
> pedophilia etc).

How many classifiers would include such articles? Why are they
necessarily bad, especially when you consider that probably dozens of
well-written and researched ``counter articles'' would likely be
submitted, and could easily be included as ``related'' articles by a
classifier?

> We've come up with plenty of examples here in past weeks of subjects
> which *are* extreme, and the project may never have submissions in
> these areas at all. But I think it's useful for GNE to have a
> philosophy explaining what happens if such articles appear.

I agree with both points; it is inevitable that some article will
appear which will be ``controversial'' (in the sense that people
involved in the project will [dis]agree with its merit) and we do need
a clear policy on what happens.

I do somewhat like Tom's idea for a ``yes only'' vote system, but this
system should have extremely clear guidelines on what its intent is. I
think its intent should be ONLY to reject articles which are CLEARLY
just garbage, like random binaries and the like. It should NOT be for
rejecting ``questionable'' articles; *anything* which is written
content should be accepted, IMO.

> It's particularly important to cover those areas which are illegal
> in one country or another. Regardless of how any of us feel about
> another countries laws (or our own for that matter), they do exist,
> can and often are enforced, and can have an effect on the reality
> and the public perception of a project like GNE.

True. Some method of optionally excluding articles from mirrors may be
the best solution here. That is: one can host a mirror and keep out
``illegal'' information. Of course, this brings up the nasty and
undesirable requirement of keeping meta-information in the
repository. I think this should be kept strictly separate, so this
would mean a separate database of article IDs which are in some manner
``questionable''. This would ideally be a list of countries where
particular article IDs are either illegal or ``potentially'' illegal.

HOWEVER, doing this also means that we do open up the specter of
easily-enacted censorship (and here I hope to use the word correctly)
by groups who would like the see such information eliminated. Having
``potential legality'' meta-information would make it almost
ludicrously easy for a {court,government} to demand that all such
articles be deleted.

> I think that there are some subjects which shouldn't be published at
> all.

I disagree.

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