QUOTE(dogbiscuit @ Mon 4th February 2008, 6:57am)
Still haven't seemed to have grasped that it is not the disclaimers but the child material, and it is pretty disgraceful that Wikia are ignoring that in being so enthusiastically helpful...
"Some user" is me, actually. The bit about getting their disclaimers worded correctly was supposed to be sort of tongue-in-cheek...
At the same time, obviously if enough people are really into this - and it only takes one - then this material isn't going to just disappear. Someone's going to put it out there somewhere. One might even argue that having it on Wikia might have prevented them from "going too far" with certain imagery and other content, but that was vastly outweighed by the legitimacy Wikia was giving it - i.e., having a site like that associated with Jimbo Wales & Co. might have almost made it look to some people as though publishing sexually-connotative images of child abuse was somehow acceptable.
Of course, one might also argue that the Wikia version of the "Spanking Art" wiki was a proof-of-concept, to demonstrate that there really is "sufficient interest" in the subject, and that therefore Wikia made it all possible, and that therefore the damage is now done. IOW, had it not been for Wikia, nobody would have even tried something like that in the first place, and it would have never existed at all, or at least not for several more years.
I doubt Jimbo even realizes this - internet celebrities, and their companies, are not like other celebrities in that they're not normally exposed to the
true weirdness of the human race on a regular basis, the way actors, rock stars, or pro athletes often are. Most entertainment and sports celebrities understand that they can be role models, for better or worse... Many of them don't care, and some of them even prefer to negatively influence others. But most of them at least try to act responsibly in the face of it. I doubt that someone like Jimbo has any idea of how many Wikipedians think he's some sort of moral beacon of leadership, and I suspect the number is quite substantial. Meanwhile, of course, he just does whatever he wants.
Long story short, being associated with "spanking art" doesn't just make Jimbo look bad to "people of discernment" - it also makes spanking art look "okay" to
people without any discernment.